2009 | Terminal Services Log

Archive for 2009

Easy Agentless Monitoring Solution for Remote Desktop Services / XenApp in Real Time

Acceleratio Ltd. has released the Terminal Services Log v. 2.5, a powerful Windows server application that makes it easy to monitor user activities on Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) / XenApp (formerly Presentation server) environments. System administrators use Terminal Services Log to detect unusual or abusive computer usage, to prevent malfunctions, and to monitor Remote Desktop Services / XenApp resources and usage, all that with easy agentless deployment on hundreds of servers.

A great application with fast support, Terminal Services Log allowed us to monitor user activity and applications on all of our Terminal Servers. Now we have detailed knowledge about our terminal users. Highly recommended! Eli Gur, DEA Products Inc.

(PRWEB) November 16, 2009 — Acceleratio Ltd. is pleased to announce the release of the Terminal Services Log – Enterprise Edition, a new edition of the Terminal Services Log – user activity monitoring tool for Citrix XenApp (formerly Presentation Server) and Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services).

Terminal Services Log is a server monitoring application that allows you to easily monitor user activities and applications on your Terminal Server. It tells you which users are logged on to your server and which applications they are using.

Monitoring usage patterns in server based computing environments is a challenge faced by numerous companies worldwide. Enterprise farms monitoring is a challenging and time consuming task. The Terminal Services Log allows you to easily get hold of all activities across all servers in a farm, to further analyze everything that is going on and on top of that,improve server performance.

“During last two years we discussed Remote Desktop Services / XenApp monitoring needs with hundreds of customers, and Enterprise edition is the result of this valuable feedback. We wanted to ease server monitoring in complex and mission critical server environments. Now, with the release of the Enterprise edition, customers will be able to monitor hundreds of servers from a single monitoring console”, said Frane Borozan, President of Acceleratio Ltd. We also ship updated versions for the Terminal Services Log – Standard and Professional editions.

The Terminal Services Log provides summary views in a grid and chart, and also creates printable reports based on views. Administrators can also schedule reports for email delivery. Reports can be further extended by using Microsoft Excel or Microsoft SQL server Analysis Services technologies by querying data store in internal data warehouse and creating powerful custom reports that match your business needs.

Key features:
1.   Built for Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) / Citrix XenApp (formerly Presentation server)
2.   Rich charts and reports
3.   Data drill down and filtering
4.   Customizable reports on top of OLAP cubes
5.   Detailed monitoring of user activities including Total, Idle and Active times
6.   Detailed reports on applications being used on remote servers
7.   IP addresses and Client names monitoring
8.   Software license usage reports, Remote Desktop CALs usage reports

Availability
Terminal Services Log is available for purchase online at www.terminalserviceslog.com or by telephone at +1 360 200-4299. A full feature 30 day trial is available at the web site.

About Acceleratio Ltd.
Acceleratio Ltd. is a private company with headquarters in Split, Croatia. We are the world leaders in user activity monitoring for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Citrix XenApp technology. Our products are used by hundreds of enterprises worldwide. Acceleratio Ltd. is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Citrix Ready Partner. For more information visit www.terminalserviceslog.com

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

For additional information or to schedule an interview, please contact our sales department at +1 360 200-4299 or e-mail sales (at) terminalserviceslog (dot) com.

November 16th, 2009 | Posted in news | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Monitor ‘Per Device’ licenses on your Terminal Server / Citrix

With the Terminal Services Log v.2.5 we released a new feature that allows you to monitor application licenses per device. One of the most popular applications being licensed per device for Terminal Services is Microsoft Office. (Learn more about Office licensing on TS). So let’s see how to configure this:

The first thing you need to do is to configure a new license type.

Go to File > Preferences
Switch to Licenses tab
In the Application Name column select the application you want to monitor (e.g. Microsoft Office Word)
In the License Type column choose Device License
Enter the Number of licenses you have

Add other Microsoft Office Applications if you want to monitor these. Let’s say I have 5 Office Standard licenses. Standard includes Word, Excel and Outlook but it does not include Access, so I have added 5 licenses for Word, Excel and Outlook and 0 licenses for Access.

