Remote Desktop Protocol

Remote Desktop Commander v5.0 Now Available!

February 10, 2021 By admin Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and current Remote Desktop Commander customers! We’ve just released Version 5.0 of our Remote Desktop Commander and Premium Management Features solutions. This new version offers something for everyone- whether you use our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite Client, or you have a license for our commercial products. For instance:

The Remote Desktop Commander Suite now comes with a brand new dashboard and report to track CPU usage by application, plus a new Agent Tuning Wizard and Agent Polling Diagnostics report.
Our Premium Management Features overlay now offers the Client Side Connection Analyzer, which makes it very easy to troubleshoot RDP disconnects and other connection problems that your users experience on their Windows PCs.
The Remote Desktop Commander Client now displays, sorts, and groups by user session connection time.

We’re also excited to announce a new promotion that is valid until March 31st, 2021, and to share with you Andy’s very candid take on Windows Virtual Desktop, so please read on!

In this RDPSoft E-Newsletter:

Track Terminal Server CPU Usage By Application

Tune Our Agent Service Using a New Agent Diagnostic Report and Polling Tuning Wizard

Troubleshoot RDP Disconnects With the Client Connection Analyzer

Session Connection Time Now Available in the Remote Desktop Commander Client

Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle Promotion For Existing Customers

Windows Virtual Desktop – Separate Fact From Fiction, and Look Past the Hype

Version 5.0 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

Quickly Find Out Which Applications Use the Most CPU on Your Terminal Servers

Several of our customers have asked for the ability to quickly find out which programs are using the most memory on their terminal servers, much like we already do with dashboards that profile application memory use.

Version 5.0 now supports this feature. You can either use the new CPU Use By Application Dashboard to review this, or you can run or schedule the CPU Use By Application Report.

For more information on this, including a full demonstration video, please read this recent blog article covering Terminal Server CPU usage and more.

Centrally Optimize Our Agent Service and Run Diagnostics With a Click of a Button

Many of our customers choose to deploy the Remote Desktop Reporter Agent Service on their session hosts to collect additional insights on terminal server performance, or to enhance user activity monitoring. Due to the fact that no RDS or WVD environment is alike, in terms of things like server load, disk space available for SQL Server, etc, it is often necessary to tweak agent service parameters. Such parameters include the rate at which the agent service gathers data, the rate at which the master Remote Desktop Reporter service gathers the agent data, and the type of data collected by the agent.

Previously, this was done manually on individual session hosts by changing registry settings or redeploying the agent with different installer command line parameters.

In Remote Desktop Commander Version 5.0, you can adjust agent polling rates and other agent related settings centrally. Simply make the desired changes in a wizard, then let Remote Desktop Commander contact each session host to adjust the polling parameters and restart the agent service for you.

The Remote Desktop Commander Polling Tuning Wizard quickly reconfigures all agent and master polling parameters to increase/decrease agent service resource use and database storage requirements

Similarly, Version 5.0 now includes an Agent Diagnostics Report, which presents statistics about how agents are performing on your session hosts. For instance, you can view the average number of data points each agent transmits during each polling cycle, how quickly the agent service is gathering that data, and how quickly it is transferring that data to the primary Remote Desktop Reporter service across the network. You can then use the results of this report to fine tune agent polling intervals within the Polling Tuning Wizard mentioned above.

Figure Out What’s Causing RDP Disconnects and Make Your Users Happy Again!

Ever had a user who just could not stay connected to your Remote Desktop Services deployment? They’ll promptly call up your IT department and offer vague complaints, telling you that their terminal server client (e.g. MSTSC.EXE) is trying to reconnect constantly, their session freezes and then they get kicked out, and on and on.

While previous versions of our Remote Desktop Commander Suite have been able to produce reporting on the latency and quality of the RDP collection for specific users, most of the valuable information regarding disconnects and other RDP connection failures exists on the client’s Windows computer, NOT the terminal servers themselves.

