I have a coupe of VMs created an listed in Hyper-V manager, one sysprepped, one not, however, when I go to create a new virtual desktop collection in RD Services, when I get to 'Specify the virtual desktop template' no templates are listed.

Following advice from other similar problems I've seen, I've removed and re-installed both the RD Virtualisation Host role and the entire RD Services function a couple of times with no success. All other aspects of RD seem to work fine, I have a session collection already up and running and the two VMs work fine from Hyper-V Manager.

Server 2012R2, all the roles are installed on a single server which is also the network DC, no obvious (to me!) problems in the event logs.

Any ideas of how to fault-find this problem?

 

I had a similar problem. The initial collection was fine that was created when the server was first built using the wizard but when I tried to create another collection, I couldn't find the templates.  My issue was an AD permissions issue.  The RD Virtualization Host Server computer object didn't have rights to the AD OU where the VM's were to be created.  I checked the existing OU where the VMs from the first collection were and found the following permissions:

RD Virtualization Host Server:

Access: Full Control.  Applies to: Descendant Computer Objects. (This one was missing and I just manually added it to the new OU).

Access: Create/Delete Computer Objects. Applies to: This object and all descendant objects.

Access: Read.  Applies to: This object only.

The Server object, must have rights to create computer objects in the AD container where the VDI clients will reside. Set the rights as above or compare with the first OU and set to those rights. It seems if this step isn't done it doesn't even look for the templates. Let me know if this fixes it.

RDS on a DC is not recommended. The reason is that the broker uses WID to store its information. WID doesn't work well on a DC as it uses local user accounts which are non-existant on a DC. This could break certain features of RDS.

Thanks for the reply. I'm on a single server so I'm guessing the server already has permission to 'itself' so to speak, there's no 'RD Virtualization Host Server' computer object shown in ADUC. Just to double-check whether I had a permissions problem, I temporarily gave Everyone Full Control permissions to the VM folder and it made no difference.

Have I correctly understood

Well, to my mind if it's allowed, it should work. There's no warnings when installing the role on a DC that it won't work and BPA doesn't flag it up as an issue at all.

On 2012 it doesn't (or at least didnt) work. I bug reported this during TAP of R2 and it got fixed. Yet it's still not recommended. 

As i stated about the issues with the WID, it might be a place to start looking if this has anything to do with your issues. 

As DC's have a different permissions model on a lot of aspects due to the lack of local userdatabase, things regarding RDS can break. This is most likely the root of your problem. 

If you can pinpoint the issue, you can bug report it to Microsoft Premium support and hopefully get a hotfix.

Hi,

Is there update regarding the issue? Do you need other assistance?

Thanks.

Is the VM that you are using as a template in a running state? It should be powered off.

you cannot select generation 2 virtual machines for VDI, only generation 1 !

Test Lab Guide: Managed Pooled Virtual Desktop Collections