Remove 1 of 3 VDI Host from RDP server

Question

Environment is 3 Server 2016 hyper v host nodes and 1 RDS server. Golden image collection is vdi disk.

We have an issue with the communication between the RDS and the host. VM's are simply not getting delivered and times out waiting no a machine. We have created a new RDS server however, we cannot setup remote desktop services since all 3 of our virtualization host are part of the original RDS server. Without completely scuttling our RDS server and removing all roles and collections we would like to remove a single Virtualization host from RDS1 deployment and then use it to test with the new RDS2 server. In order to keep our company running we just bypassed RDS1 and used remote desktop to connect directly to the VM's in the collection. All users got a temp profile but at least they can work.

what we do not know is 1) if we can remove a single VDI host? 2) If we can how do we protect the collection from deletion? We would like to move all VM's to the other 2 host then have the 3rd host to use for a new collection created from RDS2. if it works out then we remove the original RDS server and use the new one with the new collection.

So if we can't remove a single host and we end up removing RDS roles and services then powering off RDS1. What happens to the VM's in the collection? I assume they would all be deleted which would be bad since we are still using them in a way.

Of course our fear here is losing 75 VM workstations, because if we removed RDS1 and cannot get RDS2 to work then we have to recreate those workstations in Hyper-V some how by Monday when employees return to work.

Answer 1

Hello @Ryan Overby

If its cluster Host then it should be moved to another Node.

I would also suggest to reduce some resources like RAM and CPU on your VMs which is consuming 80 percent.

Apart from that running server with 80 percent should not harm just check it should not go beyond 90 percent.

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

Answer 2

Thanks for your response. Our clustered host nodes are 5, 6, & 7. The plan was to move the collection VM's from 7 and over to 5 & 6. However, there will be still be production VM servers still running on 7. We then wanted to remove 7 from RDS as a virtualization host and add it to RDS2 as its only virtual host. Once that was done we could then created a new collection with 5 vm's in to test with. If I pause it, do those servers pause as well or migrate? I have never paused it with powered on VM's. We can run everything on 2 host but its 80% resource area.

Its a shame that I can't just add node 7 to our new RDS, but it won't allow it to be in 2 separate deployments.

Answer 3

RDS collections "live" in your database, not on any servers that belong to your deployment. The only way to delete a collection is to use the RDS interfaces to delete it (or wreck your database, I suppose, although I don't recommend that). Removing a server from your deployment won't delete a collection or any of its VMs. Collections do not care which hosts operate which VMs.

If you remove a virtualization host from the collection and it hosts collection VMs, then the status for those VMs will become "Unknown" in the RDS displays because your deployment will no longer look on that host for VMs. Usually you can make things right just by moving the affected VM(s) to a host that still belongs to your deployment.

To do this with the least pain, move collection VMs off of the host that you want to retire and onto hosts that will remain in the deployment. If your virtualization hosts are clustered, then you need to make sure that a VM cannot automatically migrate back to that node. Usually with a retirement, you evict the node, but you can also pause it. Then just use Server Manager or the RDS cmdlets to remove the ailing virtualization host from the deployment.