To configure the 2X LoadBalancer, click on ‘Load Balancing’ in the Navigation bar in the 2X Console.

On the Load Balancing tab you can choose the load balancing method to be used, which counters to be used for the selected method and you can choose to enable a reconnection to a disconnected session or reconnect to same user sessions.

Resource Based Load Balancing: in this method, 2X LoadBalancer will retrieve the load information for all terminal servers in the farm and, based on the counters chosen, will determine the terminal server that will handle the incoming connection. Three different counters are available:

Round Robin Load Balancing: in this method, 2X LoadBalancer will identify the next available terminal server and forward the incoming connection accordingly, regardless of available resources on the server.

User Sessions: This option will redirect users to the server with the least number of sessions in use.

Memory:  This option will redirect users to the server with the best free/used RAM ratio.

CPU Utilization: This option will redirect users to the server with the best free/used CPU time ratio.

If more than one option is selected for load balancing, the 2X LoadBalancer will add the counter ratios together, and redirect the session to the server with the most favorable combined ratio.

The recommended setting is to enable all three options, unless there is a particular need for one of the options available.

NOTE: It will be necessary to install 2X Terminal Server Agent on all terminal servers and Citrix servers and/or 2X VDI Agent on all Virtual Desktop Hosts before each server can successfully participate in a load-balanced farm.

The ‘Reconnect to disconnected sessions’ option allows the 2X Publishing Agent to redirect an incoming user session to a previously disconnected session owned by the same user.

The ‘Reconnect sessions using client’s IP address only’ checkbox will need to be checked if reconnect is by IP address.

You may also choose to reconnect active sessions by selecting ‘Limit User to one session per desktop’. Therefore if a user re-connects to a Terminal Server with an active session started by the same user, the user will be connected to the active session.

NOTE: To limit users to one session per desktop, make sure that the setting ‘Restrict each user to one session’ is enabled at Terminal Servers>Terminal Services>configurations>Connections.

Click on the ‘Configure’ button.  You can change the default timeouts for the Terminal Server Agents. In normal scenarios, you should use the default settings

Click on the ‘Exclude List’ button and another dialog box will open that allows you to add Processes that will be excluded from load balancing.

On the Tunneling Policies tab you can set specific filters so that native RDP & ICA connections can be redirected to specific terminal server(s). Load balancing rules are useful when assigning a group of terminal servers or a specific terminal server with a 2X Secure Client Gateway IP. Therefore connections initiated from that particular IP will be load balanced to a corresponding group or a particular terminal server.

NOTE: Load Balancing Rules are applicable only to non-published desktop sessions.

The <Default> rule is pre-configured as the last rule which will catch all non configured gateway IPs. By default, this rule is configured to load balance the sessions between all servers in the farm. However, you can change the properties of this rule by selecting the default rule and clicking on ‘Properties...’.

To add a native RDP & ICA Load Balancing Rule, click the ‘Add...’ button.  This will open a new dialog as shown below. First select the IP Address for which you would like to create the rule, then choose ‘All Servers in Farm’, ‘Server Groups’, ‘Individual Server’ or ‘None’.

All connections initiated through this interface will be load balanced between all servers in the farm. One should note that the default rule is already pre-configured to load balance native RDP & ICA sessions between all servers in the farm.

All connections initiated through this interface will be load balanced with the selected group. One can select one or more groups to be associated with this interface as shown in the figure below. These Terminal Server Groups can be configured on the Terminal Server page.

All connections initiated through this interface will be load balanced with the selected individual servers. When you select individual servers, connections initiated from the selected interface will be load balanced with the selected terminal server.

You may also configure an IP address to be associated with just one single server.

All connections initiated through this IP will be denied. This option is ideal in order to deny connections initiated from the configured gateway IP. For security reasons this setting is useful when you want to allow connections from a certain interface.

With this option you can configure connections initiated from the specified gateway IP to not be forwarded (load balanced) to any terminal server.

When you have finished configuring the rule with a particular gateway IP (interface), click ‘OK’ to save the rule.

To re-configure a rule, select the particular rule and click ‘Properties’.  

To delete a rule, select the particular rule and click ‘Delete’.

NOTE:  You can create only one rule for each gateway IP.