One of the biggest criticisms of Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012 has been its general lack of manageability. The first thing RDS admins notice is the disappearance of TSAdmin. Now, in order to manage RDS on Windows Server 2012, you must use the RDSM (Remote Desktop Services Manager) component embedded inside Server Manager. However, the RDSM component will not work in workgroup deployments of RDS, and it also requires specific roles (e.g. the Connection Broker) to be deployed in order to work properly. Even then, the UI can be clunky to work with and in larger collections, does not scale well.
For RDS admins coming from a Windows Server 2008 RDS deployment who used to use TSAdmin and TSConfig, the differences around management techniques could not be any starker, and in general frustrates them to no end. Look no further than the Remote Desktop Services Forums on Microsoft’s TechNet site if you don’t believe me.
Remote Desktop Commander Lite, from RDPSoft, is a free TSAdmin replacement for all RDS deployments
Full disclosure: I am the CEO of RDPSoft.
Given all of the turmoil around RDS management options in Windows Server 2012, I have decided to make Remote Desktop Commander Lite free for all users, whether they use it for commercial, personal, or non-profit use. By doing so, this solves a lot of problems for admins dealing with the limitations inbuilt to RDSM in Server Manager. For instance:
- You can manage Remote Desktop Session Hosts deployed to workgroups
- You can manage different OS levels of RDS farms (e.g. Server 2008, Server 2012, and even legacy Server 2003 RDS deployments
- You can manage Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 workstations allowing remote connections through RDP
- Our tool is fully extensible with parameterized PowerShell scripts and cmdlets, meaning, you can pass farm RDSH members, individual computer names, user(s), process names, etc directly to PowerShell for specific management tasks you conduct frequently
- We have greatly improved shadowing capabilities for Server 2012, Server 2016, Server 2019 and even Windows 10 with our SuperShadow tool that is part of the Premium Management Features package for the Remote Desktop Commander client. Shadowing multiple sessions at once in the same window is possible, as is shadowing multiple monitor sessions. This is light years better than trying to use MSTSC to shadow sessions on session hosts running those operating systems.
- You can do a lot of additional tasks not available in RDSM, such as looking up bandwidth statistics by session, reviewing session latency and error rates on RDP 8 connections, viewing the OS level of the client, etc.
For complete information, including feature lists, screenshots, a demonstration video, and a download link, please visit the Remote Desktop Commander Lite product page at RDPSoft. I sincerely hope it makes your life a lot easier.
You should receive a knighthood from the Queen for services to sysadmins everywhere.
Does this work with draining server in 2016 and 2019? Server manager is slow and horrible. I know you can do it via powershell but this seems easy.
Absolutely – there’s actually a built-in Powershell script integrated with Remote Desktop Commander Lite that allows you to place servers in and out of drain mode, and you can pass all sorts of things (e.g. user names, computer names, session ids, process ids, etc) from our software to other PowerShell scripts you choose to integrate with our program. Also, the Premium Management Features package we recently created that only costs $99.99 per admin per year provides much better shadowing/remote assistance support than the built in Microsoft tools to do so, and it also comes with a management delegation wizard so you can allow help desk techs to manage an RDS farm without giving them admin rights.
Your point about speed is important – the RDS management tool inside Server Manager is severely hampered by speed and cannot scale past a few dozen session hosts. In contrast, our tool is lightweight and exceptionally fast when listing connected users and running processes on hundreds of session hosts.