Farms, RDS Hosts, and Published Desktops and Applications

You can use Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to provide desktop sessions on RDS hosts and deliver applications to many users.

RDS Host

RDS hosts are server computers that have Windows Remote Desktop Services and Horizon Agent installed. These servers host applications that users can access remotely.

Farms

Farms are collections of RDS hosts and facilitate the management of those hosts. Farms can have a variable number of RDS hosts and provide a common set of published applications or RDS published desktops to users. When you create an RDS application pool, you must specify a farm. The RDS hosts in the farm provide application sessions to users. See VMware Configuration Maximums for the maximum number of RDSH host servers supported per farm.

Published Desktops

Published desktops are desktop pools, which provide users with desktop sessions on RDS hosts. Multiple users can have desktop sessions on an RDS host simultaneously. You can create a published desktop pool from a physical system such as an RDS host. Use published desktop pools to provide multiple users with desktop sessions on an RDS host.

Published Applications

Published applications are application pools that run on a farm of RDS hosts. Published applications let you deliver seamless applications to many users, giving them access to published applications that run on servers in a data center instead of on their personal computers or devices.

Published Applications on Demand

Published applications on demand are attached to an available RDS host only at the time a user launches an application. Additionally, users' applications are activated only within their session. By removing the need to plan for grouping applications to farms, this model minimizes the number of hosts required to support your users and their applications as well as associated infrastructure costs and management time.