Remote Desktop Canary has the ability to perform Remote Desktop Monitoring as a Service (RDMaaS). Now that is convenience and ease-of-use!
We actually spent months rearchitecting Remote Desktop Canary to run as a Windows service application, so it could be 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 restart its testing processes automatically, in accordance with the schedule you have designed.
The two videos below do a great job exploring this capability – make sure to expand to full screen, and change your YouTube settings to view them in high resolution. And, you can read on below to learn even more about these features.
Remote Desktop Canary Is a True “Set & Forget” Monitoring Solution for RDS and AVD
Because Remote Desktop Canary 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.
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 Remote Desktop Canary 3.0+ 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 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. This will alert 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? Just reach out to our sales team today.
Updated: November 2022.
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