By Fredrik Brattstig @virtualbrat
14th July 2022
IGEL has just announced Microsoft Teams optimization using IGEL OS with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365.
Read the PR announcement HERE
Though, there are some more perks coming with the integration of Microsoft Teams optimization/WebRTC redirection.
First of all, we need to know that, the IGEL OS AVD client can be used to connect to “legacy” Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environments, like if you have RDS servers or Windows 10 VDI’s in your on-prem environment. The command line name of the IGEL AVD client is ‘igelrdp3’. If you open up a terminal and run ‘igelrdp3 -help’ will show you the different options. Looking through the options, we find “-f rdp-file” which means that we can use the IGEL AVD client to launch a preconfigured .rdp file and connect to an existing RDS host.
By then utilizing the built-in Dynamic Virtual Channels (DVC) and the WebRTC offloading that opens up to actually have the RDS host to talk to the endpoint and allow WebRTC redirection to happen.
What needs to be done to enable Microsoft Teams optimization in an on-prem RDS host??
– Install Microsoft Teams and pre-requisites according to the Microsoft official installation documentation found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/teams-on-avd
– One thing I noticed was that the WebRTC redirector service didn’t install properly on a fresh RDS server if .net wasn’t installed. So, additionally to the pre-requisites in the above article .net core runtime needs to be installed. Download it from here:
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/6.0
and install before you try to install the WebRTC redirector service.
– When it comes to IGEL OS, nothing needs to be configured for Microsoft Teams optimization to be enabled, but you would need to have a firmware where the updated IGEL AVD client 1.0.99.20 is installed. This can be found in firmware 11.07.136
When the installation is done, we just need to launch the IGEL AVD client in Remote Desktop mode, which we do by using the command-line ‘igelrdp3 -f /path/to/.rdp-file’
In the below video, I have taken a preconfigured .rdp file, which I received by launching IGEL RD WebAccess and then capture the .rdp file. Then I distribute this .rdp file to my endpoints using a regular file object in IGEL UMS. In the example I put the .rdp file in /wfs/ on the endpoint, and can after that just create a shortcut for my users to easily launch their RDS session using the command:
igelrdp3 -f /wfs/desktop.rdp
Let me show you a video of how I did it!
You can request the firmware that makes this possible by filling out the form at the bottom of this blogpost:
https://virtualbrat.com/2022/07/15/igel-os-avd-windows365-client-and-microsoft-teams-optimization-ga-announcement/
Quite powerful, isn’t it? Is it supported? I don’t, know, but at least you have a oppotunity now to get Microsoft Teams working and optimized for your on-prem RDS users!
That’s it for today! Stay optimized with IGEL OS!
/Fred
VirtualBrat 