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License Compliance for Microsoft RDS Application Virtualization

I have a situation where a Microsoft RDS farm is being used to virtualize an application out to users.  The access to the application is controlled by membership in an Active Directory group.  Anyone with access to the application is consuming a license but FNMS is not recognizing this in the license compliance calculations.

Has anyone been successful at configuring FNMS to capture license consumption for a virtual application delivered from Microsoft RDS?

(7) Replies

@RobertH 

No experience with RDS specifically, but just wanted to point you towards the Flexera Labs: VMware Horizon View Integration in case you're going to create a custom integration.

Thanks,

Hi @RobertH ,

How are you currently restricting access to applications to users in your RDS farm? Are you simply restricting access to the applications via file permissions? Or are you doing something a little more complicated like using RemoteApp or FSLogix?

FNMS doesn't have the ability control licensing via access to users except for the out of box integrations into XenApp/XenDesktop and App-V. However, I would be interested to hear what kind of technology you're using to restrict user access to see if there's wider demand for this type of capability (especially now that Microsoft has effectively given FSLogix free to everyone that uses any of their desktop virtualization technology).

We are controlling access to the RDS application using an Active Directory group.  We deploy an application to desktop that runs the RDP link to the application for users with access.   This was deployed a couple of years ago but recently we added an application to the environment that has license implications.

My research currently is taking the following approach:

  • Create a license that tracks usage of the RDP link executable on the user computers.
  • Use the Active Directory group to compile a list of users to import into FNMS.
  • Identify computers owned by the users.  I am using the ComplianceComputer.ComplianceUserID to identify ownership.  Import these computers.
  • Identify computers, not owned by a user with access, but from which users with access have executed the RDP link application.  Import these computers.
  • Import custom evidence for the virtualized application.
  • Import installation evidence using the virtualized application evidence on the target computers.
  • Link the virtualized application evidence to the application which is associated with the device based license.

I don't have a successful run yet but am hopeful.  Currently, I am using FNMS to construct source information but if I can get the prototype to work correctly, I will look at attaching to the RDS database as the source.

My prototype appears to work using the approach I described earlier: I have not tested it thoroughly.  

I am not entirely pleased with the approach because it does not make use of the license "Consumption per device, user or access use rights configurations provided for use with virtual environments.   

An enhancement request was created by Flexera as noted another reply but the priority is such that it will not happen anytime soon. 

I will likely use a refined version of the prototype for my needs.

tjohnson1
By Technical Writer
Technical Writer

An enhancement for this functionality is currently being tracked as IOJ-2112442

We are beginning to see multiple customers begining to adopt FSLogix - we would love to see if this support is included in IOJ-2112442 or if it is something that needs to be in another enhancement request.

@afilla 

AFAIK the FSLogix related enhancement request is linked to IOJ-2156495

Thanks,