Terminal Server Monitoring

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.

BriForum Recap: Storm Clouds Over Citrix, Microsoft Rising

August 10, 2015 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

It’s been a little over two weeks since BriForum 2015 ended out in Denver, and as usual, it was a blast, filled with knowledgeable speakers and engaged attendees covering the entire gamut of virtualization and server-based computing. This year, I had the privilege of being a BriForum speaker, focusing my talk on the hidden benefits provided by Version 8 of the Remote Desktop Protocol available in Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and later operating systems.

One of the larger trends I’m seeing, which was echoed by many speakers at BriForum – at least in the server-based computing segment – is how Citrix’s star is fading as a viable solution for mid-market companies. It’s gotten so bad that key shareholders in Citrix (e.g. Elliot) have effectively forced Citrix to start the spin off of some of its assets and have forced out Mark Templeton as CEO. There’s a lot to this story, and Gabe Knuth has summed it up much more comprehensively than I can, so read his post for all of the gory details.

What is getting less press, but in my mind is just as or more important, is the fact that Citrix has made critical internal personnel decisions over the past few years leading to offshoring of certain departments with rather poor results. I noticed the fruit of these decisions years ago when I merely attempted to get XenDesktop/XenApp 6.5 up and running in a lab environment. A quality software product should not require multiple patches to fix critical issues just to get a solution installed. And I’m sure CIOs continue to question a.) the high costs of the software itself combined with b.) the high costs of bringing in consultants or other hired guns just to keep their stuff running. For a smaller or mid-market company without an unlimited budget, this creates a huge incentive to divest themselves of Citrix, and look towards other solutions like VMWare’s Horizon product and “Citrix-lite” alternatives that run on top of RDS.

Which leads me to Microsoft. Fueled by their expansion of Azure as a comprehensive cloud computing platform, they have been investing *significantly* in remote desktop technologies, especially the latest Remote Desktop Protocol versions. Their most recent version of the Remote Desktop Protocol, RDP 8, features incredible improvements over previous versions, primarily in the adaptive graphics department AND in the use of UDP as a transport protocol to vastly increase data throughput and responsiveness over less than reliable links (4G, WiFi, Satellite, etc). While not as bleeding edge as Citrix’s emerging Framehawk technologies in extremely high loss networks, it’s simply *good enough* for the vast majority of corporate networks and teleworking scenarios. And as we’ve seen in the past, once Microsoft gets *good enough* in a certain market / technology area, they tend to dominate. Remember Novell, anyone? 🙂

As for us, we’re charting our path alongside Microsoft. While our software continues to support Citrix and other configurations running on top of RDS, woe be to vendors who are “Citrix only” in their design focus, as I think they’re going to be competing for an ever shrinking piece of the pie. There will be a lot of money to be made over the coming years on migrating people AWAY from Citrix on to pure Remote Desktop Services, and we will be a proud part of that vendor ecosystem.

SaaS Over Remote Desktop: License and Resource Metering Techniques

December 30, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

Believe it or not, there’s a nice sized portion of SaaS vendors in the marketplace that are delivering their SaaS applications to clients over RDS (Remote Desktop Services) as opposed to the Web.

Why Remote Desktop and RemoteApp?

There are several reasons many software vendors choose remote desktop (or RDS) and RemoteApp as the mechanism by which to provide their software as a service over the Internet. Here are the big reasons:

Inherent limitations in building a web application with a consistent, rich, and responsive user interface.
Additional development and QA costs associated with web apps.
The costs to migrate an existing non-Internet based application.
Security considerations.

But Don’t Forget License and Resource Metering

As we do more and more business with “Saas over Remote Desktop” vendors, one of the biggest problems we see them experience is license and resource metering.

SaaS vendors using remote desktop have some numbers to crunch. — If you’re an SaaS vendor using Remote Desktop to deliver your application, you’ve got some numbers to crunch when it comes to license metering.

It’s one thing to develop and bring a SaaS application to market. It’s quite another to figure out how to:

Capacity plan for additional hardware / virtualized servers in your server farm as your client base grows.
Attribute costs of business to specific clients (How much bandwidth/memory do they use?).
Reliably meter client usage of your application for billing purposes . . . and to know when to bump your clients up to the next subscription level based on that usage.

. . . or the Bottom Line

We then help SaaS vendors solve those very problems. As an aggregator of Remote Desktop Session metrics, our Remote Desktop Reporter solution is being used to produce lots of different reports that help a SaaS vendor stay on top of client license and resource usage, and in turn, significantly improve their bottom line.

Some of those metrics include:

RDP bandwidth by user.
Peak concurrent sessions by server and/or by user.
Distinct RDS users by time period.
Total time by RDS user.
Specific application use by user.

Are You a SaaS Vendor in a Similar Situation?

We can provide a web demonstration of how to configure our software and establish these reports. Reach out to us here or message us on Twitter @RDPSoft.

Or, post a question below and continue the discussion!

Want to monitor RDP bandwidth by user on Windows Server 2012? You’re out of luck…

December 20, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

One of the neatest things our Remote Desktop Reporter tool can report on is total RDP Bandwidth consumed in each user session. Historically, Microsoft has made this data accessible in their operating systems one of two ways:

Through queryable Performance Counters associated with a particular user session
Through the underlying Terminal Services API, also queryable by individual user session

As a result, we gather this information routinely for storage in Remote Desktop Reporter’s database and offer a few out of the box reports to break it down for system administrators. We also use it in our freeware RDP Bandwidth Monitor Tool, which is part of our complimentary Remote Desktop Admin Toolkit.

You can imagine our surprise when we discovered that these metrics are flat out gone in Windows Server 2012. Gone, you say? Yes, entirely.

Terminal Services Session Counters in Windows Server 2008

Let’s first look at the Terminal Services Session counters in Windows Server 2008:

Screenshot from Windows Server 2008 — “Add Counters” in Windows Server 2008.

As you can see, we can get RDP Bandwidth oriented information, such as the input/output bytes of a particular RDS Session, with both the compressed and non-compressed variants available.

But, Look at Terminal Server Session Counters on Windows Server 2012 . . .

Now, let’s look at the Terminal Server Session counters from a Windows Server 2012 box:

"Add Counters" screenshot from Windows Server 2012 — “Add Counters” in Windows Server 2012.

The very same RDP Bandwidth counters that were present in Windows Server 2008, and many previous versions, are now gone.

What About the Terminal Services API?

Certainly we can get this sort of information from those functions, right? Nope. Calling the appropriate function to obtain these metrics results in the function returning successfully, but with all of these counter values now zeroed out.

It’s like Microsoft literally removed a significant chunk of Performance Counter plumbing out of the RDS subsystem in Windows Server 2012. We’ve tested both Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, with exactly the same results.

We have a support ticket open with Microsoft, and the only information we’ve received to date is that “they have researched this and unfortunately the values are no longer supported. The documentation will be updated accordingly.”

What About an Upcoming Windows Service Pack?

Currently we are requesting possible workarounds from Microsoft to get at this type of information in Windows Server 2012, and/or a possible commitment to add those counters back in an upcoming Service Pack. We’ll update you with anything we hear in a subsequent blog post.

In the meantime, great RDS community, what’s your theory as to why these counters are missing? Did the “plumbing changes” to RDS to add/expand RemoteFX in Windows Server 2012 cause the removal of these counters? Was it a simple development oversight that slipped through QA?

Weigh in with your theories below or tweet us @RDPSoft.