Win2019 Server RDS Cluster gets confused on where its VMs live

Paul H 1 Reputation point
2021-03-01T17:09:26.153+00:00

We have a two server Windows 2019 cluster for Remote Desktop Services. These two machines are hardware based and they rely on a virtual Windows 2019 server with MSSQL 2019 to control the cluster.

Overall these two machines service the cluster fine with one exception. What happens with cluster services doesn't happen within the RDS system.
For example: if the cluster determines that it needs to balance the servers by moving a VM to one server or the other the RDS system doesn't seem to be aware of this. When you look at Hyper-V Manager it sees the VMs properly. When you look at the Cluster Manager, it too sees the VMs properly. However when you look at Server Manager and dig into the RDS Collections and look at where it believes the VMs are it sees the VM on the original server and in an "unknown" state. At that point if the user is still on the VM they will continue to work. If they disconnect and attempt to reconnect they won't be able to since the RDS side of things doesn't know where the VM lives.

How to we resolve this problem? This usually shows up on reboots however I have had to lower the balancer from high to medium since this problem has been seen to occur at times when balancing is needed.

Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2019
A Microsoft server operating system that supports enterprise-level management updated to data storage.
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Remote Desktop
Remote Desktop
A Microsoft app that connects remotely to computers and to virtual apps and desktops.
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Windows Server Clustering
Windows Server Clustering
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Clustering: The grouping of multiple servers in a way that allows them to appear to be a single unit to client computers on a network. Clustering is a means of increasing network capacity, providing live backup in case one of the servers fails, and improving data security.
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  1. Paul H 1 Reputation point
    2021-03-24T15:07:51.423+00:00

    I've opened a ticket with MS for this however they're slow to respond.

    This is easily repeatable. Just this morning all the VMs were living on Server2 and I wanted to manually balance a few to Server1. Once I moved two of them and looked at RDS in Server Manager they're once again in an UNKNOWN status.

    No one has any idea on how to resolve this?

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  2. Carl Fan 241 Reputation points
    2021-03-30T06:21:42.673+00:00

    Hi,
    I'm sorry to see your message when I just came back from vacation.
    Thank you for your information.
    I met the issue before it could be fail after the connection broker loses access to the SQL Database for more than few minutes. This may causes virtual machines from collections to go to an Unknown state.
    So Administrator must restart the Remote Desktop Connection Broker service to recover from the failure.
    I consider that you could try to check for update. If any security updates could be found, installing them firstly to check.
    You have tried to contact Microsoft Customer Support and Services and opened a ticket. So please wait for MS engineers.
    If any information you get, please feel free to post back.
    Hope this helps and please help to accept as Answer if the response is useful.
    Best Regards,
    Carl