Remote Desktop Services on a Hosted Windows Server

Oct 15, 2026

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Remote Desktop Services on a Hosted Windows Server

Somewhere in your business right now, someone’s probably said the phrase “we should just get everyone onto one system.” Maybe it was after the third laptop died this year. Maybe it was after a staff member worked from a coffee shop and you realized you had no idea what security was (or wasn’t) protecting your files. Or maybe you’re just tired of “it works on my computer” being a legitimate excuse in your office.

If that’s you, you’ve probably run into the term Remote Desktop Services, or RDS. And like most IT terms, it gets thrown around a lot without anyone actually explaining what it does, what it takes to run properly, or what it costs. So let’s fix that.

What is Remote Desktop Services?

RDS lets a group of people log into one central Windows server, and each person gets their own desktop session. Their own apps, their own files, their own little slice of the machine, all running on server hardware instead of whatever laptop happens to be sitting on their desk.

Think of it like an office building. Everyone has their own office inside it, but the power, the security, the maintenance, all of that is handled centrally instead of each person maintaining their own building. So, instead of managing 10 different structures, you’re managing one and everyone just works inside it.

Now, here’s where people get confused. RDS is not the same thing as remoting into a single PC with something like TeamViewer or a basic RDP connection. That’s one person connecting to one machine. RDS is built from the ground up for multiple people sharing one server at the same time, properly, with each session isolated from the next. This is why licensing works differently here.

Who Needs RDS?

RDS isn’t for everyone, and honestly, if your team is five people working from one office on one shared Wi-Fi network, you probably don’t need it yet. But there’s a pretty clear set of businesses where it makes real sense:

1. Remote or hybrid teams who need the same environment and the same software, whether they’re logging in from home, a client site, or the office.
2. Businesses replacing a room full of aging desktop PCs with cheap thin clients or laptops that just connect to the server and do the heavy lifting there instead.
3. Teams that keep running into version mismatches, where one person’s Excel is doing something different from everyone else’s because updates never landed evenly across ten machines.
4. Regulated industries where data needs to stay put on a server rather than scattered across whatever devices staff happen to be using.
5. Field staff, contractors, and seasonal workers who need temporary, controlled access without you having to provision (and later collect) a full company laptop.

If any of that sounds familiar, you’re in the right place. And if you want proof this isn’t just theory, an Australian allied health organization did exactly this: a growing team of clinicians and admin staff spread across multiple clinics, all needing secure, consistent access to practice management systems and internal apps without someone babysitting a server at every location. VPSBlocks set them up with a mix of Cloudlets for application hosting and Windows RDS for centralized, secure access. Same problem you might be facing, just with a different logo on the door.

Enter Windows

The benefits get thrown around a lot, but they’re worth explaining properly.

• Access from Anywhere: Any device with an RDP client turns into a full workstation. A laptop, an old PC gathering dust in a cupboard, even a tablet in a pinch.
• Centralized Software and Updates: Install or update an application once, on the server, and everyone gets it. No more chasing down which of your twelve staff laptops still have last month’s version.
• Data Stays Put: Files and databases live on the server, not scattered across a dozen laptops that can get lost, stolen, or just quietly die with two years of client data on them.
• Consistent Performance Regardless of Hardware: Staff working from a five-year-old laptop on mediocre home internet still get full server-grade performance, because the actual processing happens on the server, not their machine. Their device is basically just a window into it.
• Faster Onboarding and Offboarding: New hire starts Monday? Create an account. Someone leaves? Disable the account. No wiping laptops, no re-provisioning hardware, no chasing down company property that “walked.”

What It Takes to Run RDS Well?

RDS done badly is a genuinely miserable experience. Laggy sessions, apps that hang, staff quietly going back to using their own devices because the “proper” system is slower. So let’s be honest about what actually needs to be right.

You need real, dedicated RAM and CPU per person logged in. This isn’t a workload you squeeze onto a small, cheap VPS and hope for the best. You need fast storage, because when multiple people are hitting the disk at the same time, slow storage gets punished hard and everyone feels it at once. And you need low latency, both to the server itself and for each person’s individual connection.