How does license compliance work for per device licenses? Our application will calculate the number of unique devices that were used to run these applications in a given time period and selected server.

Finally, let’s check if I am license compliant with Microsoft Office.

Okey, looks good… my users are only using applications we have licensed. (They cannot even use Access since it is not installed.)

Let’s consider another situation. Let’s say I purchased Office Professional licenses, and I do have 5 Access licenses at hand. The report would then look like this:

So as you can see, my users are not using Access, and we are over licensed for Access. Next time I might want to reconsider the optimal Microsoft Office suite for my needs.

Conclusion

Our license compliance reports help you to determine the ideal number of licenses you need to purchase for your users on a Terminal Services / Citrix server. If you are over licensed, we help you save money when renewing licenses for business applications, and when you are under licensed… well we are also saving money for you, as you might need to purchase some licenses to resolve the problem before you are fined.

Our application allows you to monitor Per User / Per Devices licenses and we will be adding more types in the future versions of our application. For more details about licensing of your business application you should check with your vendor.

November 9th, 2009 | Tags: features, how to
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | 1 Comment »

We’ve just shipped Terminal Services Log 2.5.2.

Product version: 2.5.2
Build number: 21115
Database version: 2.5.0.21015
Release date: 9th November 2009.

Features

[Enterprise edition] Agentless monitoring of your server farm
New license type added for reporting: “Per device license” – allows you to track individual license used from a device. Click to learn more…

Enhancements

Improved look’n'feel and performance of the central dashboard screen
Improved monitoring for localized versions of Windows servers – we now support all localized versions
Application now displays information about the database version being used to help us support you in case of problems
Enhanced reliability and performance for Active Directory import
To ease the data analysis we improved export to Excel – time values are now exported in the following format HH:MM:SS
Improved Event log error logging, after 10 times the same report occurred. We will write summary information and stop filling Event log
We added “Refresh Data” command that allows you to easily refresh data for the currently selected report
Improved TSL behavior when SQL Server goes online

Bug fixes

Fixed issues with detecting previous installation settings
Fixed issues with inaccurate detection of idle time on Windows Server 2008
Fixed issues with preferences dialog on large screens
Installing TSL on a Domain Controller or Windows 2008 with UAC enabled would fail because we could not verify if service user is member of Administrators group
Check for updates did not work in cases when the server was not connected to the Internet
When you started AD import manually, changes to AD import settings were not saved
You could not import more than 1000 objects from Active Directory
Fixed issues with inaccurate data displayed on OU/Security Groups in Aggregated Mode
Improved UI behavior for license activation and test database connection

Click here to download new release.

November 9th, 2009 | Tags: enterprise edition, Release History, releases
Posted in Release History | By: Frane Borozan | 1 Comment »

Terminal Services Log is now certified as Works with Windows Server 2008 R2

I am proud to announce that we completed yet another round of certification for Terminal Services Log 2.0, and achieved a new certificate Works with Windows 2008 R2. Works with Windows 2008 R2 indicates that the application passed Microsoft’s compatibility tests. Testing was performed independently by VeriSign a service of LionBridge. Our product has been tested Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise (x64) on Hyper-V.

Compatibility with the latest Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 platform, 64bit architecture and Hyper-V confirms our dedication to continuous improvement of the solution for our customers.

We also support Windows Server 2003 x32/x64 and Windows Server 2008 x32/x64.

October 27th, 2009 | Tags: news
Posted in news, terminal services log | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Terminal Services Log 2.5 agentless – public beta

Hi everyone,

I am happy to inform you that we have a public beta of the TSL 2.5. Why is it so interesting? Because it now allows agentless monitoring of your TS / Citrix servers; no you only have to install TSL on one dedicated server in your domain. By using our product, administrators with mission critical systems don’t need to worry about application compatibility of their servers, and less software installed on the TS/Citrix means more stable and reliable systems.

If you would like to receive TSL Enterprise (That is how we call it ) please send us an email to sales@terminalserviceslog.com with Terminal Services Log 2.5 agent less – public beta as subject. Our support team will contact you ASAP and help you with TSL Enterprise installation.

October 6th, 2009 | Tags: enterprise edition
Posted in terminal services log | By: Frane Borozan | 1 Comment »

We’ve just shipped Terminal Services Log 2.4.2

Product version: 2.4.2
Build number: 20820
Database version: 2.4.0.20610
Release date: 17th August 2009.

Features

None

Enhancements

Month Report can show data from irregular time spans (e.g. from 7/7 till 8/15)
Use activity log now shows log off time
Added support for SMTP servers that require authentication
When upgrading over existing application, previous configuration settings will be detected
Improved performance and results of aggregated reports

Bug fixes

Improve performance of activity aggregation for Citrix Server farm
OU node in User Management does not show child OU nodes
User profiles could not be retrieved on some domains
Use profile does not show username
It takes two attempts to change product keys

Click here to download new release.

August 17th, 2009 | Tags: Release History
Posted in Release History | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Sending emails using SMTP server that requires authentication

A number of our customers have SMTP servers that require authentication. I am happy to inform you that we have included this long awaited feature in the Terminal Services Log 2.4.1. Now you can use your internal or one of publicly available SMTP servers to send your email alerts.

Here is an example how to configure our application to use Google Mail as SMTP provider:

Check “Enable e-mail sending”
Check “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication”
Check “Use encrypted connection (SSL)”

Type the following:

Server (:Port): smtp.gmail.com:587
Sender (email): your_email_address@gmail.com
Username: your_username (or your_email_address@gmail.com)
Password: your_password

Check this guide for more details on how to use GMail services from 3rd party tools.

July 13th, 2009 | Tags: how to
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | 1 Comment »

Terminal Services Log is certified as Works With Windows 2008

I am proud to announce that our product Terminal Services Log has been certified by Microsoft as Works with Windows 2008™. Works with Windows 2008 indicates that the application passed Microsoft’s compatibility tests on the platform. Microsoft also confirmed Terminal Services Log as Works with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Our work with Microsoft continues as we are committed to certifying our application for additional platform solutions.

Testing was conducted independently by VeriTest, a testing service of Lionbridge Technologies.

July 1st, 2009 | Tags: certifications, microsoft
Posted in Press releases | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

We’ve just shipped Terminal Services Log 2.4.0

Product version: 2.4.0
Build number: 20610
Database version: 2.4.0.20610
Release date: 30th June 2009.

Features

Integration with Active Directory
New report: User activities by Security Group
New report: User activities by Organizational Unit
Select users whose activities will be monitored

Enhancements

Improved look’n'feel of Process audit report
User credentials and permissions are validated during installation

Bug fixes

User activity log report could not be sent via email
In certain situations user’s idle time was miscalculated
When connecting to existing SQL database problems might occur while adding permissions for additional service user
IP Addresses out of all defined ranges were not classified correctly

Click here to download new release.

July 1st, 2009 | Tags: Release History
Posted in Release History | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Building a custom RemoteApp Portal for Windows 2008 – Part 2

In my previous post I described how you could add filtering for RemoteApps. This post contains step-by-step instructions on how to build the portal.

Step 1. Create RemoteApp applications and .RDP files

I will assume you have Terminal Server with RemoteApp installed so I will skip that step.

1. Open TS RemoteApp Manager

2. Publish all Applications you want your users to see.

3. Select all Applications and then click “Create .RDP files”

ts-configuration2

4. All RDP files will be stored to Program Files > Packed applications

We are going to redistribute all these files to our portal.

Step 2. Creating security groups for accessing web portal.

I have created two Security groups Management and Sales. I added user user_management to the Management group and user_sales to Sales group. user_sales and user_management are also part of the Remote Desktop Users security group.

It is much easier to use security groups, later you will be able to add user to another group or a new user to the existing group. We will be using groups to configure permissions over virtual folders.

Step 3. Configure IIS security settings

iis-virtual-directories

For the purpose of this post I created two folders on my Default web site. These will be used to host RDP files and application images (icons).

