Windows Virtual Desktop

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.

WVD Monitoring – Step By Step

August 24, 2020 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and customers!

The latest versions of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite (Version 4.9) and Remote Desktop Canary (Version 2.2) support the full monitoring of Windows Virtual Desktop, whether or not WVD is deployed in Fall 2019 (Classic) Mode, or Spring Update 2020 (ARM / Azure Resource Manager) Mode.

Here are the steps you need to take to deploy our solutions to monitor your Windows Virtual Desktop environment:

Step 1 – Provision a VM inside your WVD tenant or Azure Resource Group to run our software.

You may already have a VM deployed with management and monitoring tools on it, or you may wish to deploy a new one. All of our solutions work perfectly well on Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, Server 2019 or on Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session (EVD). You can always elect to place this VM in its own separate host pool, and then publish it as a desktop to your help desk and admin team so they can connect in and run tools when needed via the Windows Virtual Desktop client.

The key thing to remember is that this VM should be located on the same VNet and joined to the same Active Directory + Azure Active Directory domain as the WVD hosts you will be monitoring.

Step 2 – Install SQL Server Express or Azure SQL to store the WVD monitoring data collected by our solutions.

If you have a very small WVD deployment, with 3 or fewer hosts, you can most likely install SQL Server Express on the VM you created in Step 1 above. The Remote Desktop Commander Suite installer will prompt to do this for you automatically.

If you have a larger WVD deployment, you should leverage an Azure SQL database to store the WVD monitoring data instead. We find the most cost effective way to utilize Azure SQL is to opt for a single database, per-DTU model (as opposed to vCore). Using this approach, Azure SQL database costs for 90% of our customers will run somewhere between $30 and $150 USD per month, depending on the number of WVD hosts they are monitoring. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to provision Azure SQL for our solutions.

To help defray these infrastructure costs for our WVD customers, we have introduced a special discount of $2 off per WVD host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $3 off per WVD host per month if you opt for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle. Even if you only have 3 WVD hosts, your cost would only be $7.99 per host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $13.99 per host per month for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle! Click here for the details about this promotion that is valid through the end of this year.

Step 3 – Define a service account in your domain that will monitor your WVD hosts, and make the necessary Windows firewall and registry adjustments on those hosts.

This knowledge base article covers the few adjustments you need to make on your Windows Virtual Desktop hosts to allow them to be monitored correctly, especially if they are running Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session. You may wish to define a GPO in your Active Directory that adjusts these settings for you.

Step 4 – Install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite and Remote Desktop Canary to your VM you created in Step 1, and optionally install the Remote Desktop Commander agents on your WVD hosts.

Install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite on the VM you created in Step 1. Link it to SQL Server Express or Azure SQL, and set its service account. Then, add the WVD hosts via the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool, using the Import From WVD Broker wizard. If you would like to collect rich, detailed information on performance per user session and per application, install the agent service on each WVD host.

Importing WVD hosts into RDPSoft solutions is a snap.

Then, install our Remote Desktop Canary solution on the same VM. Set up a synthetic login test workflow against one of your WVD hosts, then clone that workflow against the rest of your WVD hosts. Now, Remote Desktop Canary can begin to continuously monitor your WVD hosts, verifying their responsiveness all the way through the login sequence into the desktop presentation. In WVD (as compared to RDS), Microsoft now handles the infrastructure roles of the Gateway and Broker, so determining login problems, slow login times, and user profile/black screen issues requires a close eye on the WVD hosts themselves.

Step 5 – Launch your WVD client, connect to the VM you created in Step 1, and marvel at the rich analytics and WVD monitoring tools now available at your fingertips!

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

Need Better Windows Virtual Desktop Monitoring and Management? Take Advantage Of This Special Offer!

August 24, 2020 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Hi there!

Are you in the process of deploying, or have you already deployed Windows Virtual Desktop?

Are you struggling with the lack of native WVD monitoring and WVD management tools? For example, do you need:

Say no more. We’ve got you covered. If you start a monthly subscription to our WVD monitoring and WVD management solutions on or before December 31st, 2020, we’ll give you an extra per-host VM per-month discount.

Specifically, you’re entitled to a special discount of $2 off per WVD host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $3 off per WVD host per month if you opt for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle.

That means that even in the smallest environments (e.g. only 3 WVD hosts), your costs will only be $7.99 per host VM per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $13.99 per host VM per month for the full Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle! And if you have more than a handful of hosts, we offer volume discounts that will make it even more affordable. Note – the pricing above is per host VM per month, not per user!

You simply will not find a better deal in the market in terms of price per features for comprehensive monitoring and management of your WVD infrastructure. And we keep adding more and more WVD specific features to our solutions, month after month.

Here’s what you need to do to get started.

Click here to request a quote to monitor your WVD environment. Make sure to include the number of host VMs and the number of admin/help desk users that will be managing the environment. Indicate in the form comments that you want our “WVD Deal.”

We’ll get back in touch with you shortly thereafter to verify your needs, find out more about your WVD deployment, and provide pricing. We will also supply you with a coupon code for the discounts mentioned above.

Act now before year end to secure this special offer. We look forward to bringing you on board as yet another satisfied RDPSoft customer.

Remote Desktop Commander v4.9 Now Available!

June 12, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and current Remote Desktop Commander customers! We’ve just released Version 4.9 of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite and our Premium Management Features overlay. This new version offers:

brand new reports that track things like RDP loss and retransmission rates, hourly load on servers, user reconnection attempts through a Remote Desktop Gateway, and much more;
an overhaul of our existing reporting, with a focus on better chart presentation and automatic chart data aggregation in larger environments;
the ability to delegate out management tasks and shadowing to Citrix help desk staff members, allowing them a much more streamlined shadowing experience that does not require the use of Citrix Director or Microsoft Remote Assistance;
numerous other product enhancements.

We’re also excited to announce that we’re expanding an existing promotion which you won’t want to miss, so please read on!

In this RDPSoft E-Newsletter:

New Reports Available in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite

Existing Report Improvements

Management Delegation Wizard and SuperShadow Now Available For Citrix Admins and Help Desk Staff

Other Product Enhancements in Version 4.9

Expanded Promotion – Buy Andy’s Book on RDS Security, and Get 1 Month of Remote Desktop Commander Suite AND Remote Desktop Canary Monitoring For Free

Version 4.9 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

New Reports in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite

RDP Protocol Loss and Retransmission Rates

Quickly spot the client users with the highest rates of UDP packet loss

Now that *almost all* of the Remote Desktop Services deployments running Server 2008 R2 have been retired, it remains important to keep an eye on aspects of how the modern Remote Desktop Protocol is functioning in your Server 2012, 2016, and 2019 environments. A key part of that is detecting packet loss and retransmission rates over the UDP channel used by RDS. Version 4.9 of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite now offers two new reports (a detailed variant and a summary variant) that quickly show you which users are suffering the highest rates of packet loss and retransmission. Coupled with other network quality reports like latency, you can quickly spot clients with less reliable connections.

Performance – Hourly Load By Server

Even without our agent installed, you can get daily reports showing how CPU, memory usage, and session counts increased and decreased during certain hours of the day.

Long time users of our Remote Desktop Commander Suite are well familiar with our Historical and Performance Across the Load dashboard. Now this same data is available in report form, either on-demand when working inside this dashboard, or as a report that can be scheduled on a recurring basis. For organizations running RDS, Citrix, and WVD deployments in a public cloud like Azure or AWS, having this information is critical, as it makes sure you’re not wasting your compute dollar as server load waxes and wanes throughout different days of the week.

Remote Desktop Gateway Reconnection Attempts

Similar to its sister report, Session Reconnect Attempts, the new Gateway Reconnect Attempts highlights users that have reconnected through a Remote Desktop Gateway more than 2 times in any hour. This may be indicative of connection issues on their part or, if many users are reconnecting frequently in the same hour, it may be highlighting a load issue on the Gateway or a general misconfiguration in the broader RDS deployment.

Existing Report Improvements

During the Version 4.9 development cycle, we spent a great deal of effort cleaning up the 100 reports in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, specifically reports that utilize charts.

In previous versions of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, certain charts could be become unreadable if the volume of data (e.g. the number of user accounts) was too large. While this was easily remedied by pairing the reports with filters that restricted data by computer name, Active Directory group, or user account, we have now added automatic “Top X” and “Bottom X” aggregation to some of the reports. If you have a larger environment with many different users, the charts will automatically show you the outliers (e.g. the Top 15 users with the highest average RDP latency for instance). For example:

“Top X” style aggregation now allows you to spot outliers and makes reports cleaner in larger environments. Here you can see the users with the highest and lowest productivity.

All of this aggregation is automatic so, after you upgrade to Version 4.9, you’ll start seeing it automatically in most of the reports that you typically run on a scheduled basis.

Delegation of Management AND SuperShadow Functionality Now Supported For Citrix Deployments

Our Management Delegation Wizard and SuperShadow features for RDS and Windows Virtual Desktop have been such a hit, and we now support those features in Citrix environments as well. At only $99.99 per named admin, help desk, or manager user per year, it’s quite the bargain!

We’ve heard more recently from many Citrix admins that attempting to delegate out specific management tasks like logging off users, disconnecting users, and shadowing users to help desk and other non-admin staff is painful at best. In some cases, being able to assign that level of granularity via Custom Roles in Citrix Studio is unavailable unless you are an Enterprise customer.

Then, there are issues with shadowing in Citrix Director itself. Currently, shadowing in Director leverages Remote Assistance, which must be installed and configured correctly on the administrator’s system to work correctly. It also informs the target Citrix user of the shadowing attempt. In some industries, the ability to monitor one or more worker sessions for spot auditing and compliance without user notification is required.

Fortunately, our Premium Management Features overlay now solves this big gap for all Citrix deployments, regardless of licensing level. Specific groups of help desk users can quickly be delegated specific management tasks, without being made admins on the host servers. Also, shadowing can be configured with or without consent required. More importantly – it just works. SuperShadow launches and can monitor and manage multiple user sessions at once from different Citrix hosts, whether they are desktop or app sessions, and whether or not the client is using multiple monitors. It all works natively, and is not dependent on Remote Assistance at all.

In three quick steps, you can unify and delegate Citrix management permissions to your help desk staff and other non-admin managers

Select (check) the Citrix sessions from the Virtual Apps and Desktops host servers, and then shadowing is just another mouse click away. No dependencies on Remote Assistance required.

Other Product Enhancements

Here are two other product enhancements in Version 4.9:

Loading speed has been improved in the Performance and Load Across the Farm Dashboard, especially for larger environments.
A “Test Email” button has been added in the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration tool, to quickly verify whether or not scheduled reports can relay properly.
We now support the usage of a Service Principal Name (SPN) to authenticate against and manage WVD deployments.

Expanded Promotion – Buy Andy’s RDS Security Book and Get A Month of Monitoring For Free!

Andy’s new RDPwned book on Securing Remote Desktop Services was a hit at launch, with lots of readers sharing their positive feedback with him. When the book launched, we started a promotion whereby any person who purchased the book could pick up a single server’s worth of RDS monitoring via the Remote Desktop Commander Suite for a full month. Now, we’re pleased to extend this promotion further.

If you purchase RDPwned between now and July 31st, 2020, we’ll give you a one month, single server monitoring license of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, AND a single workflow license of Remote Desktop Canary, so you can get alerted if any problems whatsoever start to develop in one of your RDS collections. That’s a $70 USD value for only $9.99!!

All you need to do to claim your 1 server, 1 month Remote Desktop Commander Suite license and your 1 workflow, 1 month Remote Desktop Canary License is to email inquiries [at] rdpsoft [dot] com with a screenshot of your Amazon Kindle purchase receipt. We’ll take care of the rest!

Remote Desktop Commander 4.9 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 4.9 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.

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

WVD Features & More: Key Capabilities In Remote Desktop Commander 4.8+

December 11, 2019 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Expanding on our Windows Virtual Desktop compatibility, Remote Desktop Commander 4.8 introduced a number of robust capabilities. Let’s drill into those features – and some others – in detail . . .

