Greetings friends and current Remote Desktop Commander customers! We’ve just released Version 7 of our Remote Desktop Commander solution. This major release version introduces many new features- such as a brand new DEX (Digital Employee eXperience) dashboard, automated agent service deployments with WinRM, automatic enhanced user activity monitoring (screenshots and window caption recording without login scripts), new improved database management features, and much more.
Here is a summary of the new features in v7:
- We have introduced an amazing new DEX (Digital Employee eXperience) dashboard that helps you diagnose exactly what is going wrong on your RDS and AVD hosts, that can lead to disconnects, delays, and poor user experience. Within a single dashboard, you have everything you need to both live troubleshoot a user session (including the ability to actively shadow their session to see what specific user actions introduce user input delay in applications), or to view what was happening in one of their previous user sessions.
- Thinking about deploying the Remote Desktop Commander Agent service on your hosts, providing many additional features such as per user and per process performance profiling, enhanced user activity monitoring, and more? In Version 7 of Remote Desktop Commander, deploying our agent just got even easier. You can now deploy, redeploy, or remove agents centrally, using a wizard in our software that leverages WinRM.
- Do you need enhanced user activity monitoring, either for HR purposes, or for support and troubleshooting? Version 7 makes it trivially easy to set this up. Login scripts are no longer needed, as you can now tell Remote Desktop Commander which users and groups need enhanced monitoring, and let our new agent service manage all of this for you automatically. Also, we’ve added a feature that lets you export multiple screenshots to an HTML file for sharing with relevant parties.
- Automatic large database table re-indexing: in version 7, you can enable database table re-indexing on a weekly basis, which will both make dashboards and reports run faster, and also keep your database size on disk in check.
- Need to see if several users got disconnected from a server at the same time? We have now introduced a new column in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator, showing the last disconnected time. This can help you see if a disconnection event affected multiple users, or just a single one.
- For our customers running Azure Virtual Desktop, we’ve added several new feature enhancements for AVD!
- Finally, we’ve made improvements in how the Remote Desktop Commander Client polls sessions and processes, displays the name of RDS collections, and helps you setup SQL Server in new deployments.
In this RDPSoft E-Newsletter:
The New User DEX (Digital Employee eXperience) Dashboard
Easier Agent Deployment/Redeployment Features
Enable Enhanced User Activity Monitoring In Mere Minutes Without Login Scripts
Other Key Features in v7
Are Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Costs for AVD Breaking Your Budget? If so, Talk To Our Sales Team
Version 7 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links
Check Out Our Amazing New DEX Dashboard! Isolate the Root Cause of User Disconnects, Delays, and Other Performance Problems in Mere Minutes
There’s a been a ton of hype in the End User Computing space over the past 2 years about DEX – which stands for Digital Employee eXperience. Gartner has only fueled this hype cycle more recently by releasing a “magic quadrant” for DEX solutions.
That said, what we’ve seen in practice from other vendors are bloated solutions that are extremely expensive – but, don’t necessarily help the EUC admin figure out what’s actually going wrong in their RDS or AVD environments that leads to user help desk calls. So, as we always do at RDPSoft, we’ve now focused on the 80% of DEX metrics that can show you nearly 100% of what’s causing the problem in those environments, and at an extremely affordable price point.
We’ve created a brand new User Digital Experience (or DEX) dashboard to immediately show you where the problems are with a user’s session in RDS and AVD. We did this by focusing on some of the most critical metrics that lead to end user calls and complaints. Specifically, this new dashboard highlights things like:
- Network delay (latency) from the client to the RDS or AVD host,
- User input delay introduced on the session host side due to unresponsive, slow, or misconfigured applications and/or the operating system,
- Specific applications that are responsible for the majority of user input delay,
- RDP packet loss in the RDS/AVD session, which can lead to disconnects,
- Current memory load on the connected session host,
- Current CPU load on the connected session host,
- Current Privileged CPU load on the connected session host, to see if the operating system is spending an inordinate amount of time in kernel mode, which could indicate driver trouble or “thrashing” caused by too many users on a host, and
- Context Switches per CPU, to see if the operating system is “thrashing” because of too much OS work focused around multi-threading/task switching, due to too many users or threads running per host.
However, we didn’t just stop there – because context is always key. Based on our hard won experience in consulting engagements with organizations using RDS and AVD, we created another key feature that we think is critical to troubleshooting DEX – live shadowing of a user’s RDS or AVD session while monitoring critical DEX metrics.
Any AVD or RDS monitoring solution can poll these metrics at a specific cadence – the more frequently you poll, the more likely you may catch a metric that is interesting or relevant but, more often than not, you won’t catch the trigger as to what the user was doing when things went sideways. In order to *really* troubleshoot, you need to observe exactly what the user is doing in their session and application(s) to see what is triggering delays. You can then correlate that back to what the application is doing at that time (making network calls to an overworked file server, making database queries to an overworked SQL server) to find out the root cause of the delay.
So, provided that you have a Premium Management Features or Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle license with us, you can click a single button in our DEX dashboard to also live observe the session with statistics. And when you do that, you’ll shadow and watch their session in real-time, while a floating window shows you what’s going on with those DEX statistics as they perform tasks in their session and interact with the apps. This is truly a game changing feature!
