There might be situations where none of the mentioned solutions can be used for various reason, i.e. financial costs. A common way to solve this problem is to map all printer connections from a specified print server using administrative credentials during the initial setup of each RDS server. This solves the problem, but it can be time consuming as all printers that uses the same driver is being installed. Even though the driver is already installed on the local computer, it takes some time to process each printer connection.

I recently faced this challenge, as the installation of all printer connections from a few specified print servers took 30-40 minutes using a legacy script. I then wrote an advanced function in PowerShell to make the procedure more effective. This was accomplished by installing a printer connection only for unique printer drivers.
An example: A print server has 500 shared printer objects, while there is only 10 unique printer drivers. It would make more sense to add a printer connection (in order to install the driver) to 10 printer objects rather than 500, given the time consumed by installing a printer connection.

The function is available for download from here.

Sample usage and output:

There is a switch option added to the function called Clean. If this parameter is specified the function will also remove all mapped printer connections for the current user.

The function doesn’t`t provide any log options. However, it produces PowerShell objects, so it would be easy to pipe the output to a file.
An example on how to export the output objects to a csv-file:

But what about printer drivers added to the print servers after the function is run on an RDS server? One way to solve this could be adding the PowerShell function to a script-file which is set up as a scheduled task to run i.e. once a day on every RDS server.  If the scheduled task is set up using Group Policy Preferences, it will be automatically created on every new RDS server that is added later on. Beside scheduling the task to run at specified intervals, the print server administrator may also invoke the scheduled task remotely on every RDS server whenever a new print driver is added to a print server. The details on how to do this is previously described in this blog-post.

Since the function might be run several times on the same computer, it also checks if the driver to be installed is already in place on the local computer. This means that after the first run, only printer drivers added to the print server after the first run is actually installed. This makes the script more effective, and depending on the number of shared printer objects on the specified print server, it shouldn’t`t run for many seconds.

Coming back to the before mentioned example (~600 printer objects, ~50 unique drivers) where it took 30-40 minutes to install printer drivers from a print server, when using the Add-PrinterDriver PowerShell function the execution ran for 4 minutes. After the first run, subsequent executions ran for  20 seconds.

While troubleshooting a problem with the SSO-feature lately, we got an error message saying “The logon attempt failed”.

The solution turned out to be rather simple. While the default logon page for RD Web Access indicates “Domain/user name” for the user name field, using only the user name works fine:

This works fine as long as your not using RD Gateway and SSO, then the error message mentioned will occur when trying to start a RemoteApp.
When RD Gateway and SSO are being used, you must supply the domain as part of the user name (domain\ user name), else the SSO-feature will break.

I actually contacted Microsoft to clarify if it is possible to hardcode the domain name some way, and got the following answer:

I have taken time to discuss with our develop team. Please understand that there is no easy way to finish the task, because in RemoteApp mode RDP client ignores user name and domain name. We need to put a domain hint on the RD Web page. It is related to coding and design. If you want to request a feature or code change, you also can contact our Advisory Service by using the contact info published at <http://support.microsoft.com/gp/advisoryservice>.

Hopefully this will be possible in future Service Packs or OS releases.

One of the many things you can manage this way is the new RemoteApp-feature introduced with Windows Server 2008. In Windows Server 2008 R2, this feature got enhanced by the addition of User Assignment and Web Single Sign-On capabilities. These new features makes it possible for more and more customers to consider RDS without additional products like Citrix. One benefit using Citrix are more flexible application-management, since an published application may be available from a new farm member without adding each application manually.

Let`s look at a given example: You got a farm with 16 RDS-servers, and you`re leveraging the RemoteApp-feature. For each server in the farm, you must manually set up all applications in RemoteApp-manager after they`re installed. Although there is an export/import-feature in the GUI, many customers require no manual interaction in the server provisioning process. By the addition of the new PowerShell-provider for RDS, this is now possible in RemoteApp using scripting as part of either server provisioning or Group Policy.

For the average Windows sysadmin, I imagine that managing RemoteApp using the RDS PowerShell provider might be a bit tedious. To make this a little easier I`ve created a Windows PowerShell module for working with RDS RemoteApp, available from here.

This module contains the following functions:

• Get-RDSRemoteApp
• Export-RDSRemoteApps
• Import-RDSRemoteApps
• New-RDSRemoteApp
• Remove-RDSRemoteApp

The functions let you administer the same application attributes as the graphical RemoteApp Manager:

• Displayname
• Alias
• Command-line arguments
• RD Web Access availability
• User Assignment

Installing the RDSRemoteApp module

Download and unzip RDSRemoteApp.zip in the following location: %userprofile%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\RDSRemoteApp

Alternatively you may save the module in any of the folders in the $Env:PSMODULEPATH variable.

Using the RDSRemoteApp module

First we`ll have a look at the RemoteApp Manager application-list in the lab-environment:

Start Windows PowerShell on the RDS-server and import the module (you will need to run PowerShell with Administrative privileges):

Since I`ve leveraged the built-in help capabilities in Windows PowerShell v2 Advanced Functions, I`ll show the usage of the functions with a few screenshots from the help:

Get-RDSRemoteApp

New-RDSRemoteApp

Remove-RDSRemoteApp

Export-RDSRemoteApps

Import-RDSRemoteApps

Sample usage for export/import:

Be aware that there are several other RDS settings that may be managed using the PowerShell provider, this module only leverages the RemoteApp functionality. If someone want to create a module for managing other aspects of RDS, feel free to include my RDSRemoteApp module. And as always, suggestions for improvements and new functionality are more than welcome.

A sample screenshot:

There are several nice features, such as “Connect group” which lets you connect to all servers in a group at once:

On the “Group Properties” you may set common settings for all connections in the group, like logon credentials:

Further, there are group properties for RDS Gateway (formerly TS Gateway), