Remote Desktop and Terminal Server Software
We get so much great feedback from our customers, and as any software solution matures, it’s easy to lose track of the details of features and the reasons customers need them.
In the case of our Remote Desktop Canary, some key features in v2.0+ have made it the synthetic login monitoring workhorse that it is.
Until the release of our Remote Desktop Commander v4.7, one of the continuous laments that we used to hear from our customer base for years centered on the user session shadowing in Remote Desktop Services. This is a shame, because the internal architecture for shadowing from Windows Server 2012 R2 onwards is pretty amazing! Using MSTSC to shadow proved however less than smooth. The litany of complaints has always included problems like:
There was also the small issue that there were no tools for shadowing/remote assistance inside Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure.
By the way: Check out this twisted history of shadowing RDP users.
In the resulting confusion, admins and IT staff have been paying an arm and a leg for remote assistance tools to bridge this gap for years. These tools require heavy install footprints, hundreds or even thousands of dollars per technician per year, and tedious invitation URLs, etc. are required to start helping users.
The other need that we heard frequently from our customers: To have the ability to precisely delegate Remote Desktop Services management permissions to their help desk and front line support staff. For a while, the only real option had been to give help desk staff admin rights on session hosts and connection brokers. Not an ideal situation from a security, or a “whoops I just rebooted a terminal server with 30 user sessions running line of business apps” perspective.
We tried to resolve some of these issues with our RDSConfig utility, that allowed permissions reassignment for users and groups on session hosts. However, in larger RDS collections, you need a way to apply those permissions to a huge swath of session hosts all at once – especially as new session hosts are brought online. Also, to do their jobs, help desk staff need rights to query the Connection Broker to dynamically list RDS collections and the servers that are members of each, plus they should have the ability to read RDS-related performance counters on those session hosts, so they can troubleshoot things like network latency from the client to the server.
We call these tools in the Remote Desktop Commander Client Premium Management Features. Want to shadow Server 2012+ systems from Windows 7? No problem. Want to monitor multiple user sessions at once in live view in one window? We do that. Do you have RDS users with multiple monitors that you haven’t been able to shadow before? Again, we’ve got you covered.
Request a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert to see all our solutions’ features in depth.
Updated: November 2020.
One of the continuous laments that we’ve heard from our customer base, for years now concerns user session shadowing in Remote Desktop Services. This is a shame, because the internal architecture for shadowing from Windows Server 2012 R2 onwards is pretty amazing.
Using MSTSC to shadow however, eh, not so much.
The litany of complaints includes problems like:
There was also the small issue that there were no tools for shadowing/remote assistance inside Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure.
As a result, admins and IT staff have been paying an arm and a leg for remote assistance tools to bridge this gap – tools that require heavy install footprints, hundreds or even thousands of dollars per technician per year, and tedious invitation URLs, etc are required to start helping users.
The other need that we hear frequently from our customers is the ability to precisely delegate Remote Desktop Services management permissions to their help desk and front line support staff. To date, the only real option has been to give help desk staff admin rights on session hosts and connection brokers. Not an ideal situation from a security, or a “whoops I just rebooted a terminal server with 30 user sessions running line of business apps” perspective.
We tried to resolve some of these issues with our RDSConfig utility, that allowed permissions reassignment for users and groups on session hosts. However, in larger RDS collections, you need a way to apply those permissions to a huge swath of session hosts all at once – especially as new session hosts are brought online. Also, to do their jobs, help desk staff need rights to query the Connection Broker to dynamically list RDS collections and the servers that are members of each, plus they should have the ability to read RDS-related performance counters on those session hosts, so they can troubleshoot things like network latency from the client to the server.
We call these new tools in the Remote Desktop Commander Client Premium Management Features. For $99.99 per admin or help desk user per year, all of the aforementioned problems go away. Want to shadow Server 2012+ systems from Windows 7? No problem. Want to monitor multiple user sessions at once in live view in one window? We do that. Do you have RDS users with multiple monitors that you haven’t been able to shadow before? Again, we’ve got you covered.
Watch this quick video on YouTube to see these features in action:
Next, download the latest copy of the Remote Desktop Commander Lite client. Once you install it, you’ll be able to preview the SuperShadow features for 15 days. The RDS Management Delegation Wizard becomes available after you purchase a subscription from us.