This is where the actual specs of whoever’s hosting your server matter a lot more than they would for, say, a simple website. VPSBlocks runs everything on dedicated, non-oversold RAM and CPU, which matters enormously here. RDS is exactly the kind of workload where a “noisy neighbor” (some other customer hammering shared resources) or an oversold server becomes instantly, painfully obvious to every single person logged in at once.

Storage runs on NVMe/Flash across the board, and because the servers are physically in Australia, staff connecting from Australian locations get low-latency sessions. Laggy RDP is one of the fastest ways to make a team quietly hate the system you rolled out for them, so this isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between RDS feeling invisible and RDS feeling like a punishment.

What is the cost of running Remote Desktops in your business?

While the key costs will vary depending on the use of the Remote Desktops, there are some very basic guidelines you can follow to give you a good indication of costs both initially and ongoing. The factors to take in to consideration are CPU, RAM, Disk space & the number of users that will be utilising the Remote Desktop Services. The CPU & RAM will depend on how many users and the applications they are using when they are logged in. For example, if they are doing just web browsing and emailing from their Remote Desktop, they will likely need 1 CPU Core and approximately 1-2GB of RAM as a starting point per user. If they are doing more comprehensive tasks and utilising a lot more resources, that may expand out to 2 CPU cores and 2-3GB of RAM being needed. The disk space will be determined on the type of work being carried out on the remote desktop. Starting a user off with 5GB will likely be ok for most office basic work like creating word documents and spreadsheets but if they are saving large documents, photos and videos, or a combination of a lot of them, then that will require a larger amount of storage.

So what is the calculation hehind this and can be quite complicated? The calculation can be quite complicated but lets look at a rough guide so that you understand the general process.

1. Calculate Windows Server Requirements. Depending on what version of Windows Server you are going to use, it will determine how many resources you need. For this example, we will go with Windows Server Standard 2022. The recommended (not minimum because they are usually way to low to work with) would be 6 CPU Cores, 24GB of RAM and 150GB of disk space. Remember this is recommended, so that means it is above minimum by quite a bit, but it should lead to quite a quick running server.
2. Work out user workload and calculate a standard for each user on average. If you are running software on the server for each user that requires a bit of processing power, then you should consider 1-2 CPU cores per user. Once again, depending on the requirements of the software you may need to allocated 2GB of RAM per user these days as a minimum.
3. Work out how many concurrent users + 1 are going to be using the server. While technically you do not need the +1 for administrator, it is always a good way to handle any unexpected increases in a new staff member etc. Typically each license will cost about $10-$15 per month per user so this is why this is important.

With the above things worked out, on a 5 user machine doing average days office work, you would be looking at a server with the following configuration as a minimum:

11 CPU Cores, 34GB of RAM, 275GB in disk space running Windows Server Standard 2022 with 6 user license cal. This you may be thinking is going to cost a pretty penny each month. It will have a sizeable cost for a smaller business BUT it is certainly still going to be cheaper than buying the equipment outright in todays hardware market.

Putting that aside for a minute, there also a few features which could save your bacon later. This would include the ability to scale within minutes not days or weeks, as well as having the ability for you. Something that these days can be painful to work with when your business is in growth mode.

Still not sure how to proceed or what to do? We are here to help!

Let the VPSBlocks team help you work out your exact requirements when it comes to running a Remote Desktop environment. We can help you work out the exact resource requirements, migration plan and even how to get this all setup. We work with businesses each day that are of all shapes and sizes who have deployed Remote Desktop Services for their staff. Often after a meeting or so, we can taylor make a solution to suit your business needs. To find out more, contact our team today.

Neil has over 25 years of experience in the hosting and technology industry and has been a part of VPSBlocks for a few years. His background spans server infrastructure, application development, and digital strategy, giving him a practical understanding of how technology supports real business outcomes. Neil works closely with clients to design, optimise, and support hosting environments that are reliable, scalable, and aligned to their needs.

Neil