Requirements

In order to add a Remote PC to a RAS Farm, RAS Remote PC Agent must be installed on it. The requirements to push install RAS Remote PC Agent are as follows:

• The firewall must be configured on the server to allow push installation. Standard SMB ports (139 and 445) need to be open. See also Port reference for the list of ports used by Parallels RAS.

• SMB access. The administrative share (\\server\c$) must be accessible. Simple file sharing must be enabled.

• Your Parallels RAS administrator account must have permissions to perform a remote installation on the PC. If it doesn't, you'll be asked to enter credentials of an account that does.

• The PC should be joined to an AD domain. If it's not, the push installation may not work and you will have to install the Agent on it manually. Please see Installing Remote PC Agent manually.

Adding a Remote PC to a Farm

Follow the below procedure to add a Remote PC to a Farm:

1. In the RAS Console, select the Farm category and click the Remote PCs node in the navigational tree.

2. Click Add in the Tasks drop-down list to launch the setup wizard.

3. Specify the IP address or FQDN of a Remote PC. Click the Get MAC button to obtain the PC's MAC address. To automatically resolve IP address to FQDN, enable the global Name Resolution option. For details, see Host name resolution.

4. Click Next.

5. In this step, the Parallels RAS checks if the Remote PC Agent is installed on the specified PC. If it's not installed, click Install to push install the agent on the PC. If the push installation of Remote PC Agent fails for any reason, you can install it manually. See Installing Remote PC Agent Manually below.

6. Click Add to add the Remote PC to the Parallels RAS Farm.

Installing Remote PC Agent manually

You may need to install the Remote PC Agent manually if the automatic push installation cannot be performed for any reason. To do so:

1. Log into the PC where the Remote PC Agent is to be installed using an administrator account and close all other applications.

2. Copy the Parallels RAS installation file (RASInstaller.msi) to the PC and double click it to launch the installation.

3. Follow the onscreen instructions and proceed to the installation type page. Select Custom and click Next.

4. Click on the Remote PC Agent and select Entire Feature will be installed on local hard drive from the drop-down list.

5. Ensure that all other components are deselected and click Next.

6. Click Install to start the installation. Click Finish once the installation is finished.

Remote PC Agent does not require any configuration. Once the agent is installed, select the Remote PC name in the Parallels RAS Console and click Troubleshooting > Check Agent. If the agent is installed properly, the status should change to Agent Installed.

Uninstalling Remote PC Agent

To uninstall Remote PC Agent from a server:

1. Navigate to Start > Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a Program.

2. Find Parallels Remote Application Server in the list of installed programs.

3. If you don't have any other Parallels RAS components on the server that you want to keep, right-click Parallels Remote Application Server and then click Uninstall. Follow the instructions to uninstall the program. You may skip the rest of these instructions.

4. If you have other RAS components that you want to keep on the server, right-click Parallels Remote Application Server and then click Change.

5. Click Next on the Welcome page.

6. On the Change, repair, or remove page, select Change.

7. On the next page, select Custom.

8. Select Remote PC Agent, then click the drop-down list in front of it, and click Entire feature will be unavailable.

9. Click Next and complete the wizard.

See .

In addition to the Remote PCs editor described in this chapter, you can also see the summary about the available Remote PCs. To do so:

1. In the RAS Console, select the Farm category and then select the Site node in the middle pane.

2. The available servers are displayed in the Remote PCs group in the right pane.

3. To go to the Remote PCs editor, right-click a server and choose Show in the Editor.

For additional info, see .

To view the properties of a Remote PC, highlight the computer in the navigation tree and click Tasks > Properties. This opens the Remote PC properties dialog.

Properties

By default, a PC is enabled in the Farm. When it is disabled, published applications and virtual desktops cannot be served from it. To enable or disable a PC in the Farm, select or clear the Enable Remote PC option.

If the IP or MAC address of a Remote PC has changed, modify them using the Remote PC and MAC Address input fields.

The Change Direct Address option allows you to specify an IP address that Parallels Client can use to connect to the PC directly. This address is only used in the Direct Connection mode and it could be an internal or external IP address.

Agent Settings

Each Remote PC in the Farm has a RAS Remote PC Agent installed to conduct communications between Parallels RAS and the PC. The agent can be configured on the Agent Settings tab page.

• Logoff active session after: The amount of time a session remains logged in after the user closes a published application. The default timeout is 25 seconds. Note that this only works for applications, but not published desktops (when a user closes a desktop, the session is logged off). This timeout is used to avoid unnecessary logins when a user closes one application and then opens another.

• Session readiness timeout: The maximum amount of time it should require to establish a session. If the specified timeout is reached, and the session is still not ready, the user will see an error message and will have to try to log in again.

• Port. Specify a different remote desktop connection port number if needed.

• Preferred Connection Broker: Select a Connection Broker with which the Remote PC Agent should communicate. This can be helpful when Site components are installed in multiple physical locations communicating through WAN. You can decrease network traffic by specifying a more appropriate Connection Broker.

• Enable drag and drop: Allows you to set how the drag and drop functionality works in Parallels Clients. Click Configure and choose from "Disabled" (no drag and drop functionality), "Sever to client only" (drag and drop to a local application only), "Client to server only" (drag and drop to a remote application only), "Bidirectional" (drag and drop in both directions).