Once you start your subscription, you’ll immediately be emailed a license file that will unlock all of those features.
**Note 1: With the release of Premium Management Features in Remote Desktop Commander Lite, legacy shadowing support for Windows Server 2008 and legacy shadowing through the MSTSC client were retired. These features remain available in our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution however.
**Note 2: If you are an existing Remote Desktop Commander Suite customer who would like to test these new Premium Management Features, please install the latest client on a VM or system OTHER than the system running the core Remote Desktop Commander Suite components.
Updated: November 2020.
Though later versions of our Remote Desktop Commander Suite build on these key features, it’s worth drilling into these specific capabilities in RDS logins and logon failure tracking (plus some extra stuff we’re sure will interest you) that were introduced starting with v4.5:
Our CEO, Andy Milford, has written at length about the challenges faced when attempting to correlate RDP logon failure data from session hosts at his PureRDS.org blog. Attempting to track successful RDP logins is no picnic either, as multiple log files from multiple different systems – the session host servers and remote desktop gateway servers – must be consulted and the information correlated.
In version 4.5 of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, the Remote Desktop Reporter Service automatically collects and correlates key events from event log files on Session Host servers and Remote Desktop Gateway servers. The result is a treasure trove of valuable login and logon failure data that it retains in its SQL database, allowing us to deliver the incredible new features described below.
Remote Desktop Services login and logon failure data correlation from session hosts and gateways is a valuable feature in its own right, but the rich visualizations of this data is what sets Remote Desktop Commander Version 4.5+ apart from the competition. The User IP Geolocation Dashboard combines IP geolocation data with interactive worldwide maps and tabular, filterable tables so administrators can zero in on both legitimate RDS users and hackers.
Our dashboard is completely extensible via PowerShell scripts, which are designed to receive selected server names, usernames, and IP addresses as input parameters. This is especially useful for the remediation of inbound hack attempts.
Instantly build reports from the filtered RDP login and logon failure data in the dashboard, or simply export the data to comma-delimited text.
Scheduled reports make it easy to keep track of both where your users are routinely connecting from, as well as the sources of hacking and penetration attempts. Group login and logon failure data by country or by user. With routine review of these reports, you can quickly spot geographic RDP login anomalies that could be suggestive of a compromised user account.
By default, the Microsoft Terminal Services client (MSTSC) does not report its actual global IP address when connecting to a terminal server. When connecting through a Remote Desktop Gateway system, no IP address information is transmitted at all. Many admins have requested that we transform the incorrect or missing IP address information with the actual global IP address of the user, whether or not they are connecting through a RD Gateway.
Based on this feedback, we have retrofitted several existing reports, such as the User Sessions – Session Details By User report family, to include the correct global IP of the user based on the correlated log data now collected by our central polling service. Also, when possible, the global IP address is accompanied with the geographic region of the user’s ISP
As you can see, we’ve mainly talked about logins and logon failures so far, and we’re talking about lots of data that we work with. So, we have to be ready to handle it all. Which brings us to a related feature.
Collecting in-depth performance data on a per-user and per-program basis with our agent service is great, but it’s easy to generate a lot of data in SQL by doing so. Version 4.5+ has a nifty new feature that we call “Performance Threshold Database Pruning.”
Now, in addition to purging out agent-based performance data based on date, you can elect to keep only the agent data associated with times of high load on session host servers. You can define what you consider to be high load both in terms of CPU usage or memory utilization, or a combination of both. Using this new feature can drastically reduce the amount of data stored in SQL over time, in many cases by over 80%.
Of course, features change and mature, so be sure to find out the latest developments with our Remote Desktop Commander Suite by requesting a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert.
Updated: November 2020.
Greetings friends and current Remote Desktop Commander customers! We’ve just released Version 4.0 of Remote Desktop Commander, both the Lite and Suite editions, so we want to tell you what’s new under the hood in terms of features.
