Terminal Server Logging Blog Articles

Terminal Server CPU Usage By Application

January 26, 2021 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Version 5.0 of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite introduces a new dashboard and report that tracks terminal server CPU usage by application. Whether you run Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Citrix, or Windows Virtual Desktop, figuring out which programs are taxing processor time the most is only a single click away.

Watch how easy it is to profile Terminal Server CPU usage by application

Using the CPU Use By Application Dashboard To Track CPU Usage by Remote Desktop Services Programs

First, make sure you have deployed the Remote Desktop Commander agent to each of your remote desktop servers, Citrix hosts, or WVD hosts. Once agents have been deployed and are collecting data, go to the Reports and Dashboards menu, and select the CPU Use By Application Dashboard.

Choose the time frame you want to evaluate. Quickly, the Remote Desktop Commander Suite calculates the CPU usage per remote desktop application, and sorts programs by greatest to least usage.

If you want to dive into the user session where the application was running, highlight the process name, and click “Open Selected Session.” That recorded remote desktop services session will then be displayed, and you can see all the activity and performance impact of all processes in that user session.

Using the CPU Use By Application Report To Keep an Eye on Programs That Regularly Tax the CPU on Remote Desktop Session Hosts

From within the CPU Use by Application Dashboard, you can click the small Report (Printer) icon to immediately generate an instant report of what is currently displayed in that dashboard.
OR, you can click “Run Reports” from the Reports and Dashboards Menu, select the Performance reporting category, and then select the Performance (Agent Required) – CPU Use By Application report from the list. Running a report this way allows you to further filter out terminal server CPU usage by things like Remote Desktop Session Host name, user or Active Directory group name, or even process name.
Similarly, in the “Run Reports” menu, you can schedule a daily instance of this report so you can track which programs are impacting CPU resources the most on your WVD, Citrix, or RDS hosts.

Terminal Server CPU Use By Application Report

Of course, you can also profile memory and CPU usage by terminal server session in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and you can find out which applications use the most memory on a regular basis, via other dashboards and reports.

What are you waiting for? Sign up today for a monthly subscription to the Remote Desktop Commander Suite at only $9.99 per terminal server monitored per month. Or learn more about our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS/WVD, where you can have access to all three of our RDS monitoring and management tools for only $16.99 per terminal server per month.

Remote Desktop Canary v2.3 Now Available!

September 30, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and current RDPSoft customers! We’ve just released Version 2.3 of Remote Desktop Canary, our synthetic RDP and WVD monitoring and alerting workhorse. This new version offers:

WVD support. Whether you’re still using WVD classic (e.g. Fall 2019 Mode), or you’ve migrated over to WVD in ARM mode (e.g. the Spring 2020 Update), Remote Desktop Canary now supports WVD.
An enhanced workflow cloning wizard. Now, if you want to test each of your session hosts or WVD hosts “all the way to the desktop” using OCR event detection, our new wizard duplicates your test settings across all of your hosts in one easy step.
We’ve improved our OCR alerting engine, so if specific text you are screening for is not seen within a certain number of seconds, Canary’s email alert will include all of the screenshots during the login sequence. As a result, you will immediately see if the login attempt has stalled while loading user profiles/FSLogix, encountered a black screen, or encountered another issue.

We’re also excited to announce that you can now purchase Remote Desktop Canary as part of our brand new Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD! Please read on for more details.

In this RDPSoft E-Newsletter:

Remote Desktop Canary Now Supports WVD

New Workflow Cloning Options

New Login Sequence Screenshot Playback With OCR Alerts

The Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

Version 2.3 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

Windows Virtual Desktop Support in Remote Desktop Canary

Set up comprehensive synthetic Windows Virtual Desktop login tests in a matter of minutes with Remote Desktop Canary

Some organizations are starting to look towards migrating to Windows Virtual Desktop in Microsoft Azure as their end user computing platform. As one of the Microsoft’s original WVD partners, RDPSoft is committed to supporting WVD throughout our product line. Most recently, we have now added support for WVD within Remote Desktop Canary.

Whether or not you are still running Windows Virtual Desktop in Fall 2019 (Classic) mode, or have migrated to the new ARM-based WVD model (Spring Update), Remote Desktop Canary supports both versions.

Since WVD now takes care of infrastructure components for you (e.g. brokering sessions on to hosts, providing a gateway that routes incoming connections into your hostpools in Azure, etc), Remote Desktop Canary’s value rests in testing each of your individual WVD hosts to make sure they are responding properly and can serve up a desktop quickly. Remember, issues with user profiles, FSLogix, and other components can turn session hosts sluggish, resulting in slow login times, and these sorts of issues cannot necessarily be deduced by WVD diagnostics information alone.

By building a “direct to server” workflow test against one of your WVD hosts, and then using our new cloning wizard (see below) to replicate that test across all of your different hosts, you can quickly set up an entire testing regime to keep eyes on each host’s responsiveness.

Moreover, with Remote Desktop Canary’s scriptable command line interface, you can schedule routine early morning “sanity checks” to make sure your WVD hosts are now up and online, especially if you have already established scaling automation to shutdown hosts and spin them back up each day as your users start to log back in.

Workflow Cloning Improvements

In initial versions of Remote Desktop Canary, cloning was done one workflow at a time. However, many of our users expressed interest in doing scheduled or routine RDP login testing of ALL of their RDS session hosts and/or WVD hosts individually. In order to make this easy, we have expanded our cloning feature so that you can define a synthetic login test for a single RDS or WVD session host, but then rapidly duplicate that test across many different servers from your Active Directory or WVD hosts in your Azure resource group.

Quickly clone an existing “single host” RDP synthetic login test to many different hosts in your domain or WVD tenant

To perform this type of cloning operation, simply:

Define a workflow synthetic RDP login test against one of your RDS servers or WVD hosts.
Test it to make sure it works exactly the way you want it to.
Select the workflow, and press the “Clone” button.
Use the wizard to select additional terminal servers or WVD hosts from your Active Directory or Azure Resource Group.

Remote Desktop Canary will then replicate your testing settings against all of the selected hosts, creating a new workflow testing entry for each host. That’s all there is to it!

If Canary Cannot Login and Access a Full Remote Desktop Quickly, You’ll Now See What Happened Via a Full Login Sequence Playback

Since the release of Remote Desktop Canary version 2.0, more and more of our users have started using OCR event detection to be notified if it takes too long for a user’s desktop to appear in a Remote Desktop session.

In previous versions of Canary, if specific OCR text was not detected within a certain time period, an email alert would be logged stating this fact. Now, in Version 2.3, we have expanded these email alerts to include all of the periodic screenshots Remote Desktop Canary captured during the login sequence.

Remote Desktop Canary will now show you exactly what the login sequence looked like when a desktop could not be loaded in a timely manner. Was it a black screen? Or a roaming profile/FSLogix problem?

Thanks to this login sequence playback with screenshots, a support desk worker or admin can immediately see the likely cause of the delay when loading a desktop, such as roaming profile problems, FSLogix initialization issues, or the dreaded black screen during login.

The Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

At RDPSoft, we’re constantly seeking ways to deliver more features and more value to our clients, at an unbelievable price point. In furtherance of that goal, we have now released the Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD. Starting at only $16.99 per server per month or $185.99 per server per year – with a 3 server purchase minimum and volume discounts available – you gain access to all three of our products, including Remote Desktop Canary!

Even better, if you’ve deployed or are getting ready to deploy WVD, we have a special promotion for you on this Complete Bundle, but act fast, as it goes away on December 31st, 2020.

Please contact our sales department for a quote if you’re an existing customer who would like to upgrade to this new offer, OR if you use our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite tool and would now like to obtain full monitoring and management capabilities for your RDS or WVD deployment. Just mention you’re interested in our new “Complete Bundle” when you fill out the form.

Remote Desktop Canary 2.3 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

If you are an existing Remote Desktop Canary subscription licensee and/or active maintenance agreement holder, click here to request upgrade instructions.

If you’d like to learn more about Remote Desktop Canary, including its feature set and how to start a subscription immediately, click here.

If you’d like to learn more about our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle For RDS and WVD, click here.

Request a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert to see all our solutions’ features in depth.

WVD Monitoring – Step By Step

August 24, 2020 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and customers!

The latest versions of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite (Version 4.9) and Remote Desktop Canary (Version 2.2) support the full monitoring of Windows Virtual Desktop, whether or not WVD is deployed in Fall 2019 (Classic) Mode, or Spring Update 2020 (ARM / Azure Resource Manager) Mode.

Here are the steps you need to take to deploy our solutions to monitor your Windows Virtual Desktop environment:

Step 1 – Provision a VM inside your WVD tenant or Azure Resource Group to run our software.

You may already have a VM deployed with management and monitoring tools on it, or you may wish to deploy a new one. All of our solutions work perfectly well on Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, Server 2019 or on Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session (EVD). You can always elect to place this VM in its own separate host pool, and then publish it as a desktop to your help desk and admin team so they can connect in and run tools when needed via the Windows Virtual Desktop client.

The key thing to remember is that this VM should be located on the same VNet and joined to the same Active Directory + Azure Active Directory domain as the WVD hosts you will be monitoring.

Step 2 – Install SQL Server Express or Azure SQL to store the WVD monitoring data collected by our solutions.

If you have a very small WVD deployment, with 3 or fewer hosts, you can most likely install SQL Server Express on the VM you created in Step 1 above. The Remote Desktop Commander Suite installer will prompt to do this for you automatically.

If you have a larger WVD deployment, you should leverage an Azure SQL database to store the WVD monitoring data instead. We find the most cost effective way to utilize Azure SQL is to opt for a single database, per-DTU model (as opposed to vCore). Using this approach, Azure SQL database costs for 90% of our customers will run somewhere between $30 and $150 USD per month, depending on the number of WVD hosts they are monitoring. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to provision Azure SQL for our solutions.

To help defray these infrastructure costs for our WVD customers, we have introduced a special discount of $2 off per WVD host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $3 off per WVD host per month if you opt for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle. Even if you only have 3 WVD hosts, your cost would only be $7.99 per host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $13.99 per host per month for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle! Click here for the details about this promotion that is valid through the end of this year.

Step 3 – Define a service account in your domain that will monitor your WVD hosts, and make the necessary Windows firewall and registry adjustments on those hosts.

This knowledge base article covers the few adjustments you need to make on your Windows Virtual Desktop hosts to allow them to be monitored correctly, especially if they are running Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session. You may wish to define a GPO in your Active Directory that adjusts these settings for you.

Step 4 – Install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite and Remote Desktop Canary to your VM you created in Step 1, and optionally install the Remote Desktop Commander agents on your WVD hosts.

Install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite on the VM you created in Step 1. Link it to SQL Server Express or Azure SQL, and set its service account. Then, add the WVD hosts via the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool, using the Import From WVD Broker wizard. If you would like to collect rich, detailed information on performance per user session and per application, install the agent service on each WVD host.

Importing WVD hosts into RDPSoft solutions is a snap.

Then, install our Remote Desktop Canary solution on the same VM. Set up a synthetic login test workflow against one of your WVD hosts, then clone that workflow against the rest of your WVD hosts. Now, Remote Desktop Canary can begin to continuously monitor your WVD hosts, verifying their responsiveness all the way through the login sequence into the desktop presentation. In WVD (as compared to RDS), Microsoft now handles the infrastructure roles of the Gateway and Broker, so determining login problems, slow login times, and user profile/black screen issues requires a close eye on the WVD hosts themselves.

Step 5 – Launch your WVD client, connect to the VM you created in Step 1, and marvel at the rich analytics and WVD monitoring tools now available at your fingertips!

Test RDP Connectivity on Multiple WVD Hosts At Once — Remote Desktop Canary can perform a routine RDP connectivity check on multiple WVD hosts at once.

Need Better Windows Virtual Desktop Monitoring and Management? Take Advantage Of This Special Offer!

August 24, 2020 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Hi there!

Are you in the process of deploying, or have you already deployed Windows Virtual Desktop?

Are you struggling with the lack of native WVD monitoring and WVD management tools? For example, do you need:

Say no more. We’ve got you covered. If you start a monthly subscription to our WVD monitoring and WVD management solutions on or before December 31st, 2020, we’ll give you an extra per-host VM per-month discount.

Specifically, you’re entitled to a special discount of $2 off per WVD host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $3 off per WVD host per month if you opt for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle.

That means that even in the smallest environments (e.g. only 3 WVD hosts), your costs will only be $7.99 per host VM per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $13.99 per host VM per month for the full Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle! And if you have more than a handful of hosts, we offer volume discounts that will make it even more affordable. Note – the pricing above is per host VM per month, not per user!

You simply will not find a better deal in the market in terms of price per features for comprehensive monitoring and management of your WVD infrastructure. And we keep adding more and more WVD specific features to our solutions, month after month.

Here’s what you need to do to get started.

Click here to request a quote to monitor your WVD environment. Make sure to include the number of host VMs and the number of admin/help desk users that will be managing the environment. Indicate in the form comments that you want our “WVD Deal.”

We’ll get back in touch with you shortly thereafter to verify your needs, find out more about your WVD deployment, and provide pricing. We will also supply you with a coupon code for the discounts mentioned above.

Act now before year end to secure this special offer. We look forward to bringing you on board as yet another satisfied RDPSoft customer.

TSAdmin Replacement For Server 2012, 2016, and 2019

July 22, 2020 By Andy Milford 1 Comment

For more than 7 years, I have had the privilege of talking to server based computing admins worldwide, discovering the key pain points they must overcome when taking care of their day-to-day management tasks, especially if they manage Remote Desktop Services deployments.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the loss of TSAdmin featured prominently in these discussions. But, more on that in a moment.

