Server Manger displays the following message for Remote Desktop Services: “There are no RD Connection Broker servers in the server pool”

I’ve been asked several times this year about a seemingly trivial task that I tend to forget myself so I thought I’d write a quick blog post about it in case someone encounters the same situation and for myself to refer to in the future.

Problem

You’ve in one of the following situations:

1. You’ve deployed a new RDS server and added it to an existing collections and would like to perform administrative tasks from that server

2. You’ve asked another administrator to administer an existing RDS server but this administrator uses an account that has never performed these tasks

The problem encountered here in either of the cases above is that when you log onto an RDS server that was recently added to a collection or with an account that has never administered the RDS collections before, you will notice that the options to administer the servers are not available in Server Manager:

Navigating to the Remote Desktop Services section will display the following message:

There are no RD Connection Broker servers in the server pool.

To manage a deployment, you must add all the servers in the deployment to the server pool.

To create a new deployment, run the Add Roles and Features Wizard and select the Remote Desktop Services installation option.

Solution

I find that most administrators including myself would eventually figure this out but I tend to forget a few months afterwards. To get the Remote Desktop Services collection to show up in the Server Manager console, click on the Manage button on the top right hand corner and then Add Servers:

You will need to add all of the RDS servers in the collection into this Window but if you only know of one because you’re not familiar with the environment, you can go ahead and add just the one you know of:

Hitting the OK button will bring you back to the Dashboard:

Clicking on the Remote Desktop Services section will display a message telling you that you need to add the rest of the servers in the deployment:

The following servers in this deployment are not part of the server pool:

The servers must be added to the server pool.

Proceed by adding the servers listed:

You should now see the collections in the deployment once the servers have been added: