What is the difference between Desktop Application, Remote Application, RDP Application, Reverse Proxied Web Application and Web Application?

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In Parallels Secure Workspace, there are some different application types that can be published:

Desktop Application

This publishes an entire user desktop.

Remote application

This is the recommended way to publish applications in Parallels Secure Workspace. A Remote Application is an application on the Remote Desktop Services server (or app server) that is published using the RDS roles. Once the RDS roles are installed, it's possible to publish applications (RemoteApps) using the Server Manager which creates an alias for the application. This alias can in turn be used to start applications using Parallels Secure Workspace. It has several advantages over the regular RDP applications:

 

RDP application

This method makes use of the regular Remote Desktop Protocol, but without the need to publish the app first. To get this working, the Remote Desktop Services roles must be installed on the server (not configured). Otherwise, it will not be possible to connect with more than one user. There is no need to publish apps first in the collection. When selecting "RDP Application" in the System Settings, specify the full path (under "Command") to the executable file: "C:\program files\myapp\run.exe".

Note that the "RD Session Host" role is still required on Microsoft Windows Server for this to work. Otherwise, whatever is specified here, is ignored and Microsoft Windows will start a full desktop.


The minimum requirement is the following group policy (GPO): Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Connections: Allow remote start of unlisted programs: enabled.
 

This is a good alternative when a legacy app does not run as expected when published as a Remote App. Most older legacy applications are used as RDP applications in Parallels Secure Workspace.


Web application

Web apps are not served through the RDP gateway component. When launching a web application, a separate tab will be opened and the browser will be directed to the URL of the Web Application.

You can also use Parallels Secure Workspace to reverse proxy web applications under a different domain (host header).

When both Remote Applications and RDP Applications are supported on your application server, we strongly recommend using Remote Applications for the best experience.

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