{"id":1414,"date":"2014-04-27T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebeagle.itgroove.net\/?p=1414"},"modified":"2023-02-24T21:48:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T21:48:29","slug":"remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/","title":{"rendered":"Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had a customer ask me about this the other day and I thought it might be useful to have a quick discussion about the differences between these two desktop access technologies.<\/p>\n<p>While we are all rushing to embrace the Cloud (Hello O365!) there is still a lot of need by a lot of organizations to share\/access \u201cdesktops\u201d for whatever reason:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Provide shared access to expensive software<\/li>\n<li>Provide access to user\u2019s internal desktop<\/li>\n<li>Provide access to shared desktop resources<\/li>\n<li>And so on and so forth \u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Microsoft provides three common technologies to respond to this type of need:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Remote Desktop Services (RDS), commonly referred to as \u201cterminal services\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Remote Web Access\/Remote Web Workplace (Server 2012\/R2 Essentials, older Small Business Server products); also implemented as RDS Gateway on Server 2008 and newer<\/li>\n<li>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) \u2013 okay, this is a stretch but included because of the whole shared resources aspect<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019m going to discuss RDS and RWA\/RWW as VDI doesn\u2019t really fit for the small businesses that I normally deal with due to the inherent cost and complexity of VDI.<\/p>\n<p>OK, so just what is RDS?&nbsp; This is pretty simple, RDS is the technology that provides users with access to a \u201cdesktop\u201d or \u201cpublished applications\u201d that are all hosted on a Windows <em>Server<\/em>.&nbsp; Access is provided using an RDP connection (Remote Desktop Protocol) from a PC, tablet or phone or via an HTTPS connection (with RDP tunnelled over HTTPS) when using published applications.&nbsp; The salient point here is that the desktop or the published applications as hosted on a <em>server<\/em>.&nbsp; In other words, users are sharing the underlying server as opposed to being a single user on a Windows <em>PC<\/em>.&nbsp; A user may see his or her desktop and assume they are the only user on the system but that is not the case, many users could be on the system at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>RWA\/RWW is a nice web frontend provided by Server 2012\/R2 Essentials machines and older SBS servers that provides, amongst other things, published access to PC\u2019s on the local network along with the Essentials or SBS server.&nbsp; While the connection used is the same tunnelled RDP over HTTPS as discussed with an RDS Server, the connection itself is to a single Windows Professional PC which can only support a single user connection at a time.&nbsp; So, while an <em>RDS Server <\/em>can provide connections for multiple users at once, RWA\/RWW can only connect a single user to any given PC at any given time.&nbsp; RWA\/RWW cannot connect two or more users at once to any Windows PC as Windows Professional does not support multiple user connections (multi-user access).&nbsp; RWA\/RWW <em>can<\/em> pass users through to an RDS Server on the network if one exists.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>So, in simple terms, RWA\/RWW is just a <em>gateway <\/em>technology while RDS is an actual multi-user <em>sharing<\/em> technology.<\/p>\n<p>For small businesses that need to provide some kind of \u201cshared access\u201d to expensive software or remote user access to software that does not play \u201cnice\u201d across the Internet (think applications like QuickBooks or Sage50), an RWA\/RWW configuration that allows connection to one or more PC\u2019s with the application <em>might<\/em> be the answer.&nbsp; However, you must keep in mind that only one user can connect to a given PC at any time.&nbsp; If you have multiple users that need to access the application at the same time then you would need to provide multiple PC\u2019s that can be accessed via RWA\/RWW.&nbsp; This is not a \u201cbad\u201d thing if users are actually connecting to their own dedicated PC (as in the have a desktop machine in the office and a laptop or tablet for the road) but can get pretty crazy if you are simply trying to maintain a \u201cpool\u201d of machines for users to connect to.&nbsp; RWA\/RWW does not provide any sort of \u201cdirector\u201d to point users at a currently unused machine so users would need to try each machine in turn to find one that is actually available.<\/p>\n<p>RDS Servers, on the other hand, are built to support access by multiple users at the same time; the upper number of users that can be supported by a given server is limited only by resources available on the server itself (RAM, processor, disk, etc).&nbsp; If you need to make access available to more than a few users then RDS is probably the <em>much<\/em> better way to go.&nbsp; But keep in mind that you have to license software for the <em>maximum<\/em> number of users you will support on an RDS server, you cannot install a single copy of Office, as an example, on an RDS server that will support up to 30 users; you have to license for 30 users.<\/p>\n<p>So, there you have it.&nbsp; In the end you use RDP (in some fashion) to access desktops over RWA\/RWW or RDS so the <em>access<\/em>&nbsp; technology is the same.&nbsp; But the technologies used to provide the accessed services are quite different.&nbsp; You need to define what your requirements and goals are in order to make the decision which technology is the one that will work for your organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a customer ask me about this the other day and I thought it might be useful to have a quick discussion about the differences between these two desktop access technologies. While we are all rushing to embrace the Cloud (Hello O365!) there is still a lot of need by a lot of organizations &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[258,259,260,261],"tags":[522,523,539,540],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server - Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server - Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I had a customer ask me about this the other day and I thought it might be useful to have a quick discussion about the differences between these two desktop access technologies. While we are all rushing to embrace the Cloud (Hello O365!) there is still a lot of need by a lot of organizations &hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-04-27T15:54:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-02-24T21:48:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sean Wallbridge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sean Wallbridge\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/\",\"name\":\"Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server - Archive\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-04-27T15:54:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-02-24T21:48:29+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/#\/schema\/person\/74e1c0def190f181c1394c2b6d883e77\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Blog Archive\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/\",\"name\":\"Archive\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/#\/schema\/person\/74e1c0def190f181c1394c2b6d883e77\",\"name\":\"Sean Wallbridge\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/adf8cea6291c39d166616f2148d919a6?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/adf8cea6291c39d166616f2148d919a6?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Sean Wallbridge\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/author\/swallbridge\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server - Archive","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/archive\/2014\/04\/27\/remote-web-access-vs-remote-desktop-server\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Remote Web Access vs Remote Desktop Server - Archive","og_description":"I had a customer ask me about this the other day and I thought it might be useful to have a quick discussion about the differences between these two desktop access technologies. 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