RDPSoft Remote Desktop Commander Suite Release Notes

If you only have a handful of Terminal Servers, you may not already have a full version of SQL Server running on your network. If so, you can install SQL Server Express, or you can deploy a single database instance of Microsoft Azure SQL, with the most common instance sizes used by our clients being S1, S2, or S3.

If you deploy SQL Express locally, here are common “gotchas” that can prevent our setup program from successfully installing SQL Server Express.

MAKE SURE .NET FRAMEWORK VERSION 3.5 IS INSTALLED ON THE VM HOSTING SQL EXPRESS

You can verify this by loading Server Manager, choosing Add Roles and Features, and viewing the installed features on your server.  If the .NET Framework 3.5 Features are not installed, install them first.

TURN OFF UAC (User Account Control)

Before starting our software’s installer, please either disable UAC for your administrator account, or log in with a built-in administrator account that has UAC disabled. If UAC is running, it can interfere with the SQL Server Express installation.

DO NOT INSTALL SQL EXPRESS ON A VM/COMPUTER WITH ANOTHER INSTANCE OF SQL SERVER EXPRESS ALREADY INSTALLED

Installing multiple instance of SQL Server Express (especially different year versions, like 2014 on 2008, etc) on a single VM raises the likelihood of an installation conflict. If at all possible, choose a VM with no prior installations of SQL Server Express. If this is unavoidable, consider purchasing our White Glove Remote Installation service so our technicians can work around potential SQL Server Express issues for you.

• CPU: 2 GHz or faster processor is recommended
• RAM: 1GB+ recommended minimum
• Available Disk Space: Between 1 and 15GBs free minimum, depending on configuration (see below)

Installing Remote Desktop Commander Suite with a Local SQL Server Express Instance requires 13 GBs of free disk space (for both SQL Server Express install and database creation). If you elect to use a remote installation of SQL Server elsewhere on your network, or use Azure SQL, this extra disk space is not required. Our setup program will prompt you at the outset regarding whether or not you need to use a local SQL Server Express instance, OR if you plan to use an existing remote SQL Server instance elsewhere.

If you do not yet have the .NET 4.0 Framework (Full) installed yet on your system, an additional 850MBs to 2GBs of free disk space will be required.

Also, if you wish to do session recording with the Remote Desktop Reporter agent, you will need to reserve anywhere from 10-50 additional GBs of storage space for recorded screenshot images, depending on how many days of retention you require.

• Memory Use: 100MBs for the base Agent Service on RDS servers, XenApp servers, or VDIs / AVD hosts. For any users that need full screenshot recording (which necessitates deployment of an in-session helper process for our Agent), add an additional 30MBs per user in that category.
• CPU Use: On average, in its standard configuration, our agent uses less than 1% of available CPU even on session hosts with greater than 30 concurrent users.

You will need to be logged on with Administrator rights on the local machine when performing the installation.

If you are installing the software in a domain environment, the Remote Desktop Reporter service account should preferably be 1.) a Domain User account, that 2.) is a local Administrator on the machine where you installed Remote Desktop Commander, and 3.) is an Administrator on all systems that it will poll for RDP session information.

If you are installing the software in a workgroup environment, choose a common Administrator account present on all workgroup members (e.g. that has the same username/password).

When working within the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool, make sure you are a local Administrator, and also hold Administrator privileges on the systems you will be managing/reporting against.

The following firewall exceptions are required so that our software can poll session host servers, Windows workstations/virtual desktops, and RD gateway servers properly:

• Remote Service Management
• Remote Event Log Management
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
• Also, the Remote Registry Service should be enabled

The Remote Desktop Commander Client is a separate program you can install (or publish as a RemoteApp) to be used by administrators, managers, and/or help desk staff.  It’s primary functions are to:

• Allow you to prepare, schedule, and review reports on historical session data collected by the Remote Desktop Reporter Service,
• Review historical Terminal Server user session performance (e.g. CPU, memory, UDP/TCP connections) collected by the Remote Desktop Reporter Agent and step through recorded user sessions, and
• View performance dashboards to quickly assess the health of your RDS/AVD/Citrix systems in terms of CPU and memory load, seeing how each user session is impacting the server.
• Perform active session and process management on Terminal Servers in your farm.
• Perform shadowing and remote assistance functions to users with sessions in your RDS / AVD environment.

Please access the Remote Desktop Commander Client Guided Setup here, which will walk you through installing and configuring the client for other admins, managers, or help desk staff to use in your organization.

You can access the Remote Desktop Commander Client installer from the ClientInstaller subfolder under the main suite installation directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\RDPSoft\Remote Desktop Reporter). NOTE: It is installed by default on the main system where the full Remote Desktop Comander Suite is installed.

Whether or not you need to deploy the Remote Desktop Reporter Agent on your systems is completely a function of a.) what metrics you wish to monitor and analyze, and b.) the server-based computing platforms (e.g. RDS, VDI, Physical Desktops) you utilize. We suggest you review our convenient Remote Desktop Reporter Feature Matrix Guide as it will quickly tell you which features require deployment of the agent components.

Please review our comprehensive Remote Desktop Reporter Agent Deployment Guide. It covers all of the scenarios, such as deployment to Server-Based Computing platforms (e.g. RDS/XenApp), deployment to virtual desktop golden images (e.g. XenDesktop), or deployment to physical workstations. It also demonstrates how to configure Group Policy to associate different monitoring levels with different users.

Also, consider watching our comprehensive agent deployment demonstration video at our Youtube channel, as it covers many of the same topics featured in the Deployment Guide above.

As the RDPSoft Service Provider License Tracker depends on usage data collected and stored by Remote Desktop Reporter, please configure Remote Desktop Commander first, and allow it to collect RDS and program usage information for several days before building reports with the SPL Tracker.