Part 3: Working with Citrix XenApp 6.5 – Installing Remote Desktop Services

A license server is a very important part of XenApp infrastructure, as the name implies the purpose of the license server is to manage XenApp licensing. In order to successfully deploy the license server, we need to deploy Remote Desktop Licensing and Remote Desktop Session Host services first. For this walkthrough we’re going to be installing RDS onto a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine.
Citrix relies on Remote Desktop Services in order to provide users access to the applications that are installed on the server. Before we begin the Citrix License Server installation, lets go over the installation procedure of Remote Desktop Services.

Deploying RD Licensing and Session Host:

We need to launch server manager and begin the “Add Roles Wizard”

Next, we need to select Remote Desktop Service

We are now presented with a quick introduction to Remote Desktop Services, its probably a good idea to read through if you’re new to RDS, otherwise click Next

We now need to make sure we select Remote Desktop Licensing

At the Discovery Scope for RD Licensing we have the option of configuring the discovery scope for the license server, in my lab, I chose to enable it and then applied the scope to the forest, however as you can see in the image below, the recommendation is not to configure the scope, in other words, leave the default settings

We can now begin the installation

After the installation is complete, we can close the wizard

Activating RDS License Server:

The second part of deploying RDS licensing is activating the license server. In my lab, I just used the evaluation license which is more than enough to be able to install XenApp and get all the apps working. So in this walkthrough, I will document the procedure of activating the license server using evaluation license mode. One important thing to note, is that once the evaluation licenses are expired, the server license service will stop functioning until new licenses are applied. This is something that needs to be considered in a production environment. Ideally, its a good idea to purchase the licenses ahead of time and install them during the setup. However, Microsoft does provide a grace period of 120 days which should be enough time to purchase all the necessary licenses.
Let’s begin by navigating over to the RD Licensing Manager

Once the Licensing Manager window is open, we should be able to see the RDS server, however make a note of the fact that the RDS server licensing is not activated, in order to activate the license server, we need to right click on the server and select Activate Server

A wizard should open and right away we can click on Next. It is also a good idea to probably read the intro if you’re new to this, sometimes I find it helps put things in to perspective

We can leave the connection method set to Automatic connection and click Next

Now, we need to fill in the Company Information

Finally, we’re getting there, the license server should now be activated

We can also confirm by looking that the status of the RD server
Now we need to configure the licensing mode and specify the license server. This step is quite simple, navigate to Administrative Tools -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration

Right click Remote Desktop Licensing Mode and select properties

Specify the licensing mode, in my case I chose per User and click on Add. We now need to define our License Server. Select the known license server and add it to specified license servers

Click Ok again

We should now see the Licensing mode and Server configured

That’s it folks, that was fairly simple and we now have an RD server that can be used for when we’re deploying Citrix. Next we’ll look at deploying the License Server, Web Server, and XenApp server