For IT pros, we know that it can be irritating to work with SSH keys on multiple machines. But don’t worry, that’s where RDM’s Key Agent Forwarding comes in! Do not confuse this with our own RDM Agent, it’s a completely different beast. This Key agent forwarding allows you to use your local SSH keys instead of leaving keys sitting on your server.

Obviously, this feature is available for specific session types: SSH Shell, SSH Tunnel and SSH Port Forward.

Here’s how to use the Key Agent Forwarding:

In the Advanced tab of your session, enable the Use Agent option to allow initial authentication. Also enable Allow Agent Forwarding to use key authentication within the session.

For example, once you’ve SSHed into a machine, it will continue to SSH from it to the next machine, using the same key. I’m sure you can see how useful this can be when comes time to deploy to a server! It will allow you to use your local SSH keys instead of having to leave them hanging on your server without any passphrase protecting them.

And that’s it! You can now pour yourself a nice glass of wine, and have one less hassle in life to deal with!

As always, please let us know your thoughts by using the comment feature of the blog. You can also visit our forums to get help and submit feature requests, you can find them here.

For millions of people around the world, September 8, 1966 is sacred: it’s the day the intrepid crew of the USS Enterprise first hit the airwaves. And while the original Star Trek only had 79 episodes, its impact is legendary. From movies to books to popular spinoff series like TNG, DS9, Voyager, and even an animated show, it’s hard to imagine another television show having such an influence. Who knew that a Frisbee on a string would change the world?

And it’s not like the Star Trek universe has fizzled out, either. There’s a new series launching next year, and as any Trekkie worth their tricorder and secret stash of Romulan ale knows, this month marks the 50th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode!

Are You a TRUE Trekkie?

Sure, you’ve seen some episodes here and there, and you might have seen some movies, too. Maybe you even know a few words in Klingon, and have your own version of the “Prime Directive”. But there’s only one way to tell if you’re a TRUE Trekkie, and that’s to take our quiz! Give it a try, and tell us how you did.

Lately, we’ve focused a lot on security and password protection because it’s a top priority for us and we’re kind of obsessed. It’s kind of like when Trekkies start talking about why the original Star Trek is better or worse than Star Trek: The Next Generation (this is just an example – please don’t get anyone in this office started on that debate or we won’t get any work done!).

OK, let’s get back to password protection, because there’s a great feature in RDM that you should be using called Password Analyzer.

We’ll start by looking at a common scenario: let’s say that on a regular basis, your team changes or adds passwords in your data source. Hopefully, you’re already using RDM’s Password Policy Complexity to make sure everyone is choosing suitable passwords (i.e. nobody is using “password” or “12345”!).

But how do you know that some of your colleagues aren’t using the same password? What if the password strength isn’t sufficient? Well, that’s where Password Analyzer enters the picture. It scans your data source and displays a strength indicator for each password. In seconds, you’ll detect vulnerabilities and can follow-up with colleagues accordingly.

Here’s how to use this feature: in Tools click on Password Analyzer. This will launch a fast and complete diagnostic of the password quality in your data source. The results are color-coded to make things even simpler. The redder things are, the more trouble you’re in!

The report is detailed and captures user names, when the password was created, description (if one has been defined in the entry), and how many times the same password has been used in your data source. This final column is the one that most of you will focus on, since it tells you if a potential problem exists.

If you notice that many of your users have the same password, you have the option of clicking Forbidden Password. This will automatically add the password to your blacklist. Clicking on the pencil will open your selected entry and allow you to edit it right away. The Export Settings will be useful when exporting reports.

If you don’t want to see all of the passwords, you can switch tabs to view passwords used for your sessions, credentials or information entry.

And that’s it! Your data source is now as safe as the Starship Enterprise in the hands of James T. Kirk!

As always, please let us know your thoughts by using the comment feature of the blog. You can also visit our forums to get help and submit feature requests, you can find them here.

As you hopefully know, we recently launched the new and improved version 2.0 of Remote Desktop Manager for Android. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you’ll find it on Google Play.

Exploring the New Multi-Tab Feature

While there are many improvements in RDM for Android 2.0, one of the biggest is the new multi-tab option. Let’s start by taking a quick look at what inspired this new feature.

One of the most important aspects of RDM is that it’s easy to use, with intuitive menus, navigation and layout. Here’s a screenshot of the desktop version of RDM so you can see what we mean:

Tablet and Smartphone-Friendly

As you might expect, it was essential for us to reflect this focus on UX and usability in RDM for Android. There are, however, many different screen sizes and various resolutions to consider. And that’s where the new multi-tab feature comes in.