Step 3.1. Copy all the RDP files of published applications for members of Management group

file-management

Step 3.2. Create default.asp file in the Management folder and paste the following code:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
    <HTML>
    <head><title>Welcome to RemoteApp Portal</title></head>
    <BODY>
    <b>Welcome to RemoteApp Portal</b> <br><br><br>

    <%
    Dim objFileScripting, objFolder
    Dim filename, filename2, filecollection, strDirectoryPath, strUrlPath
        strDirectoryPath="c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Management\Applications\"
        strUrlPath="\Management\Applications\" 

        'get file scripting object
        Set objFileScripting = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
        'Return folder object
        Set objFolder = objFileScripting.GetFolder("c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Management\Applications\")
        'return file collection In folder
        Set filecollection = objFolder.Files
        'create the links
        For Each filename In filecollection
            filename=right(filename,len(Filename)-InStrRev(filename, "\"))
            filename2=replace(filename, ".rdp", "")
            Select Case filename2
            Case "Calc"
            Response.Write "<A HREF=""" & strUrlPath & filename & """>" & "<img src=""images/calculator.png"" ALIGN=center BORDER=0 >" & filename2 & "</A><BR><BR>"
            Case "EXCEL"
            Response.Write "<A HREF=""" & strUrlPath & filename & """>" & "<img src=""images/excel.gif"" ALIGN=center BORDER=0 >" & filename2 & "</A><BR><BR>"
        Case "WORD"
            Response.Write "<A HREF=""" & strUrlPath & filename & """>" & "<img src=""images/word.gif"" ALIGN=center BORDER=0 >" & filename2 & "</A><BR><BR>"
            Case Else
        Response.Write "<A HREF=""" & strUrlPath & filename & """>" & filename2 & "</A><BR><BR>"
        End Select
        Next
    %>
    </BODY>
    </HTML>

Download here the script, images and example RDP files: remoteapp_user_filtering_example

The script lists all the RDP files in the current folder, and it displays each file with a small icon along with it. In case you would like to add additional icons just add them to images folder and tweak the code to display these.

Your application portal will look like this:

final-look

When a user clicks on one of these links new RDP application will start. (User will be prompted for username and password)

Step 4. Configuring authentication

In order to make sure that only members of Management group can see these applications do the following:

Step 4.1. – Permissions

1. Open IIS management

2. Choose Management Virtual Directory and then select Edit Permissions and then Security

3. In the security there are several users that we don’t want to access Management portal

4. Disable inheritable permission

5. In the Security tab choose Advanced, then Edit

6. Disable include inheritable permission from this object’s parent and choose to copy parent permission

7. Confirm this by choosing Apply

8. Now remove following users: Everyone, Trusted Installed, Users, Creator Owner

9. Add Management security group that we created in step 2

10. Confirm everything

Step 4.2. – Authentication

11. Now we will need to add authentication for the management group.

12. Click Management virtual directory and then choose Authentication

13. Disable Anonymous Authentication and enable Basic Authentication

Repeat the steps above for every group on your server.

To audit which application is being used by each user use Terminal Services Log !

June 30th, 2009 | Tags: remoteApp, scenarios, Terminal services
Posted in remoteApp | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Terminal Services Log

Archive for 2009

Easy Agentless Monitoring Solution for Remote Desktop Services / XenApp in Real Time

Monitor ‘Per Device’ licenses on your Terminal Server / Citrix

Conclusion

We’ve just shipped Terminal Services Log 2.5.2.

Features

Enhancements

Bug fixes

Terminal Services Log is now certified as Works with Windows Server 2008 R2

Terminal Services Log 2.5 agentless – public beta

We’ve just shipped Terminal Services Log 2.4.2

Features

Enhancements

Bug fixes

Sending emails using SMTP server that requires authentication

Terminal Services Log is certified as Works With Windows 2008

We’ve just shipped Terminal Services Log 2.4.0

Features

Enhancements

Bug fixes

Building a custom RemoteApp Portal for Windows 2008 – Part 2

Step 1. Create RemoteApp applications and .RDP files

Step 2. Creating security groups for accessing web portal.

Step 3. Configure IIS security settings

Step 4. Configuring authentication

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