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TSAdmin Replacement For Server 2012, 2016, and 2019

July 22, 2020 By Andy Milford 1 Comment

TSAdmin on Server 2012For about 10 years now, I have had the privilege of talking with server-based computing admins worldwide. I’m always discovering the key pain points they must overcome when taking care of day-to-day management tasks, especially if they manage Remote Desktop Services deployments.

One big result of these discussions has been Remote Desktop Commander. This next step in the evolution of our Remote Desktop Services solution set was developed in direct response to the specific pain points I have heard articulated time and time again by RDS admins.

Perhaps unsurprisingly though – and our focus for this article – is that the loss of TSAdmin featured prominently in these discussions.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Server 2012 TSAdmin Replacement Tagged With: Managing Remote Desktop Services, Managing Windows Virtual Desktop, RDS Manager, Remote Desktop Services Manager, Server 2012, Server 2016, Server 2019, TSAdmin, TSAdmin Replacement, Windows Server 2012, wvd management, WVD Manager, wvd monitoring

RDP On Windows Server 2012: Tracking RDP Bandwidth

August 14, 2014 By admin Leave a Comment

In two previous posts during 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2), we disclosed that due to the integration work related to RemoteFX technologies in Windows Server 2012, it was no longer possible to obtain RDP bandwidth information on a session by session basis on Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.

Microsoft Generates Two Hotfixes

Fortunately, after our identification of this bug and follow-on advocacy, Microsoft agreed to generate two Hotfixes to restore this functionality. As a result, the first Hotfix was released and is available for download!

Note well that this first Hotfix only will work on the Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 codebase. At the time of writing this article, a subsequent hotfix was to be released later for the Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 codebase.

The Symptoms . . .

In the article ID, Microsoft explains the symptoms corrected by this hotfix:

When you try to use the WTSQuerySessionInformation Remote Desktop Services API function to obtain information about incoming bytes (WTSIncomingBytes) or outgoing bytes (WTSOutgoingBytes) for a Remote Desktop session on Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, the return value is always zero bytes.

Thanks Microsoft Support and Development Teams!

We’d like to give a hearty thanks to the support and development teams at Microsoft that made this happen. Good job, guys!

Remote Desktop Reporter Helps Gain Insight On RDP Bandwidth Consumption With Windows Server 2012

Given this hotfix, consider deploying our Remote Desktop Reporter tool to gain insight on RDP bandwidth consumption in your RDS farm and find out which users are the heaviest consumers.

Updated: October 2020.

Filed Under: Remote Desktop Bandwidth Tagged With: Windows 8, Windows Server 2012

Tracking RDP Bandwidth on Windows Server 2012: An Update . . . Is a Hotfix On The Way?

January 28, 2014 By admin Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, in a blog post titled Want to monitor RDP bandwidth by user on Windows Server 2012? You’re out of luck…, we exposed the fact that the API function calls and Performance Counter metrics that used to provide per session RDP bandwidth consumption no longer worked and/or had gone missing.  At that time, we speculated that this was a result of “plumbing changes” to the Remote Desktop Services code base to add greatly enhanced RemoteFX support in Windows Server 2012.

We finally have more information, and if you need to reliably track RDP bandwidth consumption by client or by session, you’ll want to read on . . .

RemoteFX Plumbing Woes

It turns out, we were right. 🙂

Windows Server 2012 Plumbing Changes Affect Tracking RDP Bandwidth
The plumbing changes that occurred in the Remote Desktop stack in Windows Server 2012 dramatically impacted the ability to track RDP bandwidth.

After much back and forth with a highly professional Microsoft support representative, it was determined that the plumbing changes in the Remote Desktop stack to enhance RemoteFX in Windows Server 2012 were so massive (including moving whole chunks of code out of kernel mode into user mode), they effectively nuked the old API calls and Performance Counters.

Now, as has been mentioned by the distinguished Shawn Bass of the RDS MVP community, there are some new RemoteFX related performance counters that look at bandwidth.  However, these counters look at rate only, and only at bytes transferred/received in the last second.

Therefore, they do not function as before, nor are they a substitute for the old “total bytes transferred/received” counters, because they are not stateful over the life of a particular RDS user session.

Potential Pitfalls Polling Stateless RemoteFX Performance Counters For Bandwidth Data

In order to get anything approaching a total bytes transferred/received count, you literally would have to poll these counters every second, which presents many pitfalls.

  • Dependence on WMI for this data.  Not highly scalable, nor particularly reliable, in our opinion.  Don’t just take our word for it though.
  • Significantly increased bandwidth required during polling.  Pulling multiple performance counters every second over the network adds up quick.
  • No tolerance for any missed polling of data.  Miss a few seconds here or there due to a blip on the network, or the inability to access the counters for whatever reason?  That stateless data is gone, forever, and now your bandwidth tally is inaccurate.  Bad, bad news if you’re an MSP or SaaS provider actually trying to bill or meter users based on bandwidth transfer.

Of course, this doesn’t even cover the tedium of trying to match up the underlying user with a particular Winstation name.

A Hotfix On The Way?  You Might Want To Wait On The Windows Server 2012 Upgrade If You Wish to Track RDP Bandwidth Consumption

Fortunately, there is some good news (for now).  To their credit, Microsoft’s support department has agreed to file for a Hotfix to restore stateful, per-session aggregation of bandwidth metrics back through the API.  The actual release of a Hotfix is by no means assured, as it has to go through multiple levels of approval by the folks in Redmond.

In conclusion:  If you are an MSP or SaaS provider that needs to reliably track RDP bandwidth consumption by client or by session, stay at Windows Server 2008 R2 for a little longer.  This issue, in our opinion, combined with some continued challenges around RemoteFX (which we will write about later), warrants a period of watchful waiting as the Windows Server 2012 offering fully matures.

As soon as we receive word on whether or not the Hotfix will actually be developed, we will update our readership promptly.

In the meantime, if you are an MSP or SaaS over Remote Desktop vendor and would like to find out more about how our Remote Desktop Reporter tool can help you, click on the links above for more details, or contact us by phone to discuss your needs in more depth.

Filed Under: Remote Desktop Bandwidth, Remote Desktop Reporting Tagged With: RDP, Windows Server 2012

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