About Andy Milford

Andy Milford is the CEO and Founder of RDPSoft, and is a Microsoft MVP in the Enterprise Mobility / Remote Desktop Services area. Prior to starting RDPSoft, Andy was the CEO and Founder of Dorian Software, a log management company acquired by Ipswitch in late 2009. He loves creating easy-to-use yet powerful software solutions for SMBs and emerging enterprise companies.

Remote Desktop Monitoring as a Service

June 14, 2021 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Greetings everyone. I’m excited to tell you about a brand new feature we’ve added to Version 3 of our Remote Desktop Canary product, which is its ability to perform Remote Desktop Monitoring as a Service (RDMaaS).

We have spent months rearchitecting Remote Desktop Canary to run as a Windows service application, so you can now set it up on a virtual machine (running inside or outside your networks) to monitor RDP, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Remote Desktop Services connectivity and login times on a continual or scheduled basis. If the VM Remote Desktop Canary runs on is restarted – to apply updates or for any other reason – it will now restart its testing processes automatically, in accordance with the schedule you have designed.

Please watch the two videos below – make sure to expand to full screen, and change your YouTube settings to view them in high resolution. Then, read on below to learn even more about these features.

Learn how to configure Remote Desktop Canary’s service with a user account that it can utilize to spin up Remote Desktop Monitoring tests.

Remote Desktop Canary v3 is now a true Remote Desktop Monitoring as a Service solution!

Remote Desktop Canary, With Its New RDP Monitoring as a Service Capability, Is Now a True Set and Forget Monitoring Solution for RDS and AVD

Because Remote Desktop Canary now operates as a service, you can program exactly the types of tests (basic RDP connectivity checks, total login duration checks, etc.) that you want to run against individual Remote Desktop Session Hosts, Azure Virtual Desktop Hosts, or even full RDS collections. Then, you can rest easy knowing that the Remote Desktop Canary service will perform the tests you want around the clock, according to the schedule you have defined.

Even if the Windows Server VM you have installed Remote Desktop Canary on is rebooted due to Windows updates, patching, or other maintenance tasks, Remote Desktop Canary will pick right back up where it left off, based on its testing schedule.

New Scheduling Features Let You Stop Synthetic RDP and Azure Virtual Desktop Login Tests During Maintenance Periods

Many organizations do nightly or weekly reboots of their Remote Desktop Servers to improve reliability and make sure necessary Windows updates are applied. You can easily plan around those timeframes with the Remote Desktop Canary 3.0’s new scheduling engine.

Similarly, if you run Azure Virtual Desktop, you are probably shutting some of your AVD hosts down at non-peak times to save money. You can now have Remote Desktop Canary stop monitoring certain hosts in the evening, and then resume monitoring in the morning.

Even more importantly, you can now schedule a separate “sanity check” test to make sure all of your AVD hosts or RDS session hosts are fully responding and providing desktops each morning – which is critically important if you leverage FSLogix, or other user profile management solutions, that could fail to load if Azure Files or other required Azure services are offline. We’ve even heard of the Azure Virtual Machines themselves not loading properly after a cold start in the morning, but Remote Desktop Canary will sound the alarm if any of them are unresponsive, alerting you to the issue ahead of time, allowing you to fix an issue before the morning login storm of users.

Learn More About Remote Desktop Canary’s Features, Pricing, and How to Start a Monthly or Annual Subscription

Remote Desktop Canary can be purchased separately or as part of our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and AVD.

Have more questions or want to schedule a demo of its capabilities over Zoom? Please reach out to our sales team today.

How To View Remote Desktop Sessions In 3 Different Ways

April 13, 2021 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

You have likely noticed that viewing Remote Desktop sessions and related details has become increasingly difficult. This is largely a result of some recent developments: There was the overhaul of Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012 R2 and later server operating systems. Then, there’s the emergence of Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure.

Microsoft removed the old TSAdmin utility in Windows Server 2012 R2, replacing it with the often cumbersome Remote Desktop Services Manager in the Server Manager utility. It is scarce in detail regarding these sessions, and it does not scale well in larger environments. In addition, attempting to shadow remote desktop sessions with MSTSC often does not work as expected, especially with multiple monitor sessions.

And what about viewing Remote Desktop sessions in Windows Virtual Desktop? Well, you don’t get much of a break there either. Currently, you must use the Windows Virtual Desktop control plane in the Azure Portal, which is even more feature limited than the Remote Desktop Services Manager in Server Manager for classic RDS deployments.

At RDPSoft, we identified these pain points many years ago, and created an assortment of free and commercial solutions to solve these problems. Here are three different ways we’ve made viewing Remote Desktop sessions easier:

Viewing Session Properties Such as Idle Time, Connect Time & More

Remote Desktop Commander Lite Helps You View Remote Desktop Sessions Properties

Users of our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite utility can quickly view sessions connected to their terminal servers, RDS collections, and WVD hosts, and then perform management actions like logging off disconnected or hung users, sending messages, checking on the quality of their connection, and much more.

Some of the available properties of the displayed remote desktop sessions include:

Username
Server Name
Winstation Name
Client IP
Client Build Number
State (Active/Disconnected)
Idle Time
Connect Time
Session ID
RDP Bandwidth

Viewing Remote Desktop Session User Activities in Real Time With SuperShadow

Viewing Multiple Remote Desktop Sessions At Once With the MiniView Dock

Of course, some organizations need to view what users are actually doing inside their remote desktop sessions in order to assist them in a support session, or to audit their work in accordance with policy. If so, our Premium Management Features solution is a very affordable way to do so, giving admins, help desk workers, and managers the ability to view and remote control remote desktop sessions in RDS and WVD with ease.

Multiple remote desktop sessions can be viewed and/or interacted with at the same time inside the MiniView dock, and specific sessions can be brought into sharper focus with powerful resizing features.

Viewing Session Activity On a Historic Basis To Analyze Performance & Monitor User Activity

Reviewing Remote Desktop User Screen Captures — Administrators and Managers Can View Recorded Remote Desktop Session Activity After the Fact With the Remote Desktop Commander Suite

Finally, some businesses need to have full insight into how the remote desktop session activity of various users impacts the performance of their terminal servers. They may also need to record terminal server sessions to satisfy auditing and compliance or security policies on their network. In these scenarios, our Remote Desktop Commander Suite is the best tool for the job.

After administrators deploy a lightweight agent service on each terminal server or WVD host, the main Remote Desktop Reporter Service collects all of this information into a central SQL database, such as CPU and Memory utilization per process and per user session, TCP/UDP network activity per user and per process, and screenshots with window captions for added context. Managers and server admins can then review this activity to spot performance problems and/or any user activity that violates Acceptable Use Policies on corporately owned IT assets.

Want To Learn More?

Reach out so that we can provide you even more information. You can request a demo, request a quote, or you can even contact us via phone.

RDP Disconnects

January 30, 2021 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Hello everyone. I’m excited to tell you about a brand new feature we’ve added to Version 5 of our Premium Management Features product, the Client Side Connection Analyzer. Please watch the video below and read on to learn more about it.

Troubleshooting RDP disconnects for your users becomes super easy with our Client Side Connection Analyzer

Troubleshooting RDP Disconnects Is Tricky

If you’ve worked with RDS for a while, you probably know how difficult it is to troubleshoot RDP disconnections and other connection problems. There’s nothing that is logged on the terminal server side that is particularly helpful, other than being able to checking out latency and RDP loss and retransmission rates with our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution.

Windows Updates Can Break MSTSC.EXE

In many cases though, the problem exists on the client computer side, not the server side. The user’s computer may have a Windows update applied that is interfering with Remote Desktop Services, or conversely they may not YET have a critical update installed. Remember the CredSSP problems a few years back, and how that wreaked havoc on terminal server admins worldwide?

Registry Settings Can Break MSTSC.EXE

Users, or their internal IT staff, may also have set registry values on their end that effect how the Windows Terminal Services Client (MSTSC.exe) works, and unless you know what they’ve done, it will be impossible for you to troubleshoot.

Client Side Event Logs Are the Definitive Source Of RDP Disconnect Reasons

Did you know that buried in Windows event logs on a client computer, there are actual error codes that indicate the problem the client encountered when trying to connect, or when it was prematurely disconnected from a session? They are there, but they are hard to find, and you have to translate their numeric codes to actual messages to make sense of them. It’s tricky to say the least.

If you needed to gather up all of this information from the client yourself to troubleshoot your problem, you could easily spend a whole afternoon buried in an RMM tool, exporting event logs, and then trying make sense of the error codes.

This is why we created the Client Side Connection Analyzer – it takes all of the work out of this process.

Use Our Client Side Connection Analyzer to Figure Out The Reasons Behind RDP Connection Problems

Simply send the user you are helping to a special area of our website, where they can download a lightweight tool that will gather up all of this information. They don’t need to install anything on their PC, and it will run with standard user rights.

The Client Side Connection *Auditor* collects all of the information you need from users about RDP disconnects, registry settings, and applied updates, and helps the user send it back to you for troubleshooting.

Once it gathers everything up and stores it in an encrypted file, it will prompt the user to email that file back to you, or to save it and transmit it to you via a different method.

Troubleshooting RDP Disconnects with the Client Side Connection Analyzer — Review and research all relevant information about RDP Disconnects inside the Client Side Connection Analyzer

Once they’ve sent that data file back to you, you can open it up in the Client Side Connection Analyzer and examine everything of importance, such as disconnect reasons, MSTSC related registry keys, and the installed Update History from their PC. You can also see the build and version of Windows displayed in the Title Bar.

You can research any of the RDP disconnect reasons, Terminal Services Client registry keys, or Windows updates online with a single mouse click. Our tool also includes search functionality and the ability to step through all entries one by one.

Start a Subscription For Only $99.99 Per Named Admin and Technician Per Year

Let’s be frank – time is money. For only $99.99 per named admin or technician per year, you can leverage this powerful tool to clean up your users’ RDP connection problems.

And, since it is part of our powerful Premium Management Features package for RDS, Citrix and WVD, you will also be able to take advantage of our much improved RDP shadowing and Citrix remote assistance features. Not only that, you can delegate common RDS, WVD, and Citrix management tasks to non-administrators.

Again, time is money. Start an annual subscription with us today!

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.

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.