• Manage RDP transport protocol: Selects the transport protocol that will be used for connections between Parallels Client and a server. To do this, select this option and click the Configure button.

• Allow file transfer command (Web and Chrome clients): Enables file transfer in a remote session. To enable file transfer, select this option and click the Configure button. For more information, see .

• Enable drive redirection cache: Improves user experience by making file browsing and navigation on redirected drives much faster. For details, see .

RDP Printer

The RDP Printer tab allows you to configure the renaming format of redirected printers. The format may vary depending on which version and language of the server you are using.

Set your RDP Printer Name Format specifically for the configured server by choosing any of the below options from the RDP Printer Name Format drop-down list:

• Printername (from Computername) in Session no.

• Session no. (computername from) Printername

• Printername (redirected Session no)

The other RDP Printing options available in the RDP Printer tab are:

• Remove session number from printer name

• Remove client name from printer name

Configure logging

Remote PCs can be added to a RAS Farm using one of the following methods:

• from the RAS Console by specifying the PC's IP and MAC addresses and installing (remotely or directly) RAS Remote PC Agent on it.

• By allowing users to use .

Read the subsequent sections for the description of each method.

As an alternative to the admin-initiated Remote PC enrollment described above, end users can add their preferred PCs to a RAS Farm in a self-service manner. A computer enrolled this way is automatically added to a RAS Farm as a Remote PC and a corresponding published desktop is created with access granted (through automatic filtering) to the user who performed the self-enrollment. The Remote PC can then be accessed by the user from any device, anywhere.

Requirements

• Users enrolling their PCs must have local administrator privileges in Windows to install Parallels RAS Remote PC Agent.

• Mailbox must be configured in a RAS Farm to send an invitation email to end users.

Configure self-service enrollment

To configure self-service Remote PC enrollment:

1. In the RAS Console, navigate to Farm > Site > Remote PCs.

2. In the right pane, click the Tasks menu and choose Self-service enrollment. In the dialog that opens, specify the options described below.

3. To enable self-service enrollment, select Allow or Allow until. For the latter, specify the date and time. To disable the functionality (e.g. temporarily), select Do not allow.

4. In the Settings section, specify a publishing folder in which the PCs will appear as published resources. You can select an existing folder or create a new one. Click the [..] button to select or create a folder.

5. The Remote PC invitation hash field contains a hash that must be specified when enrolling a PC. The hash can also be copied from here and used separately for scripting purposes. IT administrators can make use of this hash along with the msiexec command to silently install and configure Remote PC on users’ behalf. For details, see Enrolling a PC below.

6. To send an invitation email to users that will contain instructions on how to enroll their PCs, click the Send via email button.

7. In the dialog that opens, specify the recipients by typing (or pasting) their email addresses. You can also click the [..] button and select the recipients.

8. In the Review the invitation email text box, review or modify (if needed) the email. The variables used in the email are set internally and are substituted with their values in the actual email. To preview the final email text, click Tasks > Preview.

9. Click Send to send the email. If you don't want to send the email at this time, click Cancel to return to the previous dialog where you can click OK to save the changes.

Enrolling a PC

When a user receives the invitation email, they will follow the instructions that it contains to enroll their PC. The installation process consists of the steps described below.

Log in to the Remote PC. Download or copy the RASInstaller.msi file (the Parallels RAS installer) and run the following command with administrative privileges (the invitation email will contain this command with the hash value already in it):

msiexec /qb /i  ADDLOCAL=F_PCAgent ADDFWRULES=1 SELFENROLL= [OVERRIDEUSER=user@domain] [OVERRIDEPAIP=ip of PA] [OVERRIDEHOST=published name]

The following arguments can be used to customize the enrollment. Such arguments are required if a Remote PC is not in the Active Directory domain:

• OVERRIDEPAIP: The IP address of one of the Connection Brokers in the Farm Site. Use this if the standard installation fails to connect using the system detected IP address.

• OVERRIDEUSER: Use this argument if you don't want to register the Remote PC to the user logged in to the machine.

• OVERRIDEHOST: Use this argument if you want to change the published item name from the hostname of the Remote PC.

Once the installation is complete, launch Parallels Client and log in using the local machine credentials or the ones specified in the OVERRIDEUSER argument. Look for your Remote PC using the IP address or the name specified via OVERRIDEHOST in the list of published resources and launch the desktop.

In addition to RD Session Hosts, Virtual desktops, and Azure Virtual Desktop, resources can also be published from a standalone Remote PC running a supported version of Windows. A Remote PC can be a physical box or a virtual machine treated as a physical PC, but typically they are physical computers. If you have virtual machines on your network, it makes sense to use them as part of the VDI infrastructure as described in the VDI and Virtual Desktops chapter. However, if you don't need the guest VM cloning functionality or, for example, if your end users require full administrative permissions on a PC for customization, you can use a virtual machine as a Remote PC.

This chapter describes how to add a Remote PC to a Farm and how to publish remote applications and desktop from it.

You can perform standard computer management tasks on a server right from the RAS Console. These include Remote Desktop Connection, PowerShell, Computer Management, Service Management, Event Viewer, IPconfig, Reboot, and others. To access the Tools menu, select a server, click Tasks > Tools and choose a desired tool. For requirements and usage information, see Computer management tools.