Windows system administrators generally prefer RDP for server management. Management some servers with Remote Desktop Tool is easy and practical. But If we have 50-100 or more servers it may become a nightmare. We have to remember their IP address or Hostnames and write to them every time we want to connect. There is a native solution provided by Microsoft named Remote Desktop Connection Manager or RDCMan.
Recently Microsoft the creator of the RDCMan, promotes using Windows Virtual Desktop or MSTSC instead of the RDCMan. But there is no restriction about the RDCMan usage which can be used to connect remote Windows servers or VMs easily.
Download
We can download this lightweight tool as an MSI file from the following URL.
//download.microsoft.com/download/A/F/0/AF0071F3-B198-4A35-AA90-C68D103BDCCF/rdcman.msi
Installation is easy as most of the other Windows applications. Just Next-Next-Next. By the way do not forget to accept the License Agreement.
Start
We can find the RDCMan applications from the start menu just typing Remote . It will be listed after RDP tool.
RDCMan consist of a menubar, a left side menu and the main part
- Menubar is used to configure RDCMan
- Left Side Menu is used to list saved sessions and connections.
- Main part is used to show remote session desktop
Create Database For RDCMan
Remote Desktop Connections are stored in a minimal database. For the first time usage, this database should be created. This provides the flexibility to use multiple databases which contains different data sets. We can also exchange existing database with others easily. We should create a database for RDCMan to store saved session information.
We name the database file name as mysessions and put wherever we want.
After the database created we will see the file name in the side menu like below.
Add Remote Server
For remote connection, we will add Server by using Add server menu item. We can now add servers to our current database named my session just right-clicking on it.
After that, we will get the following screen where we can set server or session configuration in detail. Just providing the following information is enough
- Server name shows the hostname or IP address of the remote system.
- Display name is used to label connection and should be easy to remember.
As we can see in the previous screenshot there is a lot of detail options about the remote desktop connection to a remote server.
- Remote Desktop Settings is used to set remote desktop properties
- Local Resources is used to set resource sharing like File, Voice, Devices etc.
- Security Settings is used to configure connection settings like encryption
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Set Logon Credentials or Username and Password
Login credentials can be provided before connecting to the remote system and can be saved for future use. From security, viewpoint be sure that all this information and database is residing in a secured system.
Logon Credentials
- `Inherit from parent` will get user name and password from the parent profile
- `Profile` provides previously saved credentials for different accounts
- `User name` will be the name of the user
- `Password` will be the user password
- `Domain` is the domain name of the user. We can use dot `.` if we want to use a local account.
After the first session is saved under the mysession group the it will be listed like below.
Connect Remote Server
Remote connections can be started just clicking from the left sidebar or if listed from the main part of the RDCMan.
Connect
Edit Existing Servers
All ready create remote connections or servers can be edited just right click and select Properties like below.
Edit Existing Servers
RDCMan Alternatives
Even RDCMan provides very good user experience for remote desktop connection there are some alternatives which alter also used for remote system management. With the less support from the Microsoft for the RDCMan following alternatives can be replaced easily.
SolarWinds Dameware Remote Support provides better experience and features than RDCMan. DRS Supports multiple platforms like Windows, MacOS X, Linux with useful utilies about these platforms and operating systems.
Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager is very similar to the RDCMan which provides rich features to manage remote systems and connections.It is also possible to share remote sessions with others easily.
mRemoteNG is a open-source and free tool which can be used for different platforms and connection types like RDP, VNC, ICA, SSH, Telnet, HTTP/HTTPS, rlogin etc. It provides less features with less complex usage.
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