STRW/LION Remote Desktop Services
To make working from home or from a flexdesk as easy as possible we have build a Remote Desktop Facility that provides you with a full Windows graphical desktop, which is running inside the University Campus, and is available from your private device such as a personal desktop or laptop. Many of you have already been using your institute Windows desktop as a graphical desktop server, but this requires you to leave that system powered on during your absence. In fact for those that do not have an institute Windows desktop (flexdesk users) there was only limited access to the Texel server possible.
With the implementation of a Remote Desktop Service (RDS), you have access to a farm of servers providing you the same experience as your institute desktop as graphical server. In fact accessing the RDS farm is even much simpler and the way to access it does hardly depend on your location, on or off premises.
Below we describe in some detail how to access the RDS farm from the three major operating systems.
For all systems, you need to download a .rdp file from the RDS server.
The next steps are OS dependent.
Above links tell you how to open an RDS session. But if you are done, you can either close the RDP program or use the logout functionality inside the graphical interface. The first method retains your RDS session and the next time you try to connect, you are directed to this still existing session. This means that you can start programs that will continue to run even if you are not connected to the session, and that returning to the session you can pickup where your left off. Using the graphical windows logout function closes the session, thus providing you with a clean new session the next time you connect RDS.
