Solution: No Remote Desktop License Servers Available To Provide License
In this new blog, we are dealing with issues related to Licensing on servers. Many of you may have encountered these issues somewhere or sometime during your work experience. There are multiple possibilities for such issues as they may come with different error messages or may be caused by different parameters.
However, several companies can keep the actual configuration customized rather than recommended as a default with all new cloud technology. Hence there are possibilities where we discover such issues or the error with RDP/connecting any devices via remote access.
Why are we installing Remote Desktop session hosts on the windows servers?
By default, only two users can log in to the server simultaneously. Still, if there is a request from the end-user to increase the session user limit to more than two users, we need to install Remote Desktop Session Host Role on the windows servers.
Many are not aware of the Microsoft policies regarding the by default grace period on the Windows OS servers. Unfortunately, they only provide 120 days of the grace period by default, and once it’s exceeded, the user will face the below error while logging into the servers.
Cause | Symptoms: When you are trying to reach the device:
- The remote session was disconnected because no Remote Desktop License Servers can provide a license
- License server <xyz> is not available. For example, network connectivity problems could cause this, the Remote Desktop Licensing service is stopped on the license server, or RD Licensing isn’t available.
- Access was denied because of a security error.
- The grace period for the Remote Desktop Session Host server has expired, but the RD Session Host server hasn’t been configured with any license servers. Therefore, connections to the RD Session Host server will be denied unless a license server is configured for the RD Session Host server.
Error: The remote session was disconnected because no Remote Desktop License Servers can provide a license. Please contact the server administrator.
The requirement to Install RDS Role on the server:
- Add a new Remote Desktop Session Host role from Server Manager itself.
- Once the role is installed successfully, we need to update the Group policy with the RDS License server.
- Remote Desktop License server – get license per user from the license server.
- Connectivity between RDS License server and Session host server (where role we are installing)
- Concurrent session user limit to increase user session
Solution:
As per the Microsoft policy, we need to allocate/assign RDS/TS CAL License server and point the server to a license server with the User/Device license to resolve the problem. But we have another solution as well to fix the above login error.
We need to renew the Grace Period on the server to extend another 120 day limit to remove the grace period registry key from the Registry on the server-side.
Steps to be followed:
- Need to login into the server with Admin
- Open the registry and navigate yourself to the below path
- Delete the Grace Period registry key
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\RCM\GracePeriod
- Reboot the server
- Once the server reboots, the grace period will extend another 120 days.
Once we follow the above steps, the issue will be fixed, and we will not receive a login error message again for the next 120 days.
Kaushal Panchal