So we have fourteen HP t420 and one Windows Server 2016 machine with Multipoint set up. If we create users in Multipoint Manager then the clients can connect via RDP as those users all right. But we can't get it work with VDI. We've created a Windows 10 template from an ISO, but can't figure out how to create stations from it. Clicling on the create stations option tells virtual desktop station created for -t, but nothing new appears in the list of virtual desktops. Tried that with a couple of clients connected as users - no difference.
Also, when restarting the server it gives a screen telling to press "B", but nothing happens if we press it. No such screens appear on the clients (they just disconnect if the server is restarted), no idea if they are supposed to.
Can't find any manual better then the official help file, and it just tells to use the create stations option, nothing on whether clients should be online or offline or anything, but we've tried both, nothing happens.
Ah, and we did the customize template thing where you are supposed to run a cmd file from its desktop before creating stations.
And the clients are connected via LAN. Each has a monitor, mouse and keyboard.
What else... can't get when the create stations option becomes available or not. Previosly it seemed to get it to appear we had to restart the server and then log as administrator on one of the clients. But now we suddenly see it available on the server (still doesn't work though), though we're not sure what exactly we've done for this affect.
The manual suggests it might only be available in station mode, but it doesn't explain what that is. We assumed it means log in from a client, but now it seems it's somethine else?
Okay, so by trial and error we've ended up doing this:
- via Server Manager add roles for Remote Desktop Services
- open Remote Desktop Services in Server Manager and get an error saying you should log in as a domain user
- luckily we've already had a domain set up, so we've joined this server to the domain and created a user for it (the user should have domain admin rights!)
- a group should also be created in the domain to be later selected in collection creation to give this group access to VMs, populate this group with users
- open Remote Desktop Services again, now as a domain user with domain admin rights, and create a collection from the template created by multipoint
- assign each station to a user (there's an option to do it automatically, but we wanted VM1 to be assigned to User1, VM2 to User2 and I imagine the automation could mess it up)
- on the thin clients configure web connection to server.domain/RDweb
- it connects, but the log in process is overly complicated
- scrap the web connection and configure an rdp connection directly to the VMs (so in "server address" you put not server.domain, but VM1.domain, VM2.domain etc)
- now it connects just by double click on the connection, also each thin client ends up linked to a particular VM as the user doesn't get to enter username and password by themselves; probably won't work if the VMs aren't already running, but that shouldn't be a big problem
- open Multipoint Dashboard and see that it doesn't see any of the connections
- open Multipoint Manager and click "add personal computers to control" or something along these lines, it doesn't see any, so use the "add manually" input box to input the names one by one: VM1.domain, VM2.domain etc
- for each added PC it will ask a username and password, by trial and error we figured out it should be the local admin account, the one set up when creating the template in Multipoint
- somehow it doesn't always work for each VM, sometimes some random ones among them would be unable to connect, in such case close the Multipoint Manager and then reopen it, it will try to connect again
- once the Multipoint Manager succesfully connects to all the VMs, open Multipoint Dashboard and now it sees them all (actually, it only sees them if there is and RDP connection, it won't just show the desktop of a VM to which noone is connected via RDP; the clients might automatically disconnect after some minutes of inactivity, but with reconnecting taking just a double click it shouldn't be a problem)
- and of course set up the licensing; I wasn't personally setting up this part, so can't tell any details on it
All seems to work fine now... or not. In Multipoint Dashboard some functions work and some don't:
- seeing users desktops works just fine
- PM works fine
- remotely starting and closing apps works fine (the list from which it suggests to choose though is a list of apps on the server, but what it really does is trying to start the app by the same path on the station, it will give an error if there isn't one)
- taking control over a station doesn't work: just shows a black screen on the server
- sharing server's screen works, but stopping it doesn't, leaving the stations with white screens which seem to only be fixed by reconnecting them
- forcing stations to disconnect works, but if you choose to disconnect all of them at once, one desktop will remain shown in the dashboard even though in thin client it will be disconnected
I wonder if there is a way to fix these?..