Microsoft Remote Desktop 10 doesn't allow scheduled Mac shutdown.

Ensure that the remote desktop connection is closed before any shutdown event because like Apple Mail still communicating with remote mail servers, remote desktop is doing so with the Windows 10 Pro (or Linux) box, and current network connections will block a shutdown request until that network connection ends, or times out.

There is really no reason to fully shutdown the Mac Mini. The new Mac Mini will be perfictlly fine and uses very little power in standby or sleep mode.

For example the Mac Mini that we use for a media server hasn't been restarted in several months and the ones that we use everyday hasn't been restart in over a month.

I believe telling you about the application network timeout answered your question. The only configuration setting is to quit Remote Desktop before the shutdown request. That eliminates all possibility of any network connection delay before the operating system sends out its kill signal to all running processes.

DukeAtreides wrote:

I understand. I am asking if there is a setting or policy that would allow a RDC disconnect upon Mac shutdown. After all, one can disconnect manually from an RDC session. Why not on scheduled shutdown?

Seems like a good question for Microsoft's RDC team. There may be something behind the manual disconnect action that sends something from RDC to Windows 10 Pro to tell it let go of the open network port connection, but that is not present in an external System Shutdown signal.

At some point, I may order an Intel NUC with Windows 10 Pro and use RDC myself, but not there yet.

IMO, it would be a good enhancement. I would feed it back to Apple https://www.apple.com/feedback/

All the best.