RDS setup advice

[Mike Leone]

So we run a RDS environment (published apps only, no VDI) running on WIn 2012. I finally got approval to update it, so I cam creating a new Win 2022 RDS environment. 

I haven't set up an RDS environment since we set this one up in 2012 LOL, so I could use a bit of advice.We will use published apps only, no VDI. It's really just 1 app, at that.

So while I wait for the RDS Per User CAL license order to come in, I am setting things up. I am making 2 collections - 1 will be just for testing (like running notepad or something simple as a published app, just to make sure that's all working), and then a collection with our single real production app.

My environment is 3 session hosts, I've seen close to 90 sessions (active and disconnected) on my current environment. I may make a 4th session host, just in case.

User Profile Disks. My current collection doesn't use them, but I guess I should? The application does allow users to save files (reports and the like), so I guess they need this?

My question: where should these go? I mean, I get that I would need to create a VM file server that is just for the User Profile Disks, I guess. But would this UPD server need to be a session host? Or is it just like a standalone file server, not part of this RDS environment?

The central file share where UPDs are stored must have full control permissions for the servers in the collection

I don't know what this means. Does that mean that the computer accounts of each session host should have FULL control of the share?

 

Since I don't currently use UPD, there's a user profile for every user on each session host. Looking at the user profiles in the system part of control panel, most are like 40-50MB, so not large.So even a small file server of say 250G should be more than sufficient, do you think?

Thanks for any pointers

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Mike. Leone, <mailto:tur...@mike-leone.com>

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[Philip Elder]

What’s the app? Is it a beast?

 

What’s the current vCPU and vRAM count assuming the current session hosts are virtual?

 

User data hosted should be hosted in a User Profile Disk or FSLogix is included now with RDS CALs.

 

That share should be on a high performance file server whether HA or not.

 

The share permission for the UPDs must have USERS FULL for things to function properly not $SessionHost FULL. It’s a bit of a funky detail, but the differencing disk gets mounted in a user context.

 

We set up the default .VHDX template at 50GB but with a 5GB partition. The actual differencing disk, which still retains the .VHDX extension, is dynamic so will only grow to the data consumed size. In this case based on what you said they will be 50MB to 60MB in size.

 

The file server would need to have at least double the space available for volume shadow copy snapshots via backup product so keep that in mind even if you don’t enable Previous Versions snapshots.

 

What is the underlying architecture of the hosts? CPU? RAM?  Storage setup and fabric?

 

Philip Elder MCTS

Senior Technical Architect

Microsoft High Availability MVP

MPECS Inc.

E-mail: Phili...@mpecsinc.ca

Phone: +1 (780) 458-2028

Web: www.mpecsinc.com

Blog: blog.mpecsinc.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/MPECSInc

Teams: Phili...@MPECSInc.Cloud

 

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[Mike Leone]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 1:48 PM Philip Elder <Phili...@mpecsinc.ca> wrote:

What’s the app? Is it a beast?

No. It's a public housing app called Elite.

 

 

What’s the current vCPU and vRAM count assuming the current session hosts are virtual?

Current session hosts are Win 2012,  4vCPUS, 2 cores each, 12G RAM total. So not a beast, either LOL.