Managing RDSH Sessions

The Sessions tab allows you to view and manage current sessions for RD Session Hosts. To view the page, navigate to Farm / <Site> / RD Session Hosts / Sessions.

Note: You can also open the Sessions tab by right-clicking a server on the RD Session Hosts tab and choosing Show Sessions. This will open the Sessions tab with a filter applied to it to display only the sessions that belong to the selected server.

The Sessions lists displays current sessions and includes the following info for each session:

• Server. RD Session Host name.
• Session ID. Session ID.
• User. Session owner.
• Protocol. Protocol used: Console (Parallels RAS Console connection), RDP (remote user connected via RDP).
• State. Session state: Idle, Active, Disconnected.
• Logon Time. Last date and time the user logged on.
• Session Length. Total sessions duration.
• Idle Time. Total session idle time.
• Type. Session type: Admin, Published Application, Published Desktop.
• Resolution. Client display resolution.
• Color Depth. Client display color depth.
• Device Name. Client device name.
• IP Address. Client IP address.

You can sort the Sessions list by any session property. Simply click on a desired column heading to sort the list in ascending or descending order.

You can also filter the list using a single or multiple session properties as criteria. To do so, click the magnifying glass icon (top right) and then type a desired string in a desired column. The list will be filtered as you type.

To manage a session (or multiple sessions at the same time), select one or more sessions and then use the Tasks drop-down menu to choose from the following actions:

• Refresh. Refresh the list.
• Disconnect. Disconnect the selected session(s).
• Log off. Log off the session(s).
• Send message. Opens the Send Message dialog where you can type and send a message to the session owner(s).
• Remote control. Remotely control the selected user session. To establish a connection, domain or local Windows account credentials (whichever the user used to log in to this computer) of the current RAS Console administrator will be used. Note that the current user (specifically if it's the local Windows user) may not be permitted to connect to the remote computer. In such a case, use the Remote control (prompt) option (described below). See also the User session remote control subsection below for important information.
• Remote control (prompt). Same as above but prompts you to enter credentials. Use this option when the current user credentials cannot be used to control a session.
• Show processes. Display and manage running processes. See Managing processes below for details.

User session remote control

The Remote Control and Remote control (prompt) menu options (see above) allow you to shadow a user RDS session. There are limitations as described below:

• Parallels RAS cannot shadow RDS sessions running on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (plain Windows Server 2008 is fine). This doesn't work even with native tools.
• If you need to shadow a user session running on Windows Server 2008, the RAS console must also be running on Windows Server 2008. If the RAS console is installed on a later version of Windows Server, shadowing will NOT work. As a workaround, you can add an RD Session Host running Windows Server 2008 to the Farm, publish the Parallels RAS console from it, and then use the console remotely to manage user RDS sessions running on Windows Server 2008. Please note that to finish a remote control session, the administrator must log off from the RAS console remote session. This is a limitation of the shadow.exe utility from Microsoft that doesn't take any arguments that would allow us to add a control like a bar, a button, or a key combination.

Managing processes

The Tasks > Show processes option opens the Running Processes dialog where you can view running processes for one or more RD Session Hosts.

Note: You can also open the Running Processes dialog by right-clicking a server on the RD Session Hosts tab and choosing Show Processes. This will open the Running Processes dialog with a filter applied to it to display only the processes that belong to the selected server.

On the Running Processes dialog, use the Show processes from drop-down menu to filter the list using the following options:

• Selected Session. Displays processes for the session selected in the Sessions list.
• Selected Server. Displays all running processes for the server on which the selected session is running.
• All Servers. Displays all running processes for all available servers.

You can also filter the list by specifying a search criteria for one or more columns. To do so, click the magnifying glass icon (top right) and then type a desired text in one or more columns. The list is filtered as you type to match the specified criteria.

The Tasks drop-down menu in the Running Processes dialog includes the following options:

• Refresh. Refresh the list.
• Kill process. Kill the selected process.
• Go To Published Item. Enabled when you select a process that belongs to a running published resource. Brings up the main Parallels RAS Console window and navigates to the corresponding published resource.
• Disconnect. Disconnect the session.
• Log off. Log off the session.
• Send message. Send a message to the session owner.
• Remote control. Remotely control the selected user session.