The result of these discussions? Remote Desktop Commander. This next step in the evolution of our Remote Desktop Services solution set was developed in direct response to the specific pain points I heard articulated time and time again by RDS admins.

No More TSAdmin in Windows Server 2012

Without a doubt, one of the biggest issues Windows server admins have been dealing with as they migrate from Server 2008 RDS deployments to RDS on Server 2012, 2016, and 2019 is the lack of a simple and powerful RDP management tool. The realization starts when TSAdmin.msc isn’t where it’s supposed to be. After a little more research, they discover that the TSAdmin msc isn’t there at all!

For almost everyone, TSAdmin had been the go-to for some of the most common terminal server user session and process management tasks to perform on terminal servers and session hosts in their RDS collections.

This issue of its absence first came to light with the release of Windows Server 2012, as the former TSAdmin (Remote Desktop Services Manager) utility was orphaned by Microsoft. Terminal Server session management tasks were, in the opinion of many, very poorly integrated into the Remote Desktop Services Manager (RDSM) in the Server Manager program. Moreover, if your RDS collections are more than a few dozen session hosts in size, the Remote Desktop Services Manager can hang and simply will not scale properly.

Remote Desktop Commander replaces TSAdmin on Server 2012 — Managing Server 2012 User Sessions with Remote Desktop Commander

With many admins still not comfortable using PowerShell scripting to do Remote Desktop Services and Windows Virtual Desktop management tasks, the situation has become untenable.

As a result, some admins turned to our free Remote Desktop Admin Toolkit, which was a collection of basic tools that could do limited user session and process management tasks. However, none of these tools were integrated with each other, and their feature set was rather limited.

A Free TSAdmin Replacement for Remote Desktop Services Deployments

As a result, we built an integrated, easy-to-use, and powerful terminal server management utility: Remote Desktop Commander Lite.

Viewing Process Memory Consumption By User on Server 2012 — Viewing Process Memory Consumption by User on Server 2012

The Remote Desktop Services Manager features for Windows Server 2012/2016/2019 that ship with RDPSoft’s Remote Desktop Commander are too numerous to list. Therefore, rather than us “bullet point” you to death, take a look at our video introduction to Remote Desktop Commander on YouTube demonstrating the intuitiveness and power of this utility.

One of the most interesting things you will see in this video is how Remote Desktop Commander can intelligently group related fields, in order to show you things like total memory consumed by user, by server, or RDP bandwidth, for instance. There are also features we provide that were never present in TSAdmin, such as the ability to review RDP latency and connection quality for multiple user sessions at once.

Running Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure? No problem. All of our solutions, including Remote Desktop Commander, also work well inside Windows Virtual Desktop environments. In fact, you can publish our tools as a WVD RemoteApp and use it to manage your WVD host pools from anywhere!

Which Edition of Remote Desktop Commander Do You Need?

Because we know that all of our customers may not need a comprehensive monitoring and reporting solution for their RDS, WVD, and Citrix farms at this time, we now offer several different classes of license:

Viewing Server 2012 session process memory consumption, grouped by heaviest memory consumers.

Remote Desktop Commander Lite – completely free for all RDS, WVD and Citrix farm admins – and it provides you with the ‘TSAdmin like’ session management features you need for day-to-day administration of your Remote Desktop Services, WVD, and Citrix server farms.

Premium Management Features for Remote Desktop Commander Lite – adds a powerful feature superset to Remote Desktop Commander, and overcomes some of the shortcomings in Microsoft’s shadowing technology, giving you a very powerful RMM tool designed specifically for support Remote Desktop user sessions and Remote App sessions. Additionally, it allows you to delegate specific RDS and WVD management tasks to help desk staff across your RDS collections and WVD hostpools without making them admins, which is not available in Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services Manager. It also solves shadowing issues in Citrix, such as the requirement to obtain consent before shadowing, and Citrix Director’s dependence on Remote Assistance. Best of all, it only costs $99.99 per help desk technician or admin per year, which is much less expensive than typical RMM tools.

Remote Desktop Commander Suite – which only costs $9.99 per monitored RDS, WVD, or Citrix host per month – gives you TSAdmin replacement management capabilities outlined above, but also includes:

Our Remote Desktop Reporter utility for historical session user activity, RDS, WVD, and Citrix performance monitoring and reporting, license reporting, connection quality/RDP latency reporting, RDP security (login and login failure) tracking, and session recording
SPL Tracker, which helps MSPs and others automate the chore of Microsoft SPLA and Citrix CSP license reporting

Free Remote Desktop Commander Software

What makes the most sense for you? Remote Desktop Commander Lite, our Premium Management Features overlay, the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, or Remote Desktop Canary? Visit our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle page to learn more about each product as well as licensing options.