This Feature Is Present In the Following Editions: Suite
Previous versions of Remote Desktop Commander allowed you to view recent performance metrics across your servers, as well as pull up snapshots of performance for all user sessions given a specific period of time. However, the new Historical Performance And Load Across The Farm Dashboard allows you to scroll through hour-by-hour graphs of when your RDS session host servers were under peak load, in terms of memory, CPU, or session count. The graph is interactive, so you can click on a point of interest, and be immediately transported to another dashboard that shows all of the sessions active in that time frame- so you can review the user session(s) that contributed most to the server load and determine what they were doing at the time.
This Feature Is Present In the Following Editions: Suite
For organizations with larger RDS deployments, attempting to review all of the session host servers in a single dashboard can get complicated. Version 4 of Remote Desktop Commander allows you to quickly filter dashboards by a 1.) RDS collection name, 2.) user-defined group of RDS servers, and 3.) in some cases, a date range lookback. By doing so, you can keep multiple dashboards up and running inside the Remote Desktop Commander Client, with one dashboard per RDS collection.
This Feature Is Present In the Following Editions: Suite
Previous versions of Remote Desktop Commander required use of a local SQL Server deployment with Windows Integrated Authentication. Version 4 now also allows you to use a.) an on-premise SQL server with Standard (explicit username/password) Authentication and/or b.) a Microsoft Azure SQL Server deployment. This provides organizations with the flexibility to create multiple SQL databases for multiple RDS deployments on a single SQL Server, even when each deployment is isolated in a different, non-trusting Windows domain.
This Feature Is Present In the Following Editions: Lite and Suite
In the summer of 2017, Andy Milford, CEO of RDPSoft and Microsoft MVP in the Remote Desktop Services category, released the beta version of the new free tool called RDSConfig at the PureRDS.org resource site he maintains. Just as TSAdmin was removed from Windows Server 2012, TSConfig was similarly removed, making it very difficult for RDS admins to adjust the RDP permissions on session hosts. This has prevented many organizations from being able to delegate certain RDS management roles to non-admin users, such as shadowing users for support purposes. In Version 4 of Remote Desktop Commander, this tool has been integrated into the Session Navigator area of both the Lite and Suite versions. Now admins can easily view and adjust RDP permissions on their session hosts any time they wish.
In version 4 of Remote Desktop Commander, we have optimized many SQL queries to speed the retrieval of historic performance data to the Client. Also, we have repaired a few bugs, including one that affected the ability to record screenshots from multiple monitor sessions in certain instances.
2017 was a great year for RDPSoft, and to celebrate our continuing growth, we’re now pleased to offer additional services to go along with our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution.
Administrator time is at a premium these days. Often, you may know there is a performance issue with your RDS farm, but you don’t have the time to figure it out on your own. Let RDPSoft do that for you. We will install our Remote Desktop Commander Suite software in your environment, and then gather up key performance metrics, including data from RDS-related event logs and installed Hotfixes. After gathering data for a week, we will build a comprehensive report that benchmarks performance in your farm and offers suggestions on how to improve it. You don’t even need to have your own instance of Microsoft SQL available for data collection – we can provide you with a secure connection to an Azure SQL database as part of this service. For more detailed information, and to request a quote, click here.
Do you need a report that’s not available out of the box? Let the RDPSoft team build that for you. Using the free Microsoft Report Builder tool, we can design custom SQL queries and RDLC templates that connect into our Remote Desktop Commander database. Click here for more information and to request a quote.
For only $99, an RDPSoft technician will establish a remote support session with you and install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite software. This service includes a.) installing the software, b.) linking it to a SQL Server Express, SQL Server, or Azure SQL database, c.) adding session hosts / workstations for monitoring, d.) verifying that data is being collected properly, and e.) verifying that the data is displayed properly in reports and the Remote Desktop Commander Client. Click here to purchase this service and schedule a time with an RDPSoft support expert.
If you attempt an Office 365 deployment inside a virtualized environment, including RDS and VDI, you will be hit with lots of snags. Our technology alliance partner, FSLogix, pioneered the solution to these issues, and they remain the best solution in the market for virtualized Office 365 roll outs. Please read this wonderful article and product comparison that details why they remain the best-of-breed solution.
One of the biggest criticisms leveled against Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services as an end user computing (EUC) platform is its complete lack of integrated management and monitoring tools. … Learn more about our centralized RDS monitoring and management >
