Remote Desktop Services : Show HostName

Question

We are using Remote Desktop Services with many Session Host servers in a pool. It happens, sometimes, that there is a problem with a specific server and due to the load balancing algorithm our users get routed to that host. One we receive complaints, we need to usually manually figure out which server is the problematic one (since at first glance there are no open symptoms/etc) that we can use.

I had two questions:

1. Is there a way, somewhere, somehow, to show the server/host/IP/name of the Session Host server so a user can tell us which is the problematic one? (Note: We are using published applications to apps like bginfo and the like aren't relevant)
2. If not, is there a way via Event/File logs we can see the match and figure out which server the user got mapped to?
3. Are you familiar with any monitoring protocol that can simulate/monitor the RDP availability on a server, and should a logon not be able to be completed, it would disable the server from the pool?

Answer 1

Hi,

I am afraid there is no such built in tools since the RDP failure reasons may vary from the authentication or the performance and so on.

According to the examples of some RDP log on related events (probably locate in the RDSH servers), they consists of the whole process of the RDP logon and the possible event ID that might be recorded.

https://ponderthebits.com/2018/02/windows-rdp-related-event-logs-identification-tracking-and-investigation/

If there are some clues related to the RDP failure in your event logs, you may consider to trigger scheduler task(notification or else) when the dedicated event was created in the RDSH host servers.

Hope this would be helpful.

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If the Answer is helpful, please click Accept Answer and upvote it.

Thanks,
Jenny

Answer 2

Hi,

1.When connecting the remoteapp, it will show some connection details like below includes the remote compute information.

2.With Get-RDusersession command, it will list out all the active connections through the connection broker.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/rdmgmt/get-rdusersession?view=windowsserver2019-ps

3.When it comes to the event logs of connections handled via connection broker, you may filter the event log 801 to check the connection details: user connection requests and redirection connection requests.

4.We have limited knowledge of third party applications and from RDS perspective, we've no idea if there is any monitor tool could achieve your request.

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If the Answer is helpful, please click Accept Answer and upvote it.

Thanks,
Jenny

Answer 3

Hi Jenny,

1. When using an RDS Farm, the server name shown is the address of the gateway/broker, not the Session Host Server.
2. When you click on Remember my username/password and/or use SSO, you do not see the above screen either.
3. The PowerShell command is great if the user signed in, but if the issue occurs during the sign-in process (ex. the session host server is corrupt), then that won't return anything useful.

The event log you showed, is on the session host server?

Answer 4

So I see there is no way to have the user identify the session host when he is in the midst of connecting?