Cannot for the life of me get remote desktop working.

thecomputerguy

thecomputerguy

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I have a network with the following:

Server running 4 virtual workstations and is a DC, DNS, DHCP, AD, and Hyper V Server
3 Physical Workstations
Verizon DSL Modem/Router
Gigabit Switch

I have tried absolutely everything I can think of to get people to login through RD. Right now were using Logmein as a temporary fix until I can get RD working.

Heres what I tried/did:

- Couldn't get it working on older verizon dsl modem, ordered replacement modem. (New Modem Model: GT784WN - http://www.actiontec.com/products/product.php?pid=215#.UQoDU7_C2bw
- Setup new modem, new modem comes with firewall disabled.
- Disabled DHCP (Handled by server)
- Enabled RDP in server (Everything works fine using internal private IP's 192.168.xxx.xxx etc, using the public IP it did not work)
- Put Server IP in DMZ
- Disabled windows firewall in server
- Enabled the firewall in the modem, set up a port forward to servers internal IP for 3389
- Changed default RDP port from 3389 to 55000
- Did all of the above steps in a Windows 7 Computer, and a Windows XP computer with no luck.

Any ideas?
 
Just to make sure I didn't forget how to set this up I setup my own computer and port forwarded 3389. Then I logged onto their network remotely and connected to mine through RDP. So they can get to my computer through RDP but I can't get to theirs.
 
First..a side note. The base Server OS that runs the Hyper-V role....are you saying that it is also their DC/infrastruture server? The Server OS that you install on the physical hardware and flip on the Hyper-V role should only do that role...nothing else. The DC should be one of the guests. You want the important servers to be portable. You also want the hyper-V box to be able to dedicated all of its resources to its guests.

Alright, onto the network thing.....so you can RDP into any of these rigs from inside of the network. Appears to be just an issue coming in from the outside?

Do you have another router in between the Actiontec and this network? Say the routers LAN IP is 192.168.0.1....your network is also 192.168.0.xxx?
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
First..a side note. The base Server OS that runs the Hyper-V role....are you saying that it is also their DC/infrastruture server? The Server OS that you install on the physical hardware and flip on the Hyper-V role should only do that role...nothing else. The DC should be one of the guests. You want the important servers to be portable. You also want the hyper-V box to be able to dedicated all of its resources to its guests.

Alright, onto the network thing.....so you can RDP into any of these rigs from inside of the network. Appears to be just an issue coming in from the outside?

Do you have another router in between the Actiontec and this network? Say the routers LAN IP is 192.168.0.1....your network is also 192.168.0.xxx?
Click to expand...

What? Your saying I should have two physical servers? 1 just to handle the DC, AD, DNS, and DHCP ... and another just to host hyper V?

This server is like a 16 Core Server with 32GB of RAM running a total of 8 users ... I can't see the server having performance issues ...

Back on RDP ...

Yes the Server IP is 192.168.0.200
Router/GW IP is 192.168.0.1
DHCP in router is off
 
Just as a thought I would try another service to make sure the DMZ/Firewall/Forwarding is working. If I was stumped I would setup a quick FTP server using FileZilla or something like that along with the forward and try to connect. Yes I know you are trying to get RDP working but I would be looking at it from another angle if there was something else blocking the connection. If you could FTP into the server then it isn't an issue with the modem/router not forwarding correctly or the server firewall allowing to pass thru or maybe the server config.
 
going from memory there is a specific firewall rule that tells the server to listen to RDP traffic from external source. You will find it in Windows Firewall/Inbound Rules, TCP in.

Try that, or at least double check whats set.
 
thecomputerguy said:
What? Your saying I should have two physical servers? 1 just to handle the DC, AD, DNS, and DHCP ... and another just to host hyper V?
Click to expand...

No...you have 1x physical host. You install Windows Server..you add Hyper-V role. Now you're done with that OS. You don't add additional roles like a DC to that box. (when you say you have a DC...you don't need to additionally mention AD and DNS...those are already inclusive of a DC...typically DHCP too)

You now add your virtual guests. One of those guests would be the DC.

You want your important computers to be portable. Hyper-V guests (as well as VMWware guests) are easily "portable"...can move from one to another if need to migrate in a hurry. The base OS that has the bare metal install is not easily portable.

Also Hyper-V role reorganizes the priorities of how the server focuses resources. This has nothing to do with how much balls your server has. It is tuned to focus resources on its guests.
 
Coming in blind here, but...
Just for testing purposes, forward port 3389 on the router/firewall to one of the client computers. Make sure the client computer has Remote Desktop enabled, and disable Windows Firewall completely... as well as any third party firewall.
See if you can then RDP into that computer from the LAN. If so...
See if you can then RDP into that computer from the outside world.

If you can, then you should be on track to diagnose the problem as server related. If you can't, then you should be looking at the router/firewall.

Of course other things come into play here, but that is a good starting point.
 
SAG said:
Coming in blind here, but...
Just for testing purposes, forward port 3389 on the router/firewall to one of the client computers. Make sure the client computer has Remote Desktop enabled, and disable Windows Firewall completely... as well as any third party firewall.
See if you can then RDP into that computer from the LAN. If so...
See if you can then RDP into that computer from the outside world.

If you can, then you should be on track to diagnose the problem as server related. If you can't, then you should be looking at the router/firewall.

Of course other things come into play here, but that is a good starting point.
Click to expand...

Already did this per my original post, but thank you for trying :)
 
Just wanted to update and let everyone know i figured it out.

Looking back at it, it's kind of a newbie mistake.

Even though the firewall was off, and I stuck computers in the DMZ to try to get it to work ... The ports still had to be forwarded even if you used the default 3389 RDP port, which was different than I had to do before.

When I setup RDP on my network just to test I threw my computer into the DMZ and RDP worked without having to forward ports. This one required ports to be forwarded regardless.

Thanks everyone for your help ... and I just reminded myself I have to turn off the DMZ on my own network ... lol
 
thecomputerguy said:
What? Your saying I should have two physical servers? 1 just to handle the DC, AD, DNS, and DHCP ... and another just to host hyper V?

This server is like a 16 Core Server with 32GB of RAM running a total of 8 users ... I can't see the server having performance issues ...

Back on RDP ...

Yes the Server IP is 192.168.0.200
Router/GW IP is 192.168.0.1
DHCP in router is off
Click to expand...

I think his point is that if you are using VM's you should just have the minimum for the host machine and then do everything else in VM's. That is basically the whole point of VM. DC goes down then just grab a snapshot and you are back up and running.
 
Using that logic ...Well since Hyper-V is included in every version of server past 2008 (I think) Why would anyone ever NOT have the DC virtualized through hyper-v ... or how does esxi fare against hyper-v?
 
Top be honest I've never even looked at Hyper-V. The way I see it MS Server with Hyper-V on top is way too big of a load compared to esxi. I've setup esxi and it works very well. I also did some support work for a growing company that bought a server along the lines of what you described. Put esxi on bare metal and then loaded the servers. No problems
 
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