Overview

itopia CAS Cloud Desktop deployments rely on a number of infrastructure servers to support the environment and provide a rich, secure experience for end users. Depending on the type of deployment and the Collection Pools you create, infrastructure servers may include Active Directory Domain Controllers, Remote Desktop Connection Brokers and Gateways, and Windows File Servers.

When creating your deployment, you can select a preconfigured deployment size or configure an Advanced deployment to specify how many instances of each infrastructure server should be deployed. Depending on your selection, CAS automatically configures the relevant settings to enable high availability and/or fault tolerance for that server role.

If your CAS deployment grows after it has been created or if you wish to add additional redundancy to your environment, you can add certain infrastructure servers to an existing deployment. This is useful if, for example, you create a small CAS deployment as a pilot program and then later wish to expand it to a production environment for a larger user base.

Supported Infrastructure Roles

Not all infrastructure servers can be added after the deployment is created, and certain configurations do not support adding infrastructure servers post-deployment. The table below provides a summary of the infrastructure roles and their support for deploying additional servers.

Step-by-Step: Adding Servers to an Existing Deployment

Use the process below to deploy new infrastructure servers to your existing CAS deployment. Depending on the role, the process typically takes between 15-60 minutes.

1. Log into the CAS Admin Console (cas.itopia.com) as a user with the Deployment Editor role or higher.
2. Using the left-hand menu, navigate to Cloud Manager » VM Instances
3. In the VM Instances module, click the Create button and select Infrastructure Servers
4. On the Create Infrastructure Servers screen, select the infrastructure role you wish to add and the number of additional instances to create in each region of your deployment.
5. Review the Summary section to confirm that the resources to be created are correct.
6. Click Create

You can monitor the status of the server creation in the VM Instances module: an orange status icon means that the server is still being created or configured; a green icon means the server has successfully been added to the infrastructure.

Limitations and Considerations

• Currently, CAS supports deploying up to four instances for each infrastructure role in each region. Depending on the sizing of the VMs, this is generally sufficient for supporting thousands of concurrent users. If you wish to deploy more than four servers for a role, please contact itopia support at support@itopia.com
• CAS deployments that have co-hosted the RD Broker role on a User Session Server cannot add additional RD Broker servers. If you are unsure whether your deployment has a co-hosted Broker role, look for a VM instance named xxxFBU001 or xxxBUS001, where xxx is your deployment code; if you have a server with this naming scheme, the Broker role is most likely co-hosted and cannot be expanded with additional servers.
• The Windows File Server role cannot be expanded from the CAS Admin Console. However, it may be possible to manually configure high availability for the File Server role using Windows Failover Cluster; this is a manual process and requires several additional servers, such as iSCSI target hosts to store the file server data. This scenario is not officially supported by itopia and we cannot offer any assistance with the configuration process; however, you should contact itopia support to coordinate updating your deployment to use the new clustered file server once it is configured.