This feature is essentially a sliding tab that sits above an open session – so it’s out of the way, and doesn’t interfere with your work area. To switch between sessions, all you have to do is swipe and click on the one you wish to open. It takes literally a second to switch between sessions.

To get a clearer sense of how this feature looks and works, here are two screenshots, one from a tablet running RDM for Android and one from a smartphone:

As you can see, the tablet version lets you easily access your home menu (on the left) while your sessions are open. To switch between sessions, you simply swipe and click on the session you want to launch on the tab above your work area. If you wish, you can also enable the full-screen mode (so it’s similar to the smartphone version).

On the other hand, on a smartphone. Once you access the home menu and configure your session, you can toggle between full screen-mode and the standard screen mode, using the multi-tab function to switch from one to the other. The main difference between the tablet and smartphone interface is that on a tablet, the navigation menu is on the left, while on a smartphone, the menu is hidden while your session(s) is open.

Send Us Your Feedback!

We hope that the new multi-tab feature in RDM for Android 2.0 helps you save time and simplify your work. We’d love to get your feedback on this or any other aspect of the app. You can comment below, or send me an email at jdupont@devolutions.net and I’ll make sure that your feedback gets straight to our Android Development Team.

As you hopefully know, we recently launched the new and improved version 2.0 of Remote Desktop Manager for iOS. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you’ll find it in the App Store.

Exploring the New Multi-Tab Feature

While there are many improvements in RDM for iOS 2.0, one of the biggest is the new multi-tab option. Let’s start by taking a quick look at what inspired this new feature.

One of the most important aspects of RDM is that it’s easy to use, with intuitive menus, navigation and layout. Here’s a screenshot of the desktop version of RDM so you can see what we mean:

Tablet and Smartphone-Friendly

As you might expect, it was essential for us to reflect this focus on UX and usability in RDM for iOS. There are, however, many different screen sizes and various resolutions to consider. And that’s where the new multi-tab feature comes in.

This feature is essentially a sliding tab that sits above an open session – so it’s out of the way, and doesn’t interfere with your work area. To switch between sessions, all you have to do is swipe and click on the one you wish to open. It takes literally a second to switch between sessions.

To get a clearer sense of how this feature looks and works, here are two screenshots, one from an iPad running RDM for iOS and one from an iPhone.

As you can see, the iPad version lets you easily access your home menu (on the left) while your sessions are open. To switch between sessions, you simply swipe and click on the session you want to launch on the tab above your work area. If you want to organize your sessions, you can drag and drop sessions on the tab. You can also enable the full-screen mode (so it’s similar to the smartphone version).

On the other hand, on a iPhone. Once you access the home menu and configure your session, you can toggle between full-screen mode and the standard screen mode, using the multi-tab function to switch from one to the other. As with an iPad, you can drag and drop your sessions on the tab. The main difference between the tablet and smartphone interface is that on a tablet, the navigation menu is on the left, while on a smartphone, the menu is hidden while your session(s) is open.

Send Us Your Feedback!

We hope that the new multi-tab feature in RDM for iOS 2.0 helps you save time and simplify your work. We’d love to get your feedback on this or any other aspect of the app. You can comment below, or send me an email at jdupont@devolutions.net and I’ll make sure that your feedback gets straight to our iOS Development Team.

For years, Remote Desktop Manager has supported Windows PowerShell through the RDM CmdLet snap-in. And while this was a functional solution, we have made things even easier with the new RDM PowerShell Module.

The RDM PowerShell Module is called RemoteDesktopManager.PowerShellModule.dll, and it is located in the same folder as RDM binaries (RemoteDesktopManager.exe).

If you installed RDM in the default location, here is how to import the module:

Import-Module “${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Devolutions\Remote Desktop Manager\RemoteDesktopManager.PowerShellModule.dll”

Alternatively, if you launch PowerShell through RDM (Tools->PowerShell Console), or from a PowerShell session, the new RDM PowerShell Module will load automatically.

And there’s even more good news: in addition to putting all of the existing cmdlets in the new module, we’ve added new ones and enhanced the overall functionality based on feedback from our community of IT pros. Here’s a quick rundown of the new features and improvements:

More interactive and dynamic

When using PowerShell interactively, the cmdlets now dynamically create parameters and validation sets. For example, when you use the cmdlet Get-RDMSession, the parameter “Name” works as a filter and gives you the available connections by name in your current data source according to the parameter Group.

