Blog Post

Security, Compliance, and Identity Blog
2 MIN READ

Reduce running costs for your RDS Deployment in Azure using Auto-Scaling

TechCommunityAPIAdmin's avatar
TechCommunityAPIAdmin
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
Sep 08, 2018

First published on CloudBlogs on Mar 23, 2017 by Enterprise Mobility + Security Team
This post is authored by Clark Nicholson, Principal Program Manager, Remote Desktop Services. Hello everyone. This is Clark Nicholson from the Remote Desktop Services team. I’m writing today to let you know we have recently published a new version of the Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) auto-scaling sample script that uses Azure Resource Management (ARM) PowerShell. Many of you have deployed Remote Desktop Services (RDS) in Azure VMs based on the RDS Technet documentation , the RDS ARM templates , or the RDS Azure Marketplace solution template . You may be wondering, “How do I reduce the cost of my RDS deployment in Azure?” It turns out that for many RDS deployments, the most significant cost is the RDSH server VMs, so a great way to reduce cost is to shut down and de-allocate your RDSH VMs during off hours and then start them back up again as usage increases. The sample script is intended to help you automate RDSH scaling. You can use the sample script as-is with simple configuration using the config.xml file, or you can customize the sample script itself. The PowerShell script, xml configuration file, and a deployment document are all included in a .zip file that can all be downloaded from TechNet Script Center. For more information, please see Remote Desktop Services , and Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines . Note: Questions and comments are welcome. However, please DO NOT post a request for troubleshooting by using the comment tool at the end of this post. Instead, post a new thread on the RDS & TS forum or make suggestions on the RDS User Voice forum . Thank you!

Updated May 11, 2021
Version 6.0