Use RDS (Remote Desktop Services) hosts for providing hosted applications and session-based remote desktops to end users.

An RDS host can be a physical machine or a virtual machine. This example uses a virtual machine with the specifications listed in the following table. The ESXi host for this virtual machine can be part of a VMware HA cluster to guard against physical server failures.

Table 1. RDS Host Virtual Machine Example

Item

Example

Operating system

64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2012 R2

RAM

24GB

Virtual CPU

4

System disk capacity

40GB

Virtual SCSI adapter type

LSI Logic SAS (the default for Windows Server 2008)

Virtual network adapter

VMXNET 3

1 NIC

1 Gigabit

Maximum number of client connections total (including session-based remote desktop connections and remote application connections)

50

For more information about RDS host configuration and tested workloads, see the VMware Horizon 6 Reference Architecture white paper at http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-Reference-Architecture-Horizon-6-View-Mirage-Workspace.pdf.