Methods and servers for establishing a connection between a client system and a virtual machine executing in a terminal services session and hosting a requested computing environment

A method for providing access to a desktop computing environment by a virtual machine launched by a hypervisor executing in a terminal services session, the method comprising the steps of:

• a) receiving from a client system
• i) credentials for a user of the client system and
• ii) a request for an enumeration of desktop computing environments available to the user;
• b) collecting data from a plurality of execution machines, the data including
• i) desktop computing environment images on each execution machine and
• ii) access control information for each desktop computing environment image;
• c) storing the collected data in a database;
• d) using the user credentials and the collected data from the database to determine desktop computing environment images available to the user;
• e) transmitting the collected data to the client system indicating desktop computing environments corresponding to the desktop computing environment images available to the user,
• f) receiving, from the client system, a request to access one of the desktop computing environments;
• g) selecting, by a broker machine, a virtual machine that can provide the requested desktop computing environment and a first operating system in which to execute the requested desktop computing environment;
• h) selecting, by the broker machine, an execution machine executing a hypervisor providing access to hardware resources required by the virtual machine;
• i) launching, by the broker machine, the virtual machine into the execution machine,
• i) the execution machine having a second operating system that provides a terminal services session,
• ii) the terminal services session executing the hypervisor,
• iii) the hypervisor executing the virtual machine, and
• iv) the virtual machine executing the first operating system for the requested desktop computing environment;
• j) launching, by the broker machine, the requested desktop computing environment into the first operating system provided by the virtual machine by deploying a desktop computing environment image corresponding to the requested desktop computing environment;
• and
• k) establishing a connection between the client system and the requested desktop computing environment.