One of the many things you can manage this way is the new RemoteApp-feature introduced with Windows Server 2008. In Windows Server 2008 R2, this feature got enhanced by the addition of User Assignment and Web Single Sign-On capabilities. These new features makes it possible for more and more customers to consider RDS without additional products like Citrix. One benefit using Citrix are more flexible application-management, since an published application may be available from a new farm member without adding each application manually.

Let`s look at a given example: You got a farm with 16 RDS-servers, and you`re leveraging the RemoteApp-feature. For each server in the farm, you must manually set up all applications in RemoteApp-manager after they`re installed. Although there is an export/import-feature in the GUI, many customers require no manual interaction in the server provisioning process. By the addition of the new PowerShell-provider for RDS, this is now possible in RemoteApp using scripting as part of either server provisioning or Group Policy.

For the average Windows sysadmin, I imagine that managing RemoteApp using the RDS PowerShell provider might be a bit tedious. To make this a little easier I`ve created a Windows PowerShell module for working with RDS RemoteApp, available from here.

This module contains the following functions:

• Get-RDSRemoteApp
• Export-RDSRemoteApps
• Import-RDSRemoteApps
• New-RDSRemoteApp
• Remove-RDSRemoteApp

The functions let you administer the same application attributes as the graphical RemoteApp Manager:

• Displayname
• Alias
• Command-line arguments
• RD Web Access availability
• User Assignment

Installing the RDSRemoteApp module

Download and unzip RDSRemoteApp.zip in the following location: %userprofile%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\RDSRemoteApp

Alternatively you may save the module in any of the folders in the $Env:PSMODULEPATH variable.

Using the RDSRemoteApp module

First we`ll have a look at the RemoteApp Manager application-list in the lab-environment:

Start Windows PowerShell on the RDS-server and import the module (you will need to run PowerShell with Administrative privileges):

Since I`ve leveraged the built-in help capabilities in Windows PowerShell v2 Advanced Functions, I`ll show the usage of the functions with a few screenshots from the help:

Get-RDSRemoteApp

New-RDSRemoteApp

Remove-RDSRemoteApp

Export-RDSRemoteApps

Import-RDSRemoteApps

Sample usage for export/import:

Be aware that there are several other RDS settings that may be managed using the PowerShell provider, this module only leverages the RemoteApp functionality. If someone want to create a module for managing other aspects of RDS, feel free to include my RDSRemoteApp module. And as always, suggestions for improvements and new functionality are more than welcome.

For those of you who may not want to do GPO restore the hard way, or buy a commercial third party product, I would encourage you to schedule regular GPO backups using the Windows PowerShell Group Policy-module available in Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as RSAT in Windows 7.
To accomplish this, I`ve written a small script which backs up all modified GPO`s in the specified timespan. I would generally recommend to have the script run once a day, thereby setting the timespan-variable to the last 24 hours. The script are called Backup-ModifiedGPOs.ps1, and available from here.

All Group Policy Objects modified in the specified timespan are backup up to the specified backup path.
Also, an HTML-report are created for each GPO-backup, with the unique backup GUID as part of the filename. This way you can easily see what settings each backup contains.

When restoring a GPO, you must first note the GUID of the backup you want to restore. Then you can restore the GPO by using the Restore-GPO cmdlet in the Group Policy-module. Sample usage:

Administrators who feels more comfortable working with the GUI, may use the Group Policy Management Console to do the restore.

The following procedure from the Group Policy Planning and Deployment Guide on Microsoft TechNet describes how to accomplish the restore operation from the GUI:

To view the list of GPO backups

1. In the GPMC console tree, expand the forest or domain that contains the GPOs that you want to back up.
2. Right-click Group Policy Objects, and the click Manage Backups.
3. In the Manage Backups dialog box, enter the path to the location where you stored the GPO backups that you want to view. Alternatively, you can click Browse, locate the folder that contains the GPO backups, and then click OK.
4. To specify that only the most recent version of the GPOs be displayed in the Backed up GPOs list, select the Show only the latest version of each GPO check box. Click Close.

Using the GPMC to restore GPOs

You can also restore GPOs. This operation restores a backed-up GPO to the same domain from which it was backed up. You cannot restore a GPO from a backup into a domain that is different from the GPO’s original domain.

To restore a previous version of an existing GPO

1. In the GPMC console tree, expand Group Policy Objects in the forest or domain that contains the GPOs that you want to restore.
2. Right-click the GPO that you want to restore to a previous version, and then click Restore from Backup.
3. When the Restore Group Policy Object Wizard opens, follow the instructions in the wizard, and then click Finish.
4. After the restore operation completes, a summary will state whether the restore succeeded. Click OK.

To restore a deleted GPO

Microsoft recently released a free tool for managing multiple remote desktop connections called “Remote Desktop Connection Manager”.

A sample screenshot:

There are several nice features, such as “Connect group” which lets you connect to all servers in a group at once:

On the “Group Properties” you may set common settings for all connections in the group, like logon credentials:

Further, there are group properties for RDS Gateway (formerly TS Gateway), display settings, local resources and so on.

There are several applications for remote desktop connections on the market, and some of them got these settings as a per server setting. It`s nice to be able to group servers and configure common settings.

Dynamically creating the connection list

When you work in larger environments with hundreds, maybe thousands of servers, setting up each connection manually isn`t an option.

Since Remote Desktop Connection Manager stores the config-files in xml-files, it`s rather easy to create dynamic config-files for a domain using Windows PowerShell. I`ve created a script to accomplish this, called New-RDCManFile.ps1, available from here. It uses Microsoft`s PowerShell-module for Active Directory, which is available in Windows Server 2008 R2 and RSAT for Windows 7.

The script does the following:
Creates a template xml-file
Inserts the logged on user`s domain name in the file properties
Inserts the logged on user`s domain name in the group properties
Inserts the logged on user`s username in the logoncredentials section
Inserts the logged on user`s domain name in the logoncredentials section
Retrieves all computer objects from Active Directory with the word “server” in the operatingsystem property
Adds each computer object as a server object
Saves the XML-file to %userprofile%\domain-name.rdg

When done you can open the rdg-file in Remote Desktop Connection Manager. I would recommend you to insert your password in the Group Properties to avoid being asked for credentials for each connection.

Feel free to customize the script to your needs, in example by editing the XML-template to edit the Group Properties. Another customization might be creating a group for each server OU for enhanced overview in larger environments.

If you would rather use Quest`s PowerShell Commands for Active Directory (which works on downlevel operatingsystems like Windows XP and Windows Server 2003), or any other way to retrieve the server names, you may customize this on line 110.

You might also want to schedule the script to run on a regular basis, saving the file to a central location. This way the IT personnel will always have access to the latest version with the most recent servers added.

If you got any further ideas or comments, please let me know in the comments section below.

While this feature can be enabled manually (or scripted) with the PowerShell 2.0 cmdlet Enable-PSRemoting, I would recommend using Group Policy whenever possible. This guide will show you how this can be accomplished for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and above. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, running Enable-PSRemoting in a PowerShell startup script would be the best approach.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 and WinRM 2.0 shipped with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. To take advantage of Windows PowerShell Remoting, both of these are required on the downlevel operating systems Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and WinRM 2.0 are available for download here, as part of the Windows Management Framework (Windows PowerShell 2.0, WinRM 2.0, and BITS 4.0). To deploy this update to downlevel operating systems I would recommend to use WSUS, which are described in detail in this blog post by Kurt Roggen.

Group Policy Configuration

Open the Group Policy Management Console from a domain-joined Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer.

Create or use an existing Group Policy Object, open it, and navigate to Computer Configuration->Policies->Administrative templates->Windows Components

Here you will find the available Group Policy settings for Windows PowerShell, WinRM and Windows Remote Shell:

To enable PowerShell Remoting, the only setting we need to configure are found under “WinRM Service”, named “Allow automatic configuration of listeners”:

Enable this policy, and configure the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to listen on. To configure WinRM to listen on all addresses, simply use *.

No other settings need to be configured, however, I`ve provided screenshots of the other settings so you can see what`s available:

There is one more thing to configure though; the Windows Firewall.

You need to create a new Inbound Rule under Computer Configuration->Policies->Windows Settings->Windows Firewall with Advanced Security->Windows Firewall with Advanced Security->Inbound Rules:

The WinRM port numbers are predefined as “Windows Remote Management”:

With WinRM 2.0, the default http listener port changed from TCP 80 to TCP 5985. The old port number are a part of the predefined scope for compatibility reasons, and may be excluded if you don`t have any legacy WinRM 1.1 listeners.

