Note: Please ensure to reference official EMC documentation before proceeding and ensure your system health checks are passed before completing a shutdown.

A new feature with the release of VNX Rockies(Block OE 5.33 & File OE 8.1) was the ability to Shutdown the Entire Array using either a single command or via the ‘Power Off’ button in the Unisphere GUI. This feature is also available for first generation VNX storage system’s, from VNX OE code release 05.32.000.5.209 & 7.1.74.5 onwards.
These options are supported on Unified, Block and File systems.

Power Off via CLI
The new CLI option extends the nas_halt command to include a new switch to power down the entire system :
nas_halt –f –sp now
This will power off Control Stations, Data Movers and the Storage Processors.
usage: nas_halt [-f] [-sp] now
Perform a controlled halt of the Control Station(s) and Data Mover(s)
-f Force shutting…

One of our priorities for this year was to improve our remote access offering to staff to enable more flexible working whilst outside of college. Office 365 helps greatly and has already improved functionality in many ways but there’s still some legacy applications and classic file shares that need to be provided remotely too. If at all possible we prefer the files not to leave the network so some form of virtual desktop looked the way to go.

After discounting VMware and Citrix offerings on cost grounds the improvements to Microsoft’s RDS offering in Server 2016 seemed to come at a perfect time.

Even more so now we’ve implemented Azure AD Application Proxy (more on that shortly!) We’ve also recently decommissioned some services that freed up a bit of physical hardware resource to “play” with so away we went!

Server installation

The physical hardware for now is running on some…

If you want to restrict access to your Remote Access Gateway and add pre-authentication for remote access, you can roll it out through Web Application Proxy. This is a really good way to make sure you have rich pre-authentication for RDG including MFA. Publishing without pre-authentication is also an option and provides a single point of entry into your systems.

Below is a step by step to getting a basic RDS gateway configured. There are additional steps and considerations that you may need to consider for your environment. In this example I am using port forwarding into my test lab, but you will want to consider where this server should be placed in your network and ensure proper firewalls are configured.

What is a Remote Desktop Gateway?

A RD Gateway allows remote users the ability to connect to internal network resources from outside the corporate network without utilizing a VPN. These internal resources can be on private or on a NAT network. The connectivity is achieved by transmitting RDP over a SSL tunnel using port 443. A RD Gateway server has a variety of authorization policies that allow you to control configuration for:

• What groups of users can utilize the RD Gateway.
• What computers or internal resources the authorized users…

To use the “connect to a Remote Computer” feature in RDS 2012 you would need to add the RD gateway address to the settings on the web access server.

To do this you would need to open up IIS in the RDweb Server.

Expand the default Website

Select “Pages”

Select “Application Settings”

Then open up the “DefaultTSGateway”

Enter the external address (FQDN) of the RD Gateway in the Value Field.

Select Application Settings

Enter the external RD Gateway FQDN.

You will now be able to remote to devices using the Web interface.

What is a Remote Desktop Gateway

A Remote Desktop Gateway Server enables users to connect to remote computers on a corporate network from any external computer. The RD Gateway uses the Remote Desktop Protocol & the HTTPS Protocol to create a secure encrypted connection.

A 2012 RD Gateway server uses port 443 (HTTPS), which provides a secure connection using a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) tunnel.

A Remote Desktop Gateway Provides The following Benefits:

• Enables Remote Desktop Connections to a corporate network without having to set up a virtual private network (VPN).
• Enables connections to remote computers across firewalls.
• Allows you to share a network connection with other programs running on your computer. This enables you to use your ISP connection instead of your corporate network to send and receive data over a remote connection.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/what-is-a-remote-desktop-gateway-server

Please see the following linkFor more information on deploying a Gateway on the perimeter network: 

Setting up a RDS Farm is not that hard but anyway I created a step by step guide to build a Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services deployment.

there is a new feature in the Windows Server 2016 RDS : Full OpenGL support with RDS for VDI scenarios.

And Yes you can use the Quickstart but I’m not using this in this demo setup. I tried to do a complete setup,but doing this I noticed that I’m constantly expanding this demo with new options so. I’ll keep this pure to the setup and some PowerShell basics.

Quick Start is an option in RDS deployment during the process of adding roles and features with Windows Server 2012 Service Manager. It dramatically simplifies the deployment process and shortens go-to-market while still providing the ability to add additional RDS servers as needed. The abstraction formed by RDWA, RDCB, and RDSH offers such elegancy…