Hi,
I have been presented with a problem to solver! I am confident in my technical skills but I have studied RDS but never implemented it so I need some guidance. Also not to sure how you licence machines when using VDI? I read that my normal Win server 2012 R2 standard licence is no good if I virtualise it, is that correct? I read through the MS licencing documentation but still come away with out a clue, so I rang MS but I explained that I wasn't sure what licence I would need to Virtualise Server 2012 R2 and also the VM Win 8.1 clients that I want to virtualise. But all they said was I would need a VDI CAL licence, is that correct? Not sure what that is anyway but it didn't sound right to me? I know that I would need an RDS cal if I use VDI normally but I wanted to know if I need a different licence for Server 2012 R2 itself? From a paragraph I read it said that Virtualisation licences would be needed. So that's what I asked MS cust serv for but I didn't get the answer to my question. So can someone here clear things up for me please? I will be running MS win server 2012 R2 standard as a VM on VMware ESXI 5.5 and then using RDS from that aswell as promoting it to a DC. So what licence will I need?
Right so here is the situation: -
I have 5 Mac computers in an office which have been running separate VM's of Win 7 which allows the users to run Sage line 50 etc, but this has become unusable because its so slow. So the owner bought a server off EBay which is pretty decent for what he paid, Quad XEON, 42GB RAM, 6x 300Gb SAS Hdd's, IDRAC 6 ent & 4 NIC's.
He has asked me to try and work a solution from products he was interested in namely VMware ESXI 5.5. So I am installing ESXI 5.5 on the server first then setting up Win serv 2012 R2 as a VM, but then I need to set up a way to get his Windows Apps i.e. Sage to the users via the web browser. I know I will need to go down the RDS Remote App route, but need pointing in the right direction on finding out what I need to be reading and doing to achieve this. I think I will also need to setup Remote Desktops along side to give users Virtualised machines to use as they need with personal profiles. Is this doable? Can you run Remote App along side Remote Desktops on the same server?
So if your still with me at this point, thanks for your time and I really hope you can through some of your vast knowledge my way?
Is this all achievable using only MS products or is it easier to look at Citrix XenDesktop?
Thanks
JK MCP