Synthetic RDP

Remote Desktop Canary v3 Is Almost Here!

April 28, 2021 By admin Leave a Comment

Hello RDPSoft friends and customers!

After a lot of work this Spring, we’re excited to announce that Remote Desktop Canary v3 is almost available! Before its official launch, however, we are seeking beta testers to put it through its paces, as Version 3 represents a major overhaul regarding how Remote Desktop Canary works. Read on to learn why this is, and then follow the link below to sign up to be a beta tester.

Major New Features in Remote Desktop Canary v3

Remote Desktop Canary Now Functions as a Windows Service!

We’ve finally turned Remote Desktop Canary into a Windows service!

You define the credentials of a user account under which all Remote Desktop Canary testing sessions will run, and the Remote Desktop Canary Service will make sure that user session is always running and performing tests according to your desired schedule.

One of the major limitations of previous versions of Remote Desktop Canary was that it ran in an interactive user session while doing its testing. This meant that if the server running Remote Desktop Canary rebooted, you’d have to depend on the Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter, running on a different VM, to relaunch the user session used for testing on that server.

Fortunately, after a lot of R&D, we found a way for a local Windows service to orchestrate the creation and teardown of a user testing session to run Remote Desktop Canary’s tests. By doing so, we’ve completely eliminated the need for the Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter applet. More importantly, the service itself will resume testing operations after a system restart for any reason.

*This also means that Remote Desktop Canary can now test RDS/WVD environments that have login banners enabled, and bypass them with synthetic input, without needing the Kickstarter tool enabled or a user session running unlocked.*

You Can Now Schedule Different Workflow Tests At Different Times During the Day

Schedule different times of tests, during different parts of the day, and carve out “no testing” times when you need to do updates or restart your infrastructure.

With the creation of the new Remote Desktop Canary Service as mentioned above, Remote Desktop Canary v3 can now schedule specific workflow tests at different times. All you need to do is build the testing routines you need and save them to separate workflow files. Then, you can schedule each workflow file to run during specific times of the day. Remote Desktop Canary will do the rest for you.

For example, you may want to do a sanity check early every morning and have Remote Desktop Canary test all of your RDS session hosts or WVD hosts after your nightly reboot, to make sure they are responding properly and that logins can proceed successfully all the way to a desktop, with no hiccups related to loading group policies or FSLogix / UPDs. Then, you may want Canary to start a recurring test the rest of the day for each of your RDS collections through the connection broker. Finally, since you schedule nightly reboots of your hosts (or shut your WVD hosts down at 1am to save money), you may want to have a period of time each evening when Remote Desktop Canary is not doing any testing at all.

Remote Desktop Canary Can Now Automatically Retrieve Relevant Event Log Information From Session Hosts Having Problems, And Include That Information In Its Automated Alert Emails.

Is a session host taking too long to respond, or is a user’s desktop not loading? Automatic diagnostic event log information from the problem host can now be included in your alerts.

In previous versions of Remote Desktop Canary, you would receive basic alerts if a connection broker or session host was not responding or it was taking to long to log in and reach a desktop. In version 3 of Remote Desktop Canary, you can configure *internal* workflows (e.g. tests running inside your network) to automatically gather errors and warning events from many different Windows event logs that may be diagnostically relevant to the problem at hand.

For instance, if FSLogix is taking a long time to load a user’s profile, if group policies are causing login delays, etc, Remote Desktop Canary will automatically include event log information that was logged around the time of the issue inside the alert email it sends to you. This will give you immediate context as to the true problem, and should shorten the time it takes you to fix the issue.

Ready To Participate In the Beta?

Please follow this link to signup. The beta has now gone live as of May 12th, 2021.

WVD Is Not All Its Cracked Up To Be. Staying On Classic RDS May Be The Better Move For Your Organization

Our CEO, Andy Milford, just completed his 4 part blog series at PureRDS on some fundamental issues with WVD, which can lead to cost overruns, less reliable service availability, and many other issues compared to staying on classic Remote Desktop Services. Please click here to become enlightened about all of WVD’s potential gotchas before leaping towards a migration away from RDS.

Remote Desktop Canary v2.3 Now Available!

September 30, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and current RDPSoft customers! We’ve just released Version 2.3 of Remote Desktop Canary, our synthetic RDP and WVD monitoring and alerting workhorse. This new version offers:

WVD support. Whether you’re still using WVD classic (e.g. Fall 2019 Mode), or you’ve migrated over to WVD in ARM mode (e.g. the Spring 2020 Update), Remote Desktop Canary now supports WVD.
An enhanced workflow cloning wizard. Now, if you want to test each of your session hosts or WVD hosts “all the way to the desktop” using OCR event detection, our new wizard duplicates your test settings across all of your hosts in one easy step.
We’ve improved our OCR alerting engine, so if specific text you are screening for is not seen within a certain number of seconds, Canary’s email alert will include all of the screenshots during the login sequence. As a result, you will immediately see if the login attempt has stalled while loading user profiles/FSLogix, encountered a black screen, or encountered another issue.

