Remote Desktop Protocol

wauzer

Hi all,

Does my Server2008 virtual machine need to be part of a domain and have a fully qualified domain name to remote desktop to it from outside my network? My network is in a workgroup configuration at the moment.

yoyo

Moved from Comp & Tech

Fysh

wauzer wrote: »

Hi all,

Does my Server2008 virtual machine need to be part of a domain and have a fully qualified domain name to remote desktop to it from outside my network? My network is in a workgroup configuration at the moment.

You don't need to be bound into an Active Directory domain for RDP to work, nor do you need an FQDN. You do need it to be directly accessible from the remote location you plan to connec - ie if it's on a private network you need something like NAT to allow you to connect to it from elsewhere.

For example: if your private network is a router with a set of 192.168.0.xxx type addresses, and you want to connect to it from elsewhere (whether that's your work computer or the public internet), you need to configure your router to be able to route DRP requests (TCP port 3389, I think) to 192.168.0.abc (where abc is the specific address assigned to your VM) when you attempt to connect to your router's public-facing address.

Edited to add: If you are using a router for this, and it has a DHCP server on it, you'll want to configure a static IP address for your VM in the router so that the port forwarding rule will consistently forward RDP traffic to the right location

wauzer

Thanks Fysh,

I have configured my router for port forwarding to my VM at 192.168.0.xx (TCP port 3555) but this is not a static IP address, could this the problem? I then try to remote desktop to my VM using the routers public IP address (again, dynamically assigned by my ISP) with the port number i.e 86.44.66.XX:3555 but no connection. I have used the same configuration to RDP to the VM from the internet using a trial version of a tool called ThinRDP and it works no problem. I thought I would be able to do the same myself without ThinRDP but it just doesn't work, hence the initial question.

Any further information you can share with me is very much appreciated.

Czarcasm

OP you can set your server to have a static IP address by changing the TCP/IP settings of your network connection, the primary and secondary DNS, you'll find how to do this on portforward.com

Does your router have the capability to use a service like dyndns.com? You register on the site so you get an address like myserver.dyndns.com, I have a Belkin (Stop sniggering down the back! It's surprisingly reliable! ) Play n600 here and it has this capability.

I can RDP into any of my machines by having the relevant ports for each machine forwarded on the router itself (I'd change the default post 3389 for security reasons too if I were you, done in the registry).

For any machines I can't directly RDP into, I have the customer download RealVNC and by default it runs in listening server service rather than have them fanny about with IPs and routers and all the rest of it, saves an awful lot of time just having them go to whatsmyip and then I can do the rest.

Have a look here too if you're adamant about not wanting to use third party solutions (I'd be the same tbh) -

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2477176#top

and here about installing WS2k8 on a VM -

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-install-windows-server-2008-r2-x64-on-vmware-7/


I'm curious as to why though you would want it running in a VM or is this just a testbed machine?

ZENER

What VM software are you using to host the 2008 server ? If it's VMWare then check how the virtual switch is configured and connected to your virtual machine. Maybe a bid more detail on this might help ?

I've got VMWare ESXi 5.1 hosting 2008 server and Windows 7 and I can RDP into either from the local network including into each other.

It depends on your configuration how you proceed. You may need to let RDP through the 2008 firewall by allowing RDP to begin with but at least be sure RDP is actually working by going in on your local network.

Ken