Remote Desktop license server in different domain than VM

Question

My targeted setup:

• SLAT enabled laptop w recent graphics card
• Win2012 Host OS w Hyper-V role
• DirectX 11 driver installed
• Win8 VM (OS is joined in my employer's domain)
• I RDP into the Win8 VM from the Host OS

I want to use RemoteFX to accelerate my VM-graphics. Unfortunately enabling RemoteFX requires installing Remote Desktop Services and thus an RDS License. Now, an RDS CAL isn't the end of the world, but an RDS 2012 License Server is "tricky" to set up without a domain.

I thought about the following:

• Configure my Win2012 Host OS as an AD domain controller making my own private little domain
• Configure my firewall so it doesn't answer to traffic from the outside.
• Install the RDS Role with
• Configure a RD License Server on it, add 1 "per user" CAL
• Add the GPU to my Win8 VM

Will this work given that my Win8 VM will be in a different "untrusted" domain? Question is mostly dependant on "who needs the license?", the Hyper-V Host OS with the RDS Role installed on it but never accepts an actual RDP connection or the Win8 VM that does?

EDIT:

Little realization:

Once you install the RDS Role and RDS Virtualization subrole, all connections to virtual machines are probably treated as if they were RDP connections to the host OS.

This is gross speculation on my part.. It's all a bit foggy IMO

Solution

I've been working on a similar issue for the past 2 weeks and unfortunately it appears that for licensing to properly work between domains there must be a 2-way trust between them.

Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754625.aspx

Another thing to keep in mind is that RDS and AD roles cannot exist on the same server, though from my tests with this the RDS licensing role may be the only component in the RDS role which can co-exist in with the AD roles.

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2799605

Comments

[Vincent Vancalbergh]

Can you confirm the "who needs the license?" question? Your answer implies that you think the VM needs it (which I find weird), but your tone indicates you might not have considered the question. I suppose it depends on how similar the issue really is..

[Vincent Vancalbergh]

Also, the "no AD and RDS" on same machine can be fixed with a mini-VM running AD in Core-mode. The laptop has 32GB of RAM. He can spare 512MB. :)