When the rule are created, you may choose to make further restrictions, i.e. to only allow the IP addresses of your management subnet, or perhaps some specific user groups:

Now that the firewall rule are configured, we are done with the minimal configuration to enable PowerShell Remoting using Group Policy.

On a computer affected by the newly configured Group Policy Object, run gpupdate and see if the settings were applied:

As you can see, the listener indicates “Source*”GPO”, meaning it was configured from a Group Policy Object.

When the GPO have been applied to all the affected computers you are ready to test the configuration.

Here is a sample usage of PowerShell Remoting combined with the Active Directory-module for Windows PowerShell:

The example are saving all computer objects in the Domain Controller Organization Unit in a variable. Then, a foreach-loop are invoking a scriptblock, returning the status of the Netlogon-service on all of the Domain Controllers.

Summary

We`ve now had a look on how to enable and configure PowerShell Remoting using Group Policy.
There are an incredible number of opportunities opening up with the new Remoting feature in Windows PowerShell 2.0. For a complete walkthrough on how you can use this new feature, I would like to recommend the excellent Administrator’s Guide to Windows PowerShell Remoting written by Dr. Tobias Weltner, Aleksandar Nikolic and Richard Giles.

The module are available here, on the TechNet Script Center Gallery.

Installation and usage

Modules in Windows PowerShell can be “installed” in two ways:

1) Save the module as a psm1-file, and store it in a folder with the same name as the psm1-file. Copy this folder, using i.e. xcopy or Copy-Item, to a desired PowerShell module-folder (see available module paths using $env:PSModulePath)

2) Import the module by calling the psm1-file directly.

The first option are preferred for production use.

Next, import the module using Import-Module:

 
(Option 1)

(Option 2)

The module consist of one function as shown here:

The help text are available with Get-Help:

For example usage, add –Examples to the Get-Help cmdlet:

Basic error checking for valid parameters are included:

The Set-PinnedApplication function supports the en-us and nb-no locales as-is, but you can easily add support for more locales.

Feel free to let me know in the comment section below if you got any feedback.

A virtual machine has two important directories, the VM root and the snapshot root. The VM root is where we store the virtual machine configuration file (XML) and the saved state files (.BIN and .VSV). The snapshot root is where we store the config and saved state files for each snapshot of a virtual machine.

Virtual hard disks (.VHDs) are stored where ever the user specifies when creating the virtual machine (or when creating a new virtual hard disk).

What has changed in Hyper-V between Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is the placement of .AVHD files (these are the differencing disks created for each snapshot). In Windows Server 2008 the .AVHD is always created in the snapshot root location, which by default are located at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Snapshots. This caused a lot of people problems – as they would run out of space on the partition where the snapshot root folder was. In Windows Server 2008 R2 the .AVHD file is always created in the same location as its parent virtual hard disk.

This means that with R2 .AVHD files will always appear beside their respective .VHD files. The one exception to this is if you bring across a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine with .AVHDs already in the snapshot root. In this case new .AVHDs will be created beside their parent .AVHDs (in the snapshot root).

Microsoft TechNet Resources

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
Hyper-V R2 in Windows Server 2008 R2

Single sign-on is an authentication method that allows users with a domain account to log on once to a client computer by using a password, and then gain access to remote servers without being asked for their credentials again. See more details here for Windows Server 2008 and here for Windows Server 2008 R2.

On the client-side SSO are currently available for Windows XP with SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Configure SSO on the server-side

To configure SSO on the server-side (Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services or Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services), set the option “Security layer” to either “Negotiate” or “SSL (TLS 1.0)”:

Best practice would be to configure this in a common GPO for all Remote Desktop Services servers in the domain:

This setting resides under Computer Configuration->Policies->Administrative templates->Windows Components->Terminal Services->Terminal Server->Security.

Configure SSO on the client-side

Using a common GPO would also be the best practice to deploy the client settings needed for SSO to work.
The “Allow Delegating Default Credentials” resides under Computer Configuration->Policies->System->Credentials Delegation:

Enable “Allow Delegating Default Credentials”, press the “Show”-button and either specify the domain pre-fixed with * to allow delegation to all servers in the domain, or specify specific servers:

Next, create a RDP-file and deploy this file to the client computers.
Before deploying the file, open it in a text editor, e.g. Notepad, and add the following line: enablecredsspsupport:i:1
This will enable SSO for the RDP-file.

