Every year now, I need to update the certificates on my Microsoft Remote desktop services servers.

This involves:

• IIS front end
• RDWeb Web client
• components of RDS through server manager. Connection broker, gateway and web.
• RDS gateway.

Rough instructions:

Install the certificate

1. Open the MMC
2. Click add snap in
3. Choose Certificates
4. Choose “Local computer”
5. Choose this computer
6. Expand Personal\Certificates
7. Right click certificates and under all tasks, choose import certificate.
8. Now import your new PFX file
9. I recommend giving it a friendly name.
10. Now right click this certificate and click more tasks.
11. Click Export
12. Follow the wizzard. Don’t export the private key.
13. Save it to somewhere that will be easy to find shortly.

Update IIS

1. Open IIS Internet Information Services
2. Expand your server then expand sites
3. Right click on Default website.
4. Click Edit bindings
5. Click on the HTTPS port 443 binding.
6. Click Edit
7. Choose your certificate using the friendly name that you configured earlier.
8. Click Ok then Close.
9. You can now close the IIS administration interface.

Update the RDWeb web client

You do this by unpublishing the client, importing the certificate then re-publishing the client again.

1. Open PowerShell as administrator
2. Type the following command to unpublish the web client.
   Publish-RDWebClientPackage -Type Production
3. Now import the certificate using the following command. Replace everything between the <> with the path to the cer file you exported earlier.
   Import-RDWebClientBrokerCert
   Publish-RDWebClientPackage -Type Production -latest

Update the RDS service using server manager

1. Open server management
2. On the right, open RDS Remote Desktop services
3. In your main deployment window, click the deployment tasks button.
4. Click Deployment properties
5. Highlight the certificates option on the left
6. For each certificate, do the following:
7. Click the certificate
8. Click change
9. Choose the second option. Ad dfrom file
10. Browse to the PFX file
11. Type the password
12. Click OK
13. Click Apply
14. You will need to do this at least four times.

Update the certificate on the gateway

1. Open the gateway manager
2. Right click the gateway on the left
3. Click Properties
4. Move to the Certificates tab
5. Choose the third button down to import a new certificate.
6. Browse to the PFX
7. Type the password when prompted

At this point, you will probably need to reboot the connection broker and front end servers.