Access the Private Vault

• Get-RDMPrivateSession to get sessions from the user Private Vault.
• Set-RDMPrivateSession to save sessions into the user Private Vault.

Manipulate User Specific Settings

• Get-RDMUserSpecificSettings to get user-specific settings from a session, or local and shared templates.
• Set-RDMUserSpecificSettings to save user-specific settings into a session.

Manipulate documents sessions

• These cmdlets are useful for moving document sessions from one data source to another they keep the embedded data document in the document session.
• Get-RDMSessionDocument to get document sessions stored in the data source.
• Set-RDMSessionDocument to save the document in the data source.

Local and shared Playlist management

• New-RDMPlaylistLocal to create a new local playlist.
• Get-RDMPlaylistLocal to get a local playlist.
• Set-RDMPlaylistLocal to save a local playlist.
• New-RDMPlaylistShared to create a new shared playlist.
• Get-RDMPlaylistShared to get a shared playlist.
• Set-RDMPlaylistShared to save a shared playlist.

Added cmdlets to simplify session configuration

• Get-RDMSessionCredentials to retrieve the credentials ID or credentials mode.
• Set-RDMSessionCredentials to set a credentials mode without having to know the credentials ID.
• Rename-RDMGroup is now the best way to change the group of a session.
• Get-RDMOpenedSession to get the embedded opened sessions in the Remote Desktop Manager application.

New parameters added to cmdlets

• Set-RDMCurrentDataSource accepts username and password to avoid a UI prompt (SQL Server, DVLS, MySQL and MariaDB are supported).
• Copy-RDMSession workflow is now similar to the copy from the UI, and returns the new copied session in the pipeline.
• There are now set parameters in the cmdlets of type New, which enable you to save the object created without having to use the Set cmdlet related to it. For example, when creating a new session with New-RDMSession, using the parameter SetSession will save the session in the data source just like Set-RDMSession does.
• Open-RDMSession now allows for the opening of a session externally or silently, which is useful for syncing sessions.

We hope that you find the new RDM PowerShell Module useful and easy to use. As always, please send us your feedback by commenting below, posting in our forum, or sending me an email.

Remote Desktop Manager offline mode lets you connect to a local copy of your data source when your database is unavailable. But before you can do this, you need to grant access on three levels:

• User level (settings can be changed in the User permissions)
• System level (settings can be changed in the Data Source settings)
• Machine level (settings can be changed in the Data Source configuration)

If you wonder what offline mode you are currently using in your data source, go in File – My Data Source Information. Simply hover over the offline mode method to see each level setting.

There are also three permission levels associated with the offline mode:

• Disabled – this prevents an offline cache from being used
• Read-only – this allows the user to browse and launch sessions
• Read/Write – this allows the user to add, update and delete sessions

Simply grant access and set the permissions and you’re all set! You’ll be accessing Remote Desktop Manager from the patio, your favorite café, or anywhere else you need to be.

Surprise Extra!

Although this is a mini refresher, there’s actually something NEW we want you to know about.

As you know, internet access when you’re on the road can sometimes be sporadic. And with Remote Desktop Manager, you may not love the fact that you have to go through various warning pop-ups to access your data in offline mode.

Well guess what? Now you can bypass them! Simply go to: File – Options – General – Application start – Startup online state, and then toggle Automatically go offline.

Once you do this, Remote Desktop Manager will automatically open in offline mode until you change it back. It’s a great option when you know you’ll be on the road, and your internet access will be unavailable.

If you want to learn more, we’ve put together a helpful tutorial video covering Remote Desktop Manager offline mode – you’ll find it here. Enjoy!

As always, please let us know your thoughts by using the comment feature of the blog. You can also visit our forums to get help and submit feature requests, you can find them here.

“Remote Desktop Manager is an actively developed and supported tool that supports the modern protocols and features of virtually everything a system admin or engineer needs. The number of features is just fantastic!”  – Preston Gallwas, Solutions Architect – Right! Systems, Inc.

Client Snapshot

Since 1993, Right! Systems, Inc. has provided business-driven, multi-vendor IT solutions to clients worldwide. Drawing on deep industry expertise and a portfolio of interrelated consulting, application, and infrastructure services, their solutions help organizations gain control of their enterprise-wide technology, increase productivity and end-user satisfaction, refocus talent and energies on their core business, and decrease total cost of ownership. The company’s engineering service department has a team of approximately 30 IT professionals who manage around 1500 servers, machines and devices.

Right! Systems’ Challenges

As part of their work, Right! Systems’ service engineers routinely visit the company’s large roster of clients. Prior to using Remote Desktop Manager, it was difficult and inefficient for engineers to store, organize, share, and access the organization’s huge­– and constantly growing – pool of credentials.

The company attempted to solve this challenge with other solutions (e.g. MSTSC, RDCMan, RoyalTS), but ran into additional obstacles and problems, including:

• It was frustrating for engineers to save a variety of remote gateway desktop servers.
• When logging into a remote server, engineers routinely had to deal with wildly distorted/huge icons, because they were connecting via a UHD resolution with DPI scaling on.
• They could not support different RD Gateways within the same document.
• It was time-consuming and inefficient to access credential information on-site with a client.

Right! Systems’ Solution: Remote Desktop Manager

Since adding Remote Desktop Manager to its environment, Right! Systems’ engineering team has solved all of these challenges and now enjoys several benefits, including the ability to:

• Save all connections and credentials, while efficiently organizing them by folder for easy on-demand retrieval from any location.
• Organize resources into a manageable pane/document while on-site with a client.
• Specify different RD Gateway settings on a per-folder level, which prevents having to configure dozens of individual connections.
• Use RDM’s built-in VPN capacity to specify a connection to a VPN client and connect to a specific server.
• Avoid distorted visuals as DPI scaling happens automatically and smoothly (i.e. no re-login required).
• Save time and avoid errors by using RDM’s web browser auto-fill feature

Feedback from Preston Gallwas, Solutions Architect – Virtualization:

“With a current project we’re engaged in, thanks to RDM, we’ve seen a huge boost in productivity as there is a large number of servers and credentials to manage. It would be difficult – or at the very least extremely annoying – to do this manually. Remote Desktop Manager has made it a breeze!”

Since you’re an IT pro, you know that user interface isn’t a small detail – it’s a big deal, and it makes or breaks a solution. That’s why we’re obsessive around here about optimizing the RDM user interface and making it work for you instead of against you. We want to make it as functional and versatile for you as possible without clogging or cluttering up your workspace. It’s a constant balancing act!

One of the ways we strike this balance is by offering you 3 user interface options: Ribbon, Menu and Classic UI.

Ribbon – This is my personal favorite, and also the most popular among our users. Most RDM features are accessible, which makes it efficient and user friendly. We’ll take a closer look at Ribbon in a moment.

Menu – This UI was part of a previous generation, but we wanted to keep it around because we know many of you like it. It has a standard menu for choosing various commands/features.

Classic UI – This version offers limited customization, but the trade-off is that it needs minimal system resources to operate.

A Closer Look at Ribbon

Let’s take a closer look at Ribbon’s main screen. As you can see from the screenshot, each section/pane offers different features:

Top Pane – Offers a quick access toolbar with most RDM features

Navigation Pane – Holds your tree view with all of your entries

Content area – Holds various dashboards for managing RDM. One dashboard is active at a time, and this pane also contains your session tabs when opened in embedded mode.

Footer – Contains the different panes of your selected entry, like the description, sub connection, attachments, etc.

Status bar – Contains your search/filter area, RDM version label and notifications.

It’s not hard to see why Ribbon is the most popular user interface – everything is nearby.

Customizing Your UI

We’ve also made it easy for you to customize your RDM user interface. For example, let’s say that you launch your sessions in embedded mode, and therefore want your screen to show your dashboard only. No problem! Simply hide your Footer, Navigation Pane and Top Pane, and voila, you have much more room.  Here’s what it would look like:

Don’t worry: if you get a little bit lost because you’ve hidden features/options and don’t know how to get them back, simply go to Window – Reset Layout to reset the layout to its original view.

On top of that, our panels can be reorganized and moved as you prefer.  When you start dragging you will see a few acceptable drop destinations appear.  This isn’t a topic easily covered by a blog post, so we have a video to display that feature in depth.  You can find it : HERE.

As always, please let us know your thoughts by using the comment feature of the blog. You can also visit our forums to get help and submit feature requests, you can find them here.

We often receive questions about our SSH Tunnel entry. What does it do exactly? When do you need it? What does it eat in winter? How do you actually set it up? Let’s take a deeper look at it!