Import Hosts and Host Pools Automatically Inside Remote Desktop Commander Using the WVD Broker

Manage Windows Virtual Desktop hosts just like your on-premises Remote Desktop Services environment with Remote Desktop Commander Lite

How is this for easy? . . . If you want to manage WVD hosts, you only need to launch a simple dialog, enter in your tenant name and WVD admin credentials, and choose the WVD Management Mode (Internal/External) you want to use.

Remote Desktop Commander will then dynamically query the WVD brokers to auto-generate all your host pools and associated hosts in the left hand tree view for you!

But wait, there’s more . . .

Dual WVD Management Modes – Internal and External

Choose the management mode you want to use with WVD, based on whether you have installed our solution inside or outside of Azure.

When you set up a link to the WVD Broker above, you specify whether or not you want Remote Desktop Commander Lite to operate in Internal or External WVD Management Mode.

Internal Mode

This mode gives you the most feature-rich Windows Virtual Desktop management experience. In this scenario, you have installed Remote Desktop Commander Lite on a VM inside the Azure VNet hosting your WVD host pools, as a WVD RemoteApp or on a management VM you will access securely via Azure Bastion. This mode gives you all of the legacy, on-premises Remote Desktop Services management features, including the ability to shadow sessions and provide remote assistance with our Premium Management Features license, query performance counters related to user experience and connection quality, RDP via admin sessions into WVD hosts to do other management tasks, etc, etc.

External Mode

External mode gives you a less feature-rich WVD management experience, but does not require Remote Desktop Commander Lite to be deployed inside the Azure VNet with your hosts. You can install it on your own local computer, and still do basic session management tasks like logging off, disconnecting, and messaging users.

Similarly, you can import your hosts from host pools directly into the Remote Desktop Commander Suite’s Add/Manage Servers area, which makes adding in your WVD session hosts for monitoring a snap.

Import hosts for monitoring directly from the Windows Virtual Desktop Broker URL in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite

Delegate Out Windows Virtual Desktop Management Tasks To Support Desk Staff Using Our WVD Management Delegation Wizard

With Version 4.8, we expanded our Premium Management Features solution to include a delegation of administration wizard for WVD. This enables you to delegate rights – including shadowing – to support team members who need to manage your WVD deployment. Yes, that’s right, with our Premium Management Features tool, you can shadow Windows Virtual Desktop sessions without difficulty, and you can limit what your support desk technicians can do on your WVD hosts.

The WVD Management Delegation Wizard allows you to unify management permissions across all hosts in your WVD host pools, plus allows you to assign specific WVD access rights like “RDS Reader” and “RDS Contributor” to one or more users. It also allows you to set shadowing policies on each host.

Windows Virtual Desktop Management Delegation — Clone WVD management permissions across WVD hosts and host pools. Assign specific rights to users in the WVD tenant.

Unify Management Permissions on Windows Virtual Desktop Hosts — Select the WVD hosts and host pools you wish to unify management permissions on.

Get A Handle On User Experience By Monitoring the User Input Delay Counters Live or Historically

Profile user experience in RDS and WVD with the User Input Delay counter

In Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10, Microsoft introduced the new User Input Delay counter. This performance counter tells you how long user input (e.g. keyboard clicks and mouse clicks) sits in the input queue on a RDS or WVD host, until it is received for processing by an application’s message queue. Latency may look fine, but if User Input Delay starts increasing because a session host is under load, that could be a sign that user experience is degrading to the point where you want to add more hosts or increase the VM instance size of your hosts.

An easy way to approach this? Profile User Input Delay in real time using our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite client, and if you are a Remote Desktop Commander Suite customer, leverage the “User Experience” reports that show you how User Input Delay looked over time in their sessions. (Just remember: In order to use this counter, your RDS or WVD hosts must be running Windows Server 2019 or Windows 10.)

User Input Delay Counter Summary Report — Use the Remote Desktop Commander Suite to determine the average User Input Delay for each user across all of their RDS or WVD sessions.

User Input Delay Counter Per Session Report — Zoom in to see how User Input Delay fluctuated in each individual RDS or WVD user session.

Where To Next?

If you’re interested in any of the above capabilities, we’re happy to help steer you in the right direction: Request a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert to explore these features in depth.

Updated: December 2020.