But wait, we’re not done! Our new DEX dashboard will also show you DEX statistics from other previously recorded user RDS and AVD sessions for additional context. You can even click through these graphs to see what other users and service processes were doing on the host during a time of degraded performance.
Read on below to learn how to upgrade to Version 7 today, to gain access to these tremendous features. And, if you’re only a Remote Desktop Commander Suite customer, we encourage you to upgrade to the Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS/AVD to take advantage of our SuperShadow session observation features and synthetic monitoring of RDS and AVD hosts.
Instant Agent Deployment, Redeployment, and Uninstallation with WinRM in Version 7
In previous versions of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, deployment of the Remote Desktop Commander Agent process was done manually, or by using your own in-house software deployment tools and scripts. Deploying our agent provides additional monitoring capabilities to our software, such as determining CPU and Memory consumption of specific users and processes, as well as enhanced user activity monitoring features such as screenshot and window caption recording.
In version 7 of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, we have completely overhauled agent deployment, with a new “Agent Deployment and Tuning Wizard.”
With this new wizard, you can:
- Deploy agents at the same time you add new hosts for monitoring in the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool,
- Deploy agents later, after you have added new hosts for monitoring,
- Automatically upgrade older agents to the newest version,
- Adjust advanced agent settings on existing deployed agents, and
- Uninstall agents from session hosts as desired
Version 7’s new Agent Deployment and Tuning Wizard handles the deployment and management of agents using Windows Remote Management (WinRM), which by default is enabled on all Windows server operating systems and can be enabled via group policy for workstations.
User Activity Monitoring Just Got Easier in Version 7 of Remote Desktop Commander
In a perfect world, RDS and AVD and the apps they host would work flawlessly all the time (without need for observation), and all teleworkers would be honest about their time reporting, never resorting to things like USB mouse jigglers, to pretend like they are working remotely when they are not.
Alas, we do not live in a perfect world and, as such, there are legitimate circumstances where enhanced user activity monitoring is required.
Whether you need to record screenshots to see the specific application error message a user keeps saying is happening (but never bothers to send you), or if your company is in a lower trust industry with frequent employee turnover, enhanced user monitoring may be required.
Version 7 now makes it very easy to set this up for the administrator at the request of the support team, HR, or management. While this feature continues to be disabled by default, it can now be enabled in mere minutes without any need for setting up login scripts for specific users or visiting each session host or workstation manually.
Now, to enable enhanced user activity monitoring, simply:
- Create a new group in Active Directory that will house the users subject to enhanced user activity monitoring (or simply select the users individually),
- Specify this group (or set of users) in the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool, and
- Run/rerun the Agent Deployment and Tuning Wizard in the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool
Once these simple steps are done, the Remote Desktop Commander Agent service directly and automatically launches a process into any user’s session that is subject to enhanced user monitoring- based on the membership list you specify in our software. There is no longer a need to fight with login scripts or other mechanisms to invoke the in-session agent process that does the per-user screenshot and window caption recording – our new agent service handles all of this for you. In fact, even if you want to do screenshot recording for RemoteApp sessions rather than desktop sessions, that works just fine as well in v7!
Once enhanced user activity monitoring has been enabled, screenshots and window caption recording of those specific users will take place, and they can be reviewed in the Session Recording window just as before. In addition, we have added a new feature which will export multiple screenshots from a specified time frame to a single HTML file, which can be shared with relevant parties.
Additional New Features in Remote Desktop Commander v7
Beyond the aforementioned major features in Version 7, we have also added other incremental improvements to our Remote Desktop Commander software, for both the free Lite version and paid Suite versions.
Remote Desktop Commander Now Displays the Full RDS Collection Name By Default in the Session Navigator Window
Previous versions of Remote Desktop Commander Client (Lite version and Suite version) displayed only the internal name of an RDS collection- which may not have correlated to the long display name of the collection you see in Server Manager. While you could rename these collections in our software, Version 7 has a new mechanism for automatically resolving the full display name of the collection, showing you the same name displayed in the RDS Manager in Server Manager on the broker.
Disconnect Time Column in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator
Some of our users wanted the Disconnect Time added in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator display, so they could see if several user sessions were disconnected at the same time for troubleshooting. This feature has now been added so, after upgrading the Remote Desktop Commander Lite client or the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, right mouse click on the column headers in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator to add this column if desired.
Automatic Database Table Re-indexing and Advanced Maintenance Features
Let’s face it, SQL Server works best when you re-index busy and high-volume database tables on a regular basis. But you and your DBAs don’t always have time to babysit all your application databases. Couple this with the fact that we have many medium and large enterprises using our software with scores or even hundreds of RDS and AVD hosts, and we figured we needed to make database maintenance even easier for you overworked admins.
Previous versions of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite had automatic database pruning features, that would remove older records on a nightly basis based on thresholds you defined. This kept our database from growing to an unwieldy size.
Yet fragmented indexes can also take up excess space in a SQL database, and can slow down the queries and reports our Remote Desktop Commander Client needs to run to present the information you’re looking for. So, version 7 introduces two new database maintenance features you can enable if you wish:
- Weekly automatic re-indexing of high-volume database tables decreases allocated space in your database, reduces unnecessary autogrowth of your database, and also speeds up data retrieval for reports and dashboards in the Remote Desktop Commander Client.
- Suspending new database inserts while purging old records can be enabled, to prevent table locking and slow database maintenance runs in very large databases. The caveat is that no new data will be collected during the database maintenance period but, given that maintenance is typically scheduled overnight when few users are using RDS/AVD, this typically is not an issue.
New SQL Server Setup Wizard and SQL Server Express 2019 Included in Remote Desktop Commander Suite v7
Setting up new instances of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite just got easier in version 7. V7 is shipped with an instance of Microsoft SQL Server Express 2019, which is still in its standard and extended support lifecycle.
Furthermore, Remote Desktop Commander Suite’s Initial Setup Wizard now has a streamlined SQL Setup Wizard that it uses to help you get everything linked to a SQL Server on your network. If you have a small environment, it will help you install SQL Server Express 2019 or, if you have a larger environment, it will help you create its database on SQL Server Standard and Enterprise. If your organization requires that new databases be created by DBAs, the wizard will export a script file you can give them to create a new database on a SQL Server, so you can link to it easily.
Remote Desktop Session Navigator Polling Enhancements
The latest version of Remote Desktop Commander has some polling enhancements, when listing sessions and processes in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator:
- First, when polling sessions or processes from an RDS collection, AVD host pool, or manual computer grouping: if a session host is hanging while being polled, Remote Desktop Commander will highlight on screen the slow polling hosts, so you can investigate them to see if there is an issue.
- Secondly, you can now configure a timeout value between 5 and 300 seconds when retrieving sessions and processes from hosts. If the timeout is exceeded, the polling will stop for that host- preventing lengthy delays in showing sessions or processes from healthy, online hosts.
We’ve recently seen behaviors in AVD where network calls to deallocated hosts take a longer time to return so, by upgrading Remote Desktop Commander Lite or the Remote Desktop Commander Suite to Version 7, you can reduce the impact of those behaviors.
Other New AVD Features
For organizations running AVD or hybrid AVD/RDS environments, we’ve added two small features to make AVD management a bit easier:
Firstly, you can now filter our performance dashboards by host pool (rather than just by computer grouping or RDS collection).
Secondly, AVD host pools now appear in our Top Level Deployment Dashboard when you register your AVD tenant and ARM group in the Remote Desktop Commander Client
Thirdly, we’ve verified that by creating a Service Principal Name (SPN) and giving it Desktop Virtualization Contributor role to specific host pools, you can effectively limit the management of specific host pools and hosts to certain help desk users – further streamlining management options for larger AVD environments.
Finally, since multi-session Windows 10/11 AVD hosts are licensed as servers in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, we’ve added a convenient checkbox that lists workstation accounts in the domain, so they can be added as servers for monitoring.
Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Costs are Too Damn High!
For giggles, we went to the Azure Pricing Calculator and started pricing out Azure Monitor costs with Log Analytics ingestion. The results gave us a log of indigestion, and we can only sympathize with those of you running AVD and using the native dashboards and reports that depend on Azure Monitor and Log Analytics. You’re paying for ingestion, you’re paying for retention, you’re paying for queries… what aren’t you paying for?
In order to troubleshoot an EUC environment effectively, whether it be in RDS or AVD, you need lots and lots of historical data, and you need it to be highly granular. Ratcheting back data polling frequency, reducing the counters you poll, and reducing how often you query the data will only lead to tears when an incident arises that you need to investigate.
At RDPSoft, we’ve never liked pricing models that are based on consumption or data ingestion. We don’t think that’s fair, and that’s why we’ve always priced our software based on the number of RDS or AVD hosts you run.
So we think we can do better for you, in terms of both saving you money AND giving you more features to help you monitor and manage your AVD environments. We encourage you to contact us to schedule a meeting, and bring your Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics bill to us. More often than not, we’ll find a way to restructure your monitoring with our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for AVD so that you can save serious money and dump most, if not all, of those Azure Monitor/Log Analytics costs.
Many of you who have “lifted and shifted” up to Azure Virtual Desktop have probably brought a SQL server instance or two with you. By letting our solutions send their data to existing SQL servers, you no longer pay those ingestion costs, and you can let our software manage retention and database storage automatically for you. Or, if you only need to do periodic DEX type monitoring when problems arise (or if you have a smaller AVD setup), our SQL Express instance may be all you need.
Most importantly, switching to our bundle means that you will get additional features like delegated session management for your help desk that far exceeds Azure Portal dashboards, detailed user activity monitoring, rich per process performance monitoring, synthetic login monitoring to test the availability of your AVD hosts, and shadowing/remote assistance that just works!
So take the AVD cost savings challenge and contact our sales team today! The only thing you have to lose is potential savings on your Azure bill. And when it comes to how Microsoft prices their offerings, any savings is good savings, right?
Remote Desktop Commander 7.x Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links
Request a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert to see all our solutions’ features in depth.
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