It turns out that much of the configuration data for RDSH is stored in the Win32_TSGeneralSetting class in WMI in the root\cimv2\TerminalServices namespace. The configured certificate for a given connection is referenced by the Thumbprint value of that certificate on a property called SSLCertificateSHA1Hash.
UPDATE: Here's a generalized Powershell solution that grabs and sets the thumbprint of the first SSL cert in the computer's personal store. If your system has multiple certs, you should add a -Filter option to the gci command to make sure you reference the correct cert. I've left my original answer intact below this for reference.
# get a reference to the config instance
$tsgs = gwmi -class "Win32_TSGeneralSetting" -Namespace root\cimv2\terminalservices -Filter "TerminalName='RDP-tcp'"
# grab the thumbprint of the first SSL cert in the computer store
$thumb = (gci -path cert:/LocalMachine/My | select -first 1).Thumbprint
# set the new thumbprint value
swmi -path $tsgs.__path -argument @{SSLCertificateSHA1Hash="$thumb"}
In order to get the thumbprint value
- Open the properties dialog for your certificate and select the Details tab
- Scroll down to the Thumbprint field and copy the space delimited hex string into something like Notepad
- Remove all the spaces from the string. You'll also want to watch out for and remove a non-ascii character that sometimes gets copied just before the first character in the string. It's not visible in Notepad.
- This is the value you need to set in WMI. It should look something like this: 1ea1fd5b25b8c327be2c4e4852263efdb4d16af4.
Now that you have the thumbprint value, here's a one-liner you can use to set the value using wmic:
wmic /namespace:\\root\cimv2\TerminalServices PATH Win32_TSGeneralSetting Set SSLCertificateSHA1Hash="THUMBPRINT"
Or if PowerShell is your thing, you can use this instead:
$path = (Get-WmiObject -class "Win32_TSGeneralSetting" -Namespace root\cimv2\terminalservices -Filter "TerminalName='RDP-tcp'").__path
Set-WmiInstance -Path $path -argument @{SSLCertificateSHA1Hash="THUMBPRINT"}
Note: the certificate must be in the 'Personal' Certificate Store for the Computer account.
Best Answer
Actually, one can install RDSH on Windows Server 2012 in a Workgroup environment.
This configuration is appropriate when there is only one server on the network and it will provide desktop sessions to users based on the number of Remote Desktop Services client access license (RDS CALs) installed on the server, but will not provide access to RemoteApp programs or the RDWeb site.
You should install two RDS roles:
Then install RDS CALs (either per user or per device).
The last step would be to configure the Remote Desktop Session Host role to use the local Remote Desktop Licensing server.
See more: Guidelines for installing the Remote Desktop Session Host role service on a computer running Windows Server 2012 without the Remote Desktop Connection Broker role service: