A secondary Connection Broker is added to a Site for redundancy. This way if the primary Connection Broker fails, the secondary Connection Broker is still available to handle the requests. Connection Brokers work in active/active manner to ensure high availability. In case of a Connection Broker failure, the next agent is always ready to handle the load. In general, the N+1 redundancy approach should be used per Site. Note that for auto-promotion you shouldn't have more than three Connection Brokers (auto-promotion is described later in this section).
When you have one more secondary Connection Brokers installed, the runtime data is replicated on each agent, so if any service fails, the downtime is reduced to a minimum. In addition, any active Connection Broker is used for authentication purposes with both the AD and any 2nd level authentication provider used.
The primary Connection Broker performs the same tasks as secondary Connection Brokers but has additional responsibilities. It manages certain processes that must be managed by a single Connection Broker. The following table lists processes managed by the primary Connection Broker and secondary Connection Brokers:
| Process | Primary Connection Broker | Secondary Connection Brokers |
|---|---|---|
As a demonstration of how load distribution between multiple Connection Brokers works, consider the following example:
Suppose we have two Connection Brokers: PA1 (primary) and PA2 (secondary).
Suppose we also have 10 RD Session Hosts: RDS1, RDS2 ... RDS10
The resulting load will be distributed as follows:
RDS1—RDS5 will use PA1 as their preferred Connection Broker.
RDS6—RDS10 will use PA2 as their preferred Connection Broker.
RAS Connection Brokers running on the same Site communicate with each other and share the load. The amount of data being transmitted from one agent to another is quite large, so a reliable high-speed communication channel must be ensured (e.g. a subnetwork can be configured for Connection Broker communications).
When adding a secondary Connection Broker to a Site, you specify an IP address for it. Make sure that the IP addresses of all agents belong to the same network segment. The port that Connection Brokers use to communicate with each other is TCP 20030.
There's no physical limit to how many Connection Brokers you can add to a Site. However, the best results are achieved with only two-three agents present. The three-agent scenario is highly recommended, especially when you have Providers and want to enable high availability for VDI. Adding more than two secondary Connection Brokers to a Site may have a reverse effect and actually degrade the system performance. Note that this does not apply to secondary Connection Brokers in standby mode, which is explained in Configuring RAS Connection Brokers.
To add a secondary Connection Broker:
Navigate to Infrastructure > Connection Brokers.
Choose Add from the ellipsis menu (or click the plus-sign icon). The Add new wizard opens.
On the Host page, specify the following:
Host name: FDQN of the host that hosts the RAS Connection Broker. Click Resolve IP to obtain the host IP address automatically.
IP address: The host IP address. Click Resolve Name to obtain the host FQDN automatically.
On the Agent Settings page, specify the following:
Alternative IPs: One or more alternative IP addresses, separated by a semicolon. These addresses will be used if RAS Secure Gateways fail to connect to the RAS Connection Broker using its FQDN or the address specified on the previous page. This can happen, for example, if Gateways are connecting from a different network, which is not joined to Active Directory.
Description: Add an optional description.
Enable firewall rules: Select to automatically configure the firewall on the host.
Restart host if required: Automatically restart host after the installation, if it is required.
Install a gateway with a Connection Broker: Select this option if you also want to install a RAS Secure Gateway on the specified host. If you select this option, you may also select the Enable HTML5 Gateway option to automatically enable User Portal on the Gateway.
On the Summary page, review the settings and click Create.
From this point, follow the onscreen instructions and add the Connection Broker to the Farm.
Monitor PAs (counters)
Yes
Yes
Monitor RD Session Hosts (counters)
Yes
Yes
Monitor Providers (counters)
Yes
Yes
Monitor RDS Sessions (reconnection)
Yes
Yes
Monitor Deployed RDS applications
Yes
Yes
Monitor VDI session (reconnections)
Yes
Yes
Manage system settings
Yes
No
Send licensing information & heart beat
Yes
No
Process and send CEP information
Yes
No
Send information to reporting server
Yes
No
Manage RDS scheduler
Yes
No
Reporting engine information
Yes
Future versions
Shadowing
Yes
Future versions
Send email notifications
Yes
No
To view RAS Connection Brokers installed in a Site, navigate to Infrastructure > Connection Broker.
A Site must have at least the primary Connection Broker installed, which is marked so in the Priority column. You can also add secondary agents for redundancy.
To modify the configuration of a Connection Broker, click it in the list and then click Properties in the middle pane. Click Edit and specify the following options:
Enable: Enables or disables the Connection Broker.
IP: Specifies the server IP address.
Alternate IPs: Specifies one or more alternate IP addresses separated by a semicolon. These addresses will be used if RAS Secure Gateways fail to connect to the RAS Connection Broker using the address specified in the IP field. This can happen, for example, if Gateways are connecting from a network which is not joined to Active Directory.
Standby: If selected, puts a secondary Connection Broker into a standby mode. This means that no agent will connect to this Connection Broker until another Connection Broker goes offline. This option is enabled automatically for any new secondary Connection Broker in excess of the three agents that already exist. It is not recommended to have more than three active Connection Brokers because it may degrade system performance. Using this option you can have more than three agents, but have them in standby mode until they are needed. For more information, see Add a secondary Connection Broker.
When done making the changes, click Save and then click Apply All Changes.
The ellipsis menu on the main Connection Brokers view has the following items:
Add: Adds a RAS Connection Broker to the Site. See the section that follows this one for the information on how to add secondary Connection Brokers.
Update agent: Update the agent.
Disable/Enable agent: Enable or disable the agent.
Logs: Allows to manage logging.
Promote to primary: Promotes a secondary Connection Broker to primary.
Rise priority: Rises the priority of a secondary Connection Broker (moves it up in the priority list).
Lower priority: Lowers the priority of a secondary Connection Broker (moves it down in the list).
Refresh. Refreshes the Connection Brokers list.
Delete. Deletes a secondary Connection Broker from the Site. To delete the current primary Connection Broker, you first need to promote a secondary Connection Broker to primary.
RAS Connection Broker provides load balancing of published applications and desktops. A RAS Connection Broker is automatically installed on a server on which you install Parallels RAS and is designated as the primary Connection Broker. Each Site must have a primary RAS Connection Broker but can also have secondary Connection Brokers added to it. The purpose of a secondary Connection Broker is to ensure that users do not experience any interruption of the service due to possible failure of the primary RAS Connection Broker.
To perform RAS Connection Broker management tasks:
Navigate to Infrastructure > Connection Brokers.
Select a Connection Broker in the list and click the ellipsis.
In the menu, choose one of the options describe below.
See Add a secondary Connection Broker.
Update, disable or enable the Connection Broker.
To configure logging choose one of the following:
Configure: Allows you to configure logging. For the explanation of log levels, please see below.
Retrieve: Retrieves a ZIP archive containing the log files to the specified location.
Clear: Clears all existing logs.
The available log levels are:
Standard: This is the standard log level that records only the most important events. Unless you are asked by Parallels RAS support to use one of the log levels described below, you should always use this one.
Extended: This logging involves more information than the standard logging, but it slows down the system because of the additional information that it needs to collect.
Verbose: Verbose logging involves even more information than the extended logging and can slow down your system significantly.
Please note that to avoid degraded performance, extended and verbose logging should only be enabled for a limited time period (enough to collect the necessary information for analysis). You can set this time period using Reset to the standard level after option. The default value is 12 hours. In specific cases, a Parallels support engineer will advise you whether this time period should be set to a different value. Once this time period is over, the log level will be reset back to standard.
This option is enabled for secondary Connection Brokers only. In the event that the primary Connection Broker is down and cannot be recovered, you can promote a secondary Connection Broker to primary.
This option is enabled for secondary Connection Broker only. Each secondary Connection Broker is given a priority. To change the priority, choose Rise priority or Lower priority. The Connection Broker will move up or down the main list. The higher the agent is in the list, the higher the priority.
Refreshes the current view.
Remove the Connection Broker from the Farm.