So, to make your life as an administrator or help desk tech easier, we created the Remote Desktop Connection Analyzer and built it into our Premium Management Features product. You can now send users having issues to our website, to download a lightweight applet which they run with no special user rights required, and no installation required. The applet will quickly gather up and translate all the RDP disconnection reasons, plus relevant registry keys that affect the Terminal Services Client and the Windows update history on their computer. It will then save all of this data to an encrypted file and prompt them to send that file back to you.

From there, you simply load that file into the Client Side Connection Analyzer, and voila! – you have the information you need at your fingertips. You can even do further research on the disconnect reasons via Google with a single click.

For more information on the Client Side Connection Analyzer, including a demonstration video, see this article on RDP disconnects.

Track and Sort By Session Connection Time in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator

Users of our Remote Desktop Commander Suite or our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite tool are very familiar with the Remote Desktop Session Navigator. This is the portion of the Remote Desktop Commander Client that allows you to manage active sessions and processes on RDS, WVD, and Citrix deployments.

When in Session View, you can sort and group sessions by things like Client Build, Username, Computer, Idle Time, etc. Many of our users have also requested that we include the Session Connection Time, so they can see when the user initially established their session on the server. Also, if you allow users to establish multiple sessions on terminal servers or on the farm in general, this feature comes in handy, as you can identify the oldest of a specific user’s sessions.

RDS Session Connection Time — Now you can group and sort by session connection time in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator

Note: If you upgrade your existing Remote Desktop Commander Suite or Remote Desktop Commander Lite programs (see below), you may need to make this new column visible first. Simply right mouse click on the column headers in the Remote Desktop Session Navigator, then place a check by the Connect Time column, and it will become visible.

Are You An Existing Customer of One Of Our Tools? Step Up To the Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle With This Special Offer

More and more of our clients are opting to purchase the Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle, which gives them access to all three of our monitoring and management tools for RDS and WVD – the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, Premium Management Features, and Remote Desktop Canary.

If you already have a subscription to one or two of our three tools, and would like a quote to step up to the bundle, click here to request a quote from sales, and indicate in the form that you want to step up to the bundle. If you then step up to the complete bundle of products before March 31st, 2020, you will be entitled to a special discount that further reduces your monthly or annual cost for 12 months. You’ll quickly see that for very little extra cost per server, you can get the comprehensive monitoring, reporting, alerting, and management tools you need to run your RDS or WVD environment successfully!

Let’s Get Real About WVD

Yes, we’re an original Microsoft WVD partner, and yes, we anticipate that this technology will grow over time, but it’s very important that you have a true understanding about the pros and cons of WVD before you consider migrating away from Classic RDS.

In the first two articles of his new blog series, our CEO and Microsoft MVP Andy Milford challenges a ton of assumptions about WVD, and questions some of Microsoft’s motives around decisions like:

refusing to make Windows 10 Multisession available outside of Azure,
the inability to use WVD infrastructure components with session hosts located outside of Azure,
the cost of WVD compute and Azure IaaS compute as compared to running RDS on-premises or in a private cloud,
various WVD licensing pitfalls, especially for MSPs and ISVs.

Andy has written the first two blog posts in the series. See:

WVD – The Bloom Is Off The Rose – Part 1
WVD – The Bloom Is Off The Rose – Part 2

He is just getting started though, and there are many additional posts that will be added shortly to this blog series, so stay tuned!

Remote Desktop Commander 5.0 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

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

If you are an existing Remote Desktop Commander Lite or Premium Management Features customer, proceed to the Remote Desktop Commander Lite download page to download Version 5.0 of the client. Then install it over your previous version.

If you’d like to learn more about the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, including its feature set and how to start a subscription for only $9.99 per server per month, click here.

If you’d like to learn more about Premium Management Features, including its feature set and how to start a subscription for only $99.99 per named admin or technician per year, click here.

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

Avoiding UDP Transport Gotchas With RDP 8

February 16, 2016 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

I’ve been writing and speaking a lot lately about the improvements found in version 8 of the Remote Desktop Protocol, which is used in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Version 10 of RDP was just introduced in Windows 10, and it soon will be implemented in Windows Server 2016, adding some new enhancements over Version 8 which we’ll talk about soon. But back to the topic at hand…

UDP Transport in RDP 8 Boosts Throughput And Enhances User Experience

RDP version 8 is the first generation of the Remote Desktop Protocol that uses UDP alongside TCP for data transmission. Provided the RDP client supports RDP 8 (e.g. Windows 7 with RDP 8 Update, Windows 8, or Windows 10), the Windows 2012 RDSH server can transmit data using both UDP and TCP. This is a big deal, because UDP doesn’t suffer from TCP’s enforcement of its congestion-avoidance algorithm, so RDP 8 can push more data across the wire in a selected chunk of time via UDP (e.g. 2x to 8x more compared to TCP transport only), even over high latency links. Couple that with some nifty forward error correction techniques, and RDP 8 is able to boldly go into sketchy network conditions that previous versions would run screaming from.

But Watch Out For the Following Gotchas That Can Block UDP in RDP 8

Believe it or not, there are several common “gotchas” that can conspire against you to prevent UDP transport use with an RDP 8 or later Remote Desktop Connection. Let’s look at them in order:

Using a Windows Server 2008 Remote Desktop Gateway With Windows Server 2012 Remote Desktop Session Hosts

The Remote Desktop Gateway Role Service in Windows Server 2008 does not support UDP transport, so all connections via this legacy gateway will be forced to use TCP only. Not good. Make sure you upgrade your Windows 2008 server running the Remote Desktop Gateway Role Service to Windows Server 2012.

Forgetting to Explicitly Add an Endpoint For UDP in Windows Azure

This one is BIG if you are hosting your Remote Desktop Session Hosts in Windows Azure (or any other cloud service provider for that matter). By default, when you create a new Windows Server 2012 instance (with or without the RDSH role implemented), only the TCP endpoint for RDP will be created. See below:

You’ll need to go back behind any newly provisioned RDSH servers in Azure and remember to explicitly define a UDP endpoint for RDP like so:

Accidentally Disabling UDP Transport Via Server Side Group Policy Objects

One other potential problem is incorrectly setting the “RDP Transport Protocols” Group Policy setting, located under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Remote Desktop Services, Remote Desktop Session Host, Connections. By default, both UDP and TCP will be used if the client supports it, but administrators can explicitly disable the use of UDP transport in this area.

So, there you have it. UDP transport in RDP 8 opens up so many possibilities in terms of user experience an overall Remote Desktop performance. However, you have to double check and make sure that it’s not being restricted right out of the gate.

Want to find out more about what transport protocols your clients use, bandwidth consumption, and connection quality? Click here to learn more about the Remote Desktop Commander, and start a $9 per server per month subscription to profile all of the above, plus much more.

Flexible Licensing for RDS Tools

December 14, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

Years ago, we launched a flexible month-to-month subscription licensing program for our Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and the result was phenomenal. The traditional channel-driven, expensive perpetual licensing models used by our competition were simply making less and less sense.

While occasionally we offer promotions, you can always count on this: We offer month-to-month licensing that starts at less than $10 per RDS/XenApp server per month, and at about a $1 per virtual desktop/physical workstation.

For more details, check out our pricing for Remote Desktop Commander.

RDS Tools for Specific Tasks . . . And Within Reach

Small and medium-sized businesses who run server-based computing farms designed around Microsoft Remote Desktop Services or Citrix XenApp continue to enthusiastically embrace our licensing model, thrilled to finally have reliable tools that cover areas like:

. . . and the little features that help with things like enabling Remote Desktop remotely and the demystification of RDP logs.

All with so little additional cost.

Not sure where to start? Determine what your needs are for RDS tools or Learn more about Remote Desktop Commander Suite and its many features.

Updated: January 2021.

Why XenApp Monitoring Is So $#%!?@ Expensive

September 21, 2015 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

This post is likely going to irritate some folks in our industry, and that’s OK. Frankly, that’s the point.

Let’s Pull Back the Curtain On How Server Based Computing (SBC) / End User Computing Software Is Sold

I’ve now been in the SBC industry for nearly 2 years. Prior to that, I was the CEO of Dorian Software, a Windows log management vendor that helped governments and businesses shore up their network security and compliance.

At Dorian, we sold some through the channel, but sold direct to the end user most of the time. Because of this, we we could deliver max value because we didn’t have to pad our pricing to leave tons of margin for channel partners. It was a win-win for everyone involved – we could close deals quicker, and our customers saved a ton of money and realized a quicker return on their investment.

The Citrix and Server Based Computing Markets Are Heavily Channel Driven. Which Means Businesses Of All Sizes Get Soaked By Higher Costs Down the Line.

In my two short years as RDPSoft’s CEO, I’ve been amazed by how insular the server-based computing / end-user computing market is. Big channel players effectively act as gatekeepers of the market, and unless you bring an expensive product to them from which they can extract healthy margins, they’re not going to talk to you.

When I’ve challenged them in conversations on why more customers don’t buy solutions directly from vendors, they speak with open contempt about how “businesses don’t have the skill or expertise to deploy these solutions on their own.” Given how complex, buggy, and temperamental SBC solutions have become, they may well have a point.

However, there are plenty of admins who deploy these products every day with nothing more than online E-Docs and message boards to guide them. I know, because I talk to them each and every week.

As a consequence of the above, most XenApp Monitoring solutions sold through the channel cost more than $600 per server or $50 per concurrent user. When compared to the nearly $300 difference per concurrent user between XenApp Advanced Edition and XenApp Platinum Edition (which ships with all the EdgeSight / Director monitoring goodies), I suppose $50-$100 per concurrent user becomes a relative bargain for larger enterprises. But it’s still out of reach for most SMB shops. And it’s a complete non-starter for Managed Service Providers.

Here’s What You Get To Pay For When You Buy a XenApp/XenDesktop Monitoring Solution From the Channel

Yes, let’s dissect this. It’s not pretty.

The portion of the sale paid to the channel partner by the vendor (typically anywhere from 20% to 50%)
All those steak dinners and “lunch and learns” the vendor gets to treat the channel partner to once a quarter, in the hope that the channel partner a.) actually knows how to sell their solution, and b.) doesn’t jump ship to a different vendor that’s promising higher margins.
All the “under the table” payments made by the vendor to those “independent” server-based computing / end-user computing “experts” you know and love, so said experts will hawk their products in blog articles, online reviews, and at trade shows. Yes, I know said experts have to eat too, but there’s an appalling lack of transparency about how prevalent this practice is in our industry. Could we have a little more voluntary disclosure, please??!!

The Net Result: SMBs Often Get Priced Out Of the XenApp Monitoring Market

Most of the channel fat cats described above (and by extension, the vendors they partner with) have no interest in dealing with Citrix and RDS deployments in organizations with fewer than 100 concurrent users. Many of them also don’t want to deal with shops that have fewer than 500 concurrent users. However, the irony in all of this is that the *vast majority* of Citrix and RDS farms feature fewer than 500 users. Because of this effective orphaning of the SMB market, admins in these smaller networks don’t have a lot of options in their budget range. They may cobble together some scripts, lean too heavily on traditional Network Monitoring Software that doesn’t have much depth when it comes to monitoring/reporting on SBC activity, or sadly, go without. This needs to change.

It’s Time To Disrupt This Industry To Benefit the SMBs and MSPs

Now that we’ve studied this market, and seen it for how it truly is, warts and all, we’re throwing down the gauntlet.

For only $9 per server per month, or $1 per workstation/virtual desktop per month, you can now acquire subscription licensing from us. Yes, you read that correctly.

Want to continually monitor 10 XenApp servers year around? No problem – that will cost you $1080 a year.

Want to do a simple 90 day assessment of remote worker productivity on your 5 RDS servers? Easy enough – just carry a subscription for 3 months, and pay only $135!

Have two RDS servers you need to check bandwidth consumption on for 30 days? We think you’ll find that $18 to be a bargain.

Now It’s Your Turn. Help Us Get the Word Out About Our New Flexible and Affordable Pricing.

Let your colleagues and friends know about our new offering, via social media, forum exchanges, trade shows, and simple word of mouth. As a token of our appreciation, if you send us a link to a post or share you made about our new pricing model and feature set, we’ll give you a 2-month subscription credit on monitoring in your own environment! Help us shake up this niche so that organizations of all sizes will benefit.

RDP Latency – Yes, Virginia, You Can Track It Now…

September 2, 2015 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

RDP Latency IS Now Trackable in Windows Server 2012

Several weeks ago, I gave a really fun talk at BriForum about the hidden benefits found inside Version 8 of the Remote Desktop Protocol – specifically, the fact that for any given RDP 8 connections to a Windows Server 2012 (or Windows 8) system, you can now track things like session latency, data throughput, assessed bandwidth, error rates, and much more. Provided you know which performance counters to query and how to query them.

The big catch here is not on the client side – you can get Windows 7 updated to use RDP Version 8, and Windows 8 and Windows 10 already run it natively. Plus, most thin clients (the good ones anyway) now support RDP 8.

No, the challenge is on the server side. Each week I talk to evaluators of our tools and ask them what server platform they’re running. Inevitably, the majority seem to answer Windows 2008 R2. Yes, I get it. Windows 2008 still gives you that nice Start Menu that your users know and love. But, to be frank, RDP Version 7 (which is what Windows 2008 uses) stinks when compared to RDP 8.

Why is Version 8 So Awesome For Higher RDP Latency Connections?

Two words: UDP transport. Yep, Microsoft’s RDS gurus REALLY did things right in RDP 8. By default, unless you disable it intentionally or unintentionally (more on that in a later blog article), RDP 8 uses both TCP AND UDP to serve up remote desktops to your clients. I won’t bore you to tears with the internal mechanics, but the key takeaway is this – on marginal, high latency connections (e.g. spotty Wifi, 4G mobile hotspots, overseas WAN links, or satellite), adaptive UDP transport overcomes much of the inherent “guaranteed delivery” limitations of TCP. In doing so, it effectively can increase data throughput from 3x to 10x over previous RDP versions, all while improving the responsiveness experienced by clients interacting with their sessions.

So Beyond Improved RDP Throughput and Responsiveness, Why Should I Upgrade to Windows 2012 Server?

Good question. Because once you do, you can use our software to track every aspect of network connection quality between your RDS servers and your client sessions, whether you want to do it in realtime, or via leveraging the ever expanding set of reports we’re creating. Seriously, what we can do with this information is awesome – it lets you, the admin, get in front of those annoying damn calls from users kvetching about how the connection is dropping, or their screen updates are too slow – etc. See for yourself by watching this video we just recorded showing these features in action:

Tracking RDP Latency and Connection Quality With Remote Desktop Commander

That is really awesome stuff. And I have some Windows 2012 servers already deployed. How can I get a copy of your software to profile my users’ RDP latency and connection quality?

That’s super easy – simply start a monthly subscription of our Remote Desktop Commander Suite for only $9 per server per month. For this extremely affordable monthly rate, you can track RDP latency, RDP bandwidth consumption, CPU and memory consumption by session, plus review detailed session recordings for root cause RDS performance problem analysis and/or terminal server user auditing.

We haven’t rolled on Windows Server 2012 yet. We may wait for Windows Server 2016 next year. Is there anything in the meantime we can do to get some of this information?

Absolutely. Stand up at least one Windows Server 2012 instance in your farm, populate it with the same apps/desktop environments your users need, and then send your “problem children” clients directly over to the Windows 2012 server. If you do that, you can use our software to keep tabs on their connection quality, PLUS they’ll be able to leverage the awesome UDP transport offered by RDP 8.