Is AWS ELB a viable replacement of RDGW

amazon-elbamazon-web-servicesremote desktopremote-desktop-services

tl;dr

Is Amazon Web Services Elastic Load Balancer a viable replacement for Remote Desktop Gateway?

short enough; did read

My client currently uses a remote desktop gateway with roughly 10 remote desktop servers. We're now moving them to AWS. And I'd like to use AWS' Elastic Load Balancer due to reduced cost and improved functionality. I've successfully created a remote desktop environment behind an ELB by balancing port 3389.

Despite this, my knowledge on RDGW is slim, and in order to avoid any gotcha's I thought it'd be a good idea to consult the community.

My concerns are:

  1. When losing connection from the session, will the user be able to log back onto the same server?
  2. Will the user be randomly balanced to another server?
  3. I've overlooked an obvious fact that'll get me fired when we release the system to production

Best Answer

Running a ELB as RDGW for two years now...

Firstly, it works*

* It works sufficiently

  • + Users are able to login through ELB and use the servers as expected
  • + We have not experienced any sudden or unexpected loss of connection
  • – Disconnected sessions are not restored to the same server
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