The VDI environment on a Microsoft deployment is dependent on another well-known technology: Remote Desktop Services (RDS), formerly known as Terminal Services (TS). The reason for this dependence is that Microsoft decided to use the RDP protocol to present the VM to the client machine, since that is a well established technology. Additionally, on Windows Server 2012 both VDI and RDS evolved to provide a better user experience to the client.

On Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft introduced a number of new features for RDS, such as Web Access, Connection Broker, virtualization host, and others. It is not in the scope of this book to go into these new features in any depth. However, as some of these features will influence the VDI environment, here is a quick reference on the new features for RDS that work together with VDI: