Introducing Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) 2.2
Published Jun 11 2010 07:00 PM 487K Views

Inside Microsoft, we maintain a repository of tools written by our engineers and technical staff. Many of the tools that are posted are very specific to Microsoft engineering— tools to help developers and testers better manage their project in our internal source control system, provide better visibility into our internal bug/issue tracking system, etc. Since these tools are very specific to the Microsoft environment, most of them don't get released externally.

About eight months ago, I came across a tool in the repository called Remote Desktop Connection Manager ("RDCMan" for short) written by Julian Burger, one of our principal developers on the Windows Live Experiences team. RDCMan is a central place where you can organize, group, and manage your various Remote Desktop connections. This is particularly useful for system administrators, developers, testers, and lab managers who maintain groups of computers and connect to them frequently. As an example - my customer manages over 200 Exchange servers worldwide. Today, they maintain a configuration file for the Remote Desktops MMC with many of their servers. Of course, with 200 servers, it becomes difficult to maintain and navigate, as seen in the following screenshot.


Figure 1: Managing RDP connections in the Remote Desktops MMC

After I installed RDCMan, it was very clear that our customers and partners would benefit greatly from it, as it fills the gap nicely that the standalone Remote Desktop Connection application and the Remote Desktops MMC snap-in leave behind. Here's a screen shot of an organized RDCMan configuration with the servers organized by version (Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010), region (Chicago, Redmond) and then finally by Exchange role (Client Access, Hub Transport, Mailbox, etc.)


Figure 2: An organized RDCMan configuratoin

You'll also notice that there's a grid on the right side that has a thumbnail of each of the servers. Yes, RDCMan supports a live thumbnail view of your connected servers, as seen in the following screenshot.


Figure 3: RDCMan displays live thumbnails of your connected servers

I'll leave the other features for you to discover.

With Julian's blessing, I worked with our legal department, trademark group, engineering compliance, release support, and others to get RDCMan licensed for external distribution... and while it's been months in the works - today, I'm excited to announce that Remote Desktop Connection Manager is now available externally on the Microsoft Download Center - get it from http://go.microsoft.com/?LinkID=9733636.

David Zazzo

71 Comments
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This tool is a real time saver and the more servers you work with the more time it will save you.  
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very nice tool!  i have been a long time user of terminals (found on codeplex) and this tool has pretty good "feel" with my limited usage.  

feature request:  the addition of an auto-filling address bar at the top that queries the tree to quickly connect to X server would be golden.
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Woah!! Awesome! I hope this replaces the Remote Desktops console in Windows Server...
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This looks great!  Will it / Can it be included in future versions of RSAT - replacing the current MMC?
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OMG this is the best thing EVER!

OK you must do an internal review of ALL your tools and reconsider releasing them if this is the kind of stuff you have hidden in there.  What other amazing stuff are you hiding from us!
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When I was at the ECOE a couple of years ago, I managed to get a copy of version 1.0. It's been a handy tool ever since. Glad to see that it's now publicly available!
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Been using this tool for about 2 weeks now and its great, but i must also mention a 3rd party tool that preceeded it. Its called RoyalTS from www.code4ward.net

It has many of the missing features from RDCMan and is worth every penny.
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This looks pretty nice, but another 3rd party tool that is even better and supports many other protocols is VisionApp Remote Desktop!
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Thanks for running this through all the necessary departments, David. That probably took as much time as it did to develop the tool. Great job and many thanks!
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Julian, you're brilliant. This tool makes my work a lot easier.
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Fantastic!
ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou
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Anyone know how to easily list the VMs on a hyper-V server?  
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I can´t believe you got more awesome tools like that one here at your hand - this tool really rocks, especially with huge ammounts of servers to manage. it beats all other third party rdp concentrator-tools i know so far. i wish you guys would release more of stuff like this because this one here is so great, it screams.
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Really great tool thanks!  I do have one issue when trying to log off a group of servers, I get the message "unable to logoff from .... Reason:  Log off session API failed".  Anybody else getting that?
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Very nice tool, thank you! Great!!!
A search function would be a nice feature...
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Nice but not enough to detract me from Visionapp Remote Desktop as it allows central database configuration as well as support for other protocols such as ICA, SSH, HTTP (HP iLO), etc.
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At last they released it in public even though I've been using it for quite some time since in my lab here:
http://www.sysadminlab.net/windows/how-sysadmins-rdp-efficiently-using-remote-desktop-connection-man...
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is there a limit to the # of groups you can add?
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As a feature request, I would like an export function where can export it without my credentials to share with other co-workers.


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This is an incredible tool.  Kudos for getting this done.
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There appears to be a bug that prevents you from adding sub groups in some cases.  For instance, if I create a group called "Group A" in the root, and then create a second group called "Group B" in the root, any time I try to create a subgroup in Group B my only option for a parent is Group A.  I have looked at the XML and I can see no difference in any of the elements.  I have tried creating new RDG files and I can recreate the problem consistently.  
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This is a nice tool, but I really like Remote Desktop Manager:

http://remotedesktopmanager.com/
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This might be enough for me to switch away from using RoyalTS
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Nice looking tool but why not in an mmc? This means I'd have to have another window open with my custom mmc now
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Very nice tool. Thanks for making it available. I especially like the abillity to undock a connected session (very useful for comparing servers on multi-monitor setup). My top feature request would be import/export of connections on the group level (preferably in an easy to modify format like .csv). Thanks again for sharing this with the world :)
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Great Tool.  Previously used VRD 1.5..which appears to still have some benefits - namly password protecting the config file and not being able to see the password.  ie - if someone grabbed the MS config file, they could import it and see your servers and passwords.  With VRD, they'd have to decypher the password on the file first and even then, there's no option to clear text the password.
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Really nice tool, but in the group/server settings, I hope they would have a "connect to console session" setting. So that on double-clicking any server it would automatically connect to console. This one thing may mean I still use terminals.
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I just wanted to say thanks, this has made my life so much easier.  thanks a lot.

glen
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All - the great comments, criticisms, and the overall enthusiasm has been great to read.  I've read every comment, and encourage you to keep 'em coming.

After this blog post went to "print", we set up a Microsoft Connect site that you can use to submit feedback back to us - feature requests, bug reports, etc.  You can find it at http://connect.microsoft.com/site1049.

(Of course, can't forget this:  We'll read each piece of feedback, but more often than not, we won't be able to reply to each of them...)
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Great Tool !!!

But if I want to logoff a server, i'm getting an Error: "Unable to log off %servername% Reason: Log off session API failed"

Anyone got a solution for that?

Lucky
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dzazzomsft, unfortunately when I go to that website it brings up a page not found message.
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I recently downloaded this tool and really like it, but I am having some difficulty. An application on several servers that my team manages requires that we specify the /admin switch when using mstsc.exe to establish an RDP session. Is it possible to specify this switch using RDCM? I’ve poked around through the help file and various configuration dialogs but have not yet figured it out.
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Right click on the server and select connect as where you will get an option "Connect to Console"
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Thank you, thank you! You can't believe how much time this will save. This is a great tool for those of us with large numbers of servers.
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Dzazzomsft that link is no longer valid.  Do you have a different link?
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@Bernard/@Steele,
Thanks for pointing out the bad link.  I think there's something funny with it (it works for me.)  I wonder if it has to do with first registration or something.

Here's a workaround you can try:
Go to Microsoft Connect: http://connect.microsoft.com
Log in or register, then on the upper-right hand corner of the page, you should see some links, one of them being Directory.
Under categories (on the left-hand navigation), choose Servers.  You should then be able to find Remote Desktop Connection Manager in the list and get to the connection that way.

If it still doesn't work, drop me a note at david.zazzo at microsoft daht com, and I'll dig deeper.

Thanks!
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In my line of work, secuirty is key.  As such, we change the RDP port number using regedit on all our server from the default port to a custom port.  In the standard RDP client, we are able to connect using mstsc /v:SERVER:PORT.  I am not able to have the same luck with this application.

Does anyone know how to connect to the RDP session using custom ports?  This application would be ideal as I am always in numerous servers throughout the day which usually very from day to day.
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John D,
Open RDC Manager and select Edit -> Properties -> Connection Settings
Remove the option to inherit from parent and change the port number that will be set to 3389. Is this what you are after?
Andrew
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Lucky,
I also have the same problem, "Unable to log off from Serverxy
Reason: Log off session API failed" when i choose Log off.
Anyone have a solution?
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This seems like a nice program, but I am very satisfied with TSRoyal by Code4Ward.

TSRoyal not only manages RDP connections, but can also manage telnet connections and out-of-band http connections to servers and devices.

Folders help keep you organized and settings and passwords are exportable in XML.

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A great tool. but as others, I'm having the "Unable to log off from <Servername> Reason: Log off session API failed" error.
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Oooh, baby.....I sure hope this works, it looks sweet.
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Same here: Unable to log off.

Only our Exchange Server 2007 works but the other Server 2003 boxes having the error.

Is it a security issue?

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Sweet. Thanks a lot David and Julian. I've been missing this tool for a while now.
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Sweet. I just installed it to my network. Saves me lots of time.
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This looks like a good tool. I'll try it. Might even get my collegue to stop nagging about mRemote.
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Two things.
I am also getting the log off issue reported several times in the above posts - doesn't seem to be any update on this.

Secondly, importing servers is either *.txt or all files. However I won't allow importing of saved RDP connections?
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very cool!
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This is a wonderful tool for those of your managing large numbers of servers - biggest timesaver I've found in the last year.

Just one minor request - please enable the software to "remember" the setting of the "Viewconnected group" option. You have to turn it on every time you start the application which is a headache.
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‎Jul 01 2019 03:52 PM
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