Remote desktop connection broker upgrade and mac connectivity issues

Dave K 21 Reputation points
2023-05-10T13:40:15.5833333+00:00

I had previously tested upgrading a Remote Desktop installation from 2012R2 all the way to 2022 in a test sandbox environment, which all went well, so I planned to upgrade our production deployment.

My Plan was to go from 2012R2 to 2019, then 2019 to 2022, however, one connection broker failed to upgrade to 2019, with the error after rollback indicating some sort of Sysprep issue. The other, currently inactive connection broker (you're supposed to remove all but one broker in a HA deployment and then do the in place upgrade) upgraded to 2019 without issue, although it took FOREVER. I then tried to upgrade to 2016 instead of 2019, and while that also took forever, it succeeded, and once I had patched the 2016 connection broker to address the CredSSP issue, I was able to connect fine to several different collections.

When everyone started coming in, there were a lot of issues though - Some getting the message 'The requested session access is denied', which is usually a damaged RDP file that's causing you to try to be connected to the session broker instead of a deployment server. The other time it can come up is with macs, if you have the admin session box checked in the RDP app.

After a bit, it became apparent that only macs were having issues, which explained why I couldn't duplicate the issues even when connecting as users that were reporting issues.

I then saved a snapshot of the connection broker in it's 'upgraded to 2016' state and reverted back to the 2012r2 snapshot, after which, everyone, including mac users, could connect.

I'm not sure what else I can provide, but the TL;DR is I upgraded the active Remote Desktop Connection Broker from 2012R2 to 2016, and after that, macs could not connect to any session host in the deployment, but PCs could connect fine.

That being said, does anyone know if this is a known issue with 2016 or 2016+ and macs, was it resolved at some point, and/or where should I look to determine why the macs wouldn't work but PCs would?

Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2016
A Microsoft server operating system that supports enterprise-level management updated to data storage.
2,368 questions
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012
A Microsoft server operating system that supports enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.
1,526 questions
Remote Desktop
Remote Desktop
A Microsoft app that connects remotely to computers and to virtual apps and desktops.
4,225 questions
0 comments

1 answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Limitless Technology 43,926 Reputation points
    2023-05-18T09:47:10.5233333+00:00

    Hello Dave,

    Thank you for your question and for reaching out with your question today.

    Were your Mac clients using the latest version of the MacOS RDP Client? Here is a great guide for using the MacOS client with Windows Server including 2022:

    https://learn.microsoft.com/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/clients/remote-desktop-mac

    You may want to trial the beta client to see if there is improved connectivity.

    If the reply was helpful, please don’t forget to upvote or accept as answer.

    0 comments