I would also recommend to sign the RDP-file with a Code Signing certificate. This can be accomplished using the utility rdpsign.exe:

Sample signing:

When a RDP-file are signed, the following will be added to the bottom of the file:

signature:s:AQABAAEAAADBCgAAMIIKvQ……..

For Windows Vista and Windows 7 clients, the configuration would now be completed when the RDP-file are deployed.

For Windows XP clients the following would be necessary in addition to the steps above:
-Service Pack 3 needs to be installed
-At least version 6.0 of the Remote Desktop Client
-Turn on the CredSSP Security Provider

The steps to turn on the CredSSP Security Provider are described in this kb-article.

I would recommend deploying these registry settings using Group Policy Preferences:

Also the RDP-file may be deployed in the same way:

I`ve covered the usage of Group Policy Preferences in a previous post.

Also, SSO can be combined with Remote Desktop Services Web Access. The Remote Desktop Services Team has posted an excellent post describing how to set up SSO in RDS Web Access.

I would now like to show how printer connections can be deployed using Group Policy. Today we have 2 possible solutions for natively deploy printers using Group Policy without the need for any scripting:

1) Group Policy Preferences – available in Windows Server 2008 and later

2) Print Management – available in Windows Server 2003 R2 and later

Using Group Policy Preferences to deploy printers are described in an earlier blog post, available here. Therefore, I won`t explain any further details regarding this.

I will focus on the Print Management which has a powerful “Deploy with Group Policy” feature.

Configure printer deployment on

print servers

To use the “Deploy with Group Policy” feature, you need to install the “Print Management Component” feature from “Add/Remove Windows Components” in Windows Server 2003 R2. In Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 you need to install the “Print Server”-role from the “Add Roles Wizard”.

When installed, you`ll find “Print Management” under “Administrative tools” on the Start menu:

The following screenshots are taken from Windows Server 2008 R2.

When you open the Print Management Console you will see an overview of Custom Filters, Print Server and Deployed Printers:

You may add additional filters and print servers to the console, which you can read more about in the links in the bottom of this post. For now, we`ll focus on the printer deployment part.

Right-click the printer you want to deploy, and select “Deploy with Group Policy”:

Select “Browse” to choose a Group Policy Object where the printer connection will be deployed. Select “per user” and/or “per machine” and press “Add”. Then click “OK”:

You should now receive a message stating that the deployment operation was successful. Click “OK”:

The printer will now be deployed to client computers.

Behind the scenes

To understand how the print deployment feature works, we`ll activate the “Advanced Features” option on the “View”-menu in “Active Directory Users and Computers”:

Open the “Group Policy Management Console”, go to the Group Policy Object you deployed the printer to, and select “Details”:

Note the “Unique ID” (GUID).

Back in ADUC, expand “System” and then “Policies”:

This is where the actual Group Policy Objects in Active Directory are stored, in addition to \\domain.local\sysvol\policies.

Find and expand the Group Policy Object you deployed the printer to. You will now see “PushedPrinterConnections” under the “Machine” and “User” nodes:

When looking at “PushedPrinterConnections” under the “User” node, we see an entry of type “msPrint-ConnectionPolicy”:

When we go into “Properties” on the “msPrint-ConnectionPolicy” and go to “Attribute Editor”, we can see that this represents the printer connection we added:

Deployment to client computers

Client computers running Windows Vista and later have native support for the new printer connection policies, and will work “out-of-the-box” when printer connections are added to a Group Policy.

Client computers running Windows 2000 and Windows XP doesn`t support the the new printer connection policies natively. To resolve this, there are a utility called “pushprinterconnections.exe” which must be added to a logonscript in Group Policy. This utility will check the computer and user Group Policy Objects and add any printer connections defined.

This utility have 1 parameter: –log. This is useful when troubleshooting problems, and I would recommend you to use this parameter. As you can see, the utility should not be run manually from the command line:

Here is an example of the utility added to a logon-script in a Group Policy Object:

The log-files are named “ppcUser.log” and “ppcComputer.log”. These are located in the %temp% directory:

Here is an example output of the logfile:

In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, no other feedback than these log-files are provided.

In Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 and later, the following feedback are shown during logon:

In addition, any failures are logged to the “Application”-log with Source “SpoolerSpoolss”.

Special considerations

Windows 2000 supports only “per machine” deployments when using the pushprinterconnections.exe utility.

The pushprinterconnections.exe utility won`t catch “per user” connection policies when using “User Group Policy loopback processing”. You must link the GPO containing the “per user” connection policies to an Organizational Unit where the users reside.

Use ACL`s  on the printer objects on the print servers to publish the printers based on group membership. By using this approach, all printer connections may be defined in the same Group Policy Object.

My recommendations

As I said in the introduction to this post, printer connections have traditionally been deployed to users with scripting. Since there are native ways to accomplish this using Group Policy, this would be my recommendation.

Considerations for using the “Deploy with Group Policy” feature in the print server role:

-the print administrator would have an overview over all printers which are deployed with the Print Management Group Policy feature in the Print Management console
-printers can be administered in an individual GPO like GP Preferences with the Print Management console. To do so, open Group Policy Editor, expand Computer Configuration/User Configuration->Policies->Windows Settings->Deployed Printers
-it requires that pushprinterconnections.exe are run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 clients
-it is available with Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 R2 and later (backwards compatible to Windows 2000 Professional/2000 Server)
-it requires Windows Server 2003 Client Access Licenses (CALs)

Considerations for using Group Policy Preferences:

-it can handle more different printer types (local, TCP/IP, and shared instead of only “shared”)
-it has several additional options (deleting all existing connections, setting default printer, etc.)
-it can save a lot of GPOs because you can have many printer objects in one GPO and use “Item Level Targeting” to address each printer individually (e.g. clients in a specific IP-range, per group or even per user)
-it is easy to automate the process of adding printer objects to a GPO using Windows PowerShell, since the GP Preferences settings are store in XML-files
-it requires that Group Policy Client Side Extenstions are deployed on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 clients
-it is available with Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 and later (backwards compatible to Windows XP/2003 Server)
-it requires Windows Server 2008 Client Access Licenses (CALs)

Resource links

Step-by-Step Guide for Print Management
(Applies To: Windows Server 2003 R2)

Print Management Step-by-Step Guide
Applies To: Windows Server 2008

Print Management
(Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista)

Deploy the PushPrinterConnections.exe Utility

Since Excel Add-ins are per-user based, this was in the first place a manual setting. Of course we wanted to automate this process, so I researched a bit on the internet and found mostly VBScripts. I`ve used this KB-article as a template.

Although this worked very well, I`m trying to leverage the use of PowerShell as much as possible. Many would say that VBScripts load much faster, and are more effecient as logonscripts.
Even though PowerShell v1 was a bit slow due to the lack of assemblies not being ngen`ed, as described on the PowerShell Team`s Blog, this bug is fixed in v2 and I`m quite happy with the loading time now.

I basicly re-wrote the sample VBScript in the KB-article, the result are uploaded to PoshCode.org and available from here.

I used an if-statement to check if the Add-in are already installed, to avoid installing it on every logon.

When tested and ready for production, the script may be distributed as a traditional logonscript, or alternatively with Group Policy:

It turns out that that this utility is not included in Windows Server 2008/2008 R2.

According to a comment from a team member from the Microsoft Directory Services Team, this is the explanation:

“Unfortunately, replmon did not survive the transition to Win2008. It was actually developed by MS support, not the product group (along with many other support tools/resource kit tools), and without an actual owner to service the tool years later, it was a casualty. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on 2008 though…”

I wouldn`t recommend using unsupported tools on Windows Server 2008/2008 R2, so the advice would be to either use repadmin.exe on 2008/2008 R2, or to use replmon.exe from a Windows Server 2003 server.

You can find the command reference for repadmin.exe in Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 here.

A few examples:

repadmin.exe /showrepl shows the replication-status for the domain controller the tool are being run from.

repadmin.exe /showrepl servername shows the replication-status for the domain controller with the provided servername,

repadmin.exe /queue shows the replication-queue for the domain controller the tool are being run from.

repadmin.exe /queue servername shows the replication-queue for the domain controller with the provided servername,

repadmin.exe /replsummary shows a brief summary of the replication status.

I also checked if there are any PowerShell cmdlets for checking replication status in Windows Server 2008 R2, but it`s not. Hopefully this will be implemented some time in the future.

PS: I did test installing the Windows Server 2003 Support tools on a Windows Server 2008 domain controller in a lab environment, and it does work.