I recently migrated a client from Windows Server 2003 to 2012. Knowing what I know about Windows Server 2008 RDS and RemoteApps I thought I’d take the same approach. Microsoft has made many improvements to Remote Desktop Services in Windows 2012 but with that, I soon discovered, they dropped the ability to host RemoteApps in environments with single server running Active Directory Domain Services Role.

Basically, small business organizations with single server wanting to take advantage of Active Directory authentication and RemoteApps are out of luck.

Though, all is not lost. If you forgo RemoteApps you may install Remote Desktop Licensing and Remote Desktop Session Host roles on a Domain Controller, which will allow you to provide Remote Desktop Services in the environment, minus RemoteApps.

So if you find yourself in my situation check-out the following Microsoft KB article on how to deploy Windows Server 2012 RDS on servers running Active Directory Domain Services http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2833839

Cheers!