We’re also excited to announce that you can now purchase Remote Desktop Canary as part of our brand new Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD! Please read on for more details.

In this RDPSoft E-Newsletter:

Remote Desktop Canary Now Supports WVD

New Workflow Cloning Options

New Login Sequence Screenshot Playback With OCR Alerts

The Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

Version 2.3 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

Windows Virtual Desktop Support in Remote Desktop Canary

Set up comprehensive synthetic Windows Virtual Desktop login tests in a matter of minutes with Remote Desktop Canary

Some organizations are starting to look towards migrating to Windows Virtual Desktop in Microsoft Azure as their end user computing platform. As one of the Microsoft’s original WVD partners, RDPSoft is committed to supporting WVD throughout our product line. Most recently, we have now added support for WVD within Remote Desktop Canary.

Whether or not you are still running Windows Virtual Desktop in Fall 2019 (Classic) mode, or have migrated to the new ARM-based WVD model (Spring Update), Remote Desktop Canary supports both versions.

Since WVD now takes care of infrastructure components for you (e.g. brokering sessions on to hosts, providing a gateway that routes incoming connections into your hostpools in Azure, etc), Remote Desktop Canary’s value rests in testing each of your individual WVD hosts to make sure they are responding properly and can serve up a desktop quickly. Remember, issues with user profiles, FSLogix, and other components can turn session hosts sluggish, resulting in slow login times, and these sorts of issues cannot necessarily be deduced by WVD diagnostics information alone.

By building a “direct to server” workflow test against one of your WVD hosts, and then using our new cloning wizard (see below) to replicate that test across all of your different hosts, you can quickly set up an entire testing regime to keep eyes on each host’s responsiveness.

Moreover, with Remote Desktop Canary’s scriptable command line interface, you can schedule routine early morning “sanity checks” to make sure your WVD hosts are now up and online, especially if you have already established scaling automation to shutdown hosts and spin them back up each day as your users start to log back in.

Workflow Cloning Improvements

In initial versions of Remote Desktop Canary, cloning was done one workflow at a time. However, many of our users expressed interest in doing scheduled or routine RDP login testing of ALL of their RDS session hosts and/or WVD hosts individually. In order to make this easy, we have expanded our cloning feature so that you can define a synthetic login test for a single RDS or WVD session host, but then rapidly duplicate that test across many different servers from your Active Directory or WVD hosts in your Azure resource group.

Quickly clone an existing “single host” RDP synthetic login test to many different hosts in your domain or WVD tenant

To perform this type of cloning operation, simply:

Define a workflow synthetic RDP login test against one of your RDS servers or WVD hosts.
Test it to make sure it works exactly the way you want it to.
Select the workflow, and press the “Clone” button.
Use the wizard to select additional terminal servers or WVD hosts from your Active Directory or Azure Resource Group.

Remote Desktop Canary will then replicate your testing settings against all of the selected hosts, creating a new workflow testing entry for each host. That’s all there is to it!

If Canary Cannot Login and Access a Full Remote Desktop Quickly, You’ll Now See What Happened Via a Full Login Sequence Playback

Since the release of Remote Desktop Canary version 2.0, more and more of our users have started using OCR event detection to be notified if it takes too long for a user’s desktop to appear in a Remote Desktop session.

In previous versions of Canary, if specific OCR text was not detected within a certain time period, an email alert would be logged stating this fact. Now, in Version 2.3, we have expanded these email alerts to include all of the periodic screenshots Remote Desktop Canary captured during the login sequence.

Remote Desktop Canary will now show you exactly what the login sequence looked like when a desktop could not be loaded in a timely manner. Was it a black screen? Or a roaming profile/FSLogix problem?

Thanks to this login sequence playback with screenshots, a support desk worker or admin can immediately see the likely cause of the delay when loading a desktop, such as roaming profile problems, FSLogix initialization issues, or the dreaded black screen during login.

The Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

At RDPSoft, we’re constantly seeking ways to deliver more features and more value to our clients, at an unbelievable price point. In furtherance of that goal, we have now released the Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD. Starting at only $16.99 per server per month or $185.99 per server per year – with a 3 server purchase minimum and volume discounts available – you gain access to all three of our products, including Remote Desktop Canary!

Even better, if you’ve deployed or are getting ready to deploy WVD, we have a special promotion for you on this Complete Bundle, but act fast, as it goes away on December 31st, 2020.

Please contact our sales department for a quote if you’re an existing customer who would like to upgrade to this new offer, OR if you use our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite tool and would now like to obtain full monitoring and management capabilities for your RDS or WVD deployment. Just mention you’re interested in our new “Complete Bundle” when you fill out the form.

Remote Desktop Canary 2.3 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

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

If you’d like to learn more about Remote Desktop Canary, including its feature set and how to start a subscription immediately, click here.

If you’d like to learn more about our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle For RDS and WVD, click here.

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

5 Key Synthetic Login Monitoring Features Available In Remote Desktop Canary v2.0+

March 4, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

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. So, here’s a look at 5 key features that were first introduced with version 2.0:

1. Use OCR Event Detection To Alert To Error Conditions And Slow Application Load Times During Synthetic RDS Logins

Based on our customers’ wonderful feedback, we engineered an OCR event detection engine that scans screenshots during and after the RDP login sequence.

So besides that just being cool itself, what does it really do for you? This engine allows you to define and receive alerts when certain error messages appear on screen. This way, you can define and receive alerts if it takes too long for a program to start in a RDP session – due to profile problems, for instance.

Receive OCR Based Alerts Related To On Screen Errors and Application Startup Times — Version 2.0+ of Remote Desktop Canary offers a full OCR engine that can alert based on on-screen error conditions OR slow application startup times.

2. RDP Connectivity Testing On Multiple Computers at Once

Remote Desktop Canary offers a “multi-server testing workflow,” whereby it will quickly check RDP responsiveness on a group of servers in Active Directory, or the servers participating in a RDS collection.

Test RDP Connectivity on Multiple Servers At Once — Remote Desktop Canary can perform a routine RDP connectivity check on multiple servers at once.

3. Bypass Windows Server Login Notification Banners

If your organization uses login notification banners to provide an acceptable use policy (AUP) or warning that users must acknowledge before signing on, Remote Desktop Canary can now bypass this easily with synthetic input. As a result, you can now test conditions beyond the login screen using Canary’s new OCR event detection engine.

Bypass Login Notification Banners — Bypassing login notification banners with synthetic input, allowing application and desktop startup times to be profiled with OCR-based alerting.

4. Keep Remote Desktop Canary Up And Running 24/7 With the Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter Applet

Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter is a companion utility that ships with Remote Desktop Canary v2.0+. It “babysits” the actively running Remote Desktop Canary tests – by itself running on a different VM from the VM running Remote Desktop Canary.

As a result, it is able to make sure that Remote Desktop Canary tests stay running at all times, and function properly, even in scenarios like:

When the Remote Desktop Canary system is rebooted, such as for routine maintenance or patch installation
If the Remote Desktop Canary Logon Testing Module stops running for any reason
When an active Remote Desktop connection to the Remote Desktop Canary system is interrupted, resulting in a disconnected session that would prevent synthetic input from properly bypassing login banners

Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter babysits the user session running Remote Desktop Canary — The Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter applet keeps a watchful eye on the VM running your Remote Desktop Canary workflows.

And Number 5 . . . Toggle Workflows In and Out of Maintenance Mode

Part of what makes a good monitoring tool is how well you can juggle all of the tasks at hand.

Therefore, while Remote Desktop Canary is running continuous synthetic RDS login tests, you can toggle specific workflows in and out of maintenance mode with a single mouse click. When placed in maintenance mode, Remote Desktop Canary will suspend testing against that RDS collection or group of servers. This prevents alerts from being generated when you take server(s) offline for patching or other maintenance.

Right mouse click on any workflow to take it in or out of maintenance mode.

But That’s Not All . . .

This is all pretty powerful stuff as any admin can tell you, and we’re always updating and adding new features.

See what we’re up to now: Learn more about Remote Desktop Canary, including all of its features and how it is priced. Or, you can request a free 14-day trial of Remote Desktop Canary in your environment, click here.

Updated: January 2021.

Why Synthetic RDP Monitoring and What Is It Really Anyway?

September 18, 2019 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

When we were first beta testing Remote Desktop Canary™, we realized that the phrase “synthetic RDP monitoring” was fairly fresh for some. Today, there still can be confusion for some about the phrase.

One of the most challenging aspects of monitoring the health of your Remote Desktop Services environment is measuring how quickly it responds to external and internal logins.

For instance, your Network Monitoring Solution may indicate that everything is working fine – your Connection Broker is up and running, your Remote Desktop Gateway services are operational, etc, but then users start to call in and complain about slow connection times, connections failing, etc.

The only real way to stay on top of this is to leverage what is known as Synthetic RDP Login Monitoring, whereby a full RDP connection using an RDP client is made into your environment, while various metrics are being measured on the client side. In other words, it’s a set of recurring tests you can configure to alert you when inbound RDP connections to your environment fail or take longer than normal to connect.

Until now, this sort of monitoring / RDP login testing has only been provided by a few vendors in the market – at an extremely high price. So, just like we did with our Remote Desktop Commander Suite, we’ve brought this technology into the market as an extremely affordable monthly or annual subscription.

Interested? Reach out for more information and possibly a web demo.

Updated: October 2020.

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