SSH tunneling is used to create a secure connection between a local and a remote computer, by going through another device that relays a specific service. Some people call this device a Jump or server. It’s basically an encrypted tunnel created through an SSH protocol connection. The SSH Tunnel can be used to establish a form of a virtual private network (VPN), and since the connection is encrypted, it can be useful for transferring unencrypted traffic over a network through an encrypted channel.

For example, we can use an SSH Tunnel to securely transfer files between a FTP server and a client even though the FTP protocol itself is not encrypted. It could also be useful when connecting a client through an SSH server protected by a firewall. SSH tunnels also provide a means to bypass firewalls that prohibit or filter certain internet services.

There are three ways to create an SSH tunnel:

Local port forwarding: The connections from the SSH client are forwarded via the SSH server, then to a destination server. Local port forwarding lets you connect from your local computer to another server. For example, you could use the local port forwarding to bypass a company firewall to connect to your client. It is the most used type of port forwarding.

Remote port forwarding: The connections from the SSH server are forwarded via the SSH client, then to a destination server. Remote port forwarding lets you connect from the remote SSH server to another server. For example, you could connect from your SSH server to a computer on your company’s intranet. It is a less common type of port forwarding.

Dynamic port forwarding: The connections from various programs are forwarded via the SSH client, then via the SSH server, and finally to several destination servers. Each program that uses the proxy server needs to be configured specifically, and reconfigured when you stop using the proxy server. For example, dynamic port forwarding lets you bypass a company firewall that blocks web access altogether. It is rarely used as it is very time consuming to set up.

Settings

We will showcase the local port forwarding mode as it is the most commonly used by far.

To create an SSH tunnel, a given port of your local machine needs to be forwarded to a port on a remote machine, which will be the other end of the tunnel. This is the job of the SSH Server.  Once the SSH tunnel has been established, the user simply connects to the local end of the tunnel in order to access the remote host transparently.

This might sound more complicated than it is — so let’s look at a concrete example of how to set up an SSH Tunnel. Let’s say you’re the IT technician at your office and need to connect to a client through an SSH server to perform work using RDP, but (there is always a but) it is protected by a company firewall. You need to get through the firewall in order to perform your work. The solution is to create an SSH Tunnel in Remote Desktop Manager to carry the RDP communication.

SSH Tunnel Diagram

Start by creating an SSH Tunnel entry in Remote Desktop Manager.

In the SSH Server Settings, enter the following information:

Host: Enter your SSH Server host or IP address (please refer to (3) in the SSH Tunnel diagram).
Port: Enter your SSH Server port (please refer to (4) in the SSH Tunnel diagram).
Username: Enter your SSH Server username to connect.
Password: Enter your SSH Server password to connect.

In the Outgoing Tunnel Settings, enter the following information:

Local address: 127.0.0.1 (please refer to (1) in the SSH Tunnel diagram).
Local port: Use any unused port that you prefer, but RFC6335 states that the Private Port range is from 49152 to 65535 (please refer to (2) in the SSH Tunnel diagram).
Remote host: Enter the host or IP address of your remote host (please refer to (5) in the SSH Tunnel diagram).
Remote port: Specify the appropriate port for the chosen protocol. For instance, RDP’s default port is 3389 (please refer to (6) in the SSH Tunnel diagram).

Then create your remote session (in this example we will use an RDP session).

In your RDP session, enter the following information:

Computer: Enter your Local Address (please refer to (1) in the SSH Tunnel diagram) – 127.0.0.1
Port: Enter your Local Port (please refer to (2) in the SSH Tunnel diagram) – 49152
Username: Enter the username to connect to your Remote Host.
Password: Enter the password to connect to your Remote Host.

In the VPN tab of your session, in Open, select Always connect; in Type, select Session.

And finally, in the Settings tab of your VPN, simply select your newly created SSH Port entry.

You have now configured your session with the following rule: for each connection that comes on interface 127.0.0.1 and port 49152, forward that connection to the SSH server and request the server to forward that connection to your Remote Host.

You can now launch your RDP session and your SSH Tunnel will automatically open, establish the connection, and then launch and open your RDP session.

One little side note: if you experience an error when launching your RDP session, adjust the After Execute Wait delay in the VPN/SSH/Gateway tab, which is located in the advanced properties of the session. As some servers are slower than others, the delay may be too short, in which case the session would get launched before the SSH server has had time to properly connect.

We truly hope that we’ve helped demystify the SSH Tunnel for you and, in doing so, made your day a little bit better!

As always, please let us know your thoughts by using the comment feature of the blog. You can also visit our forums to get help and submit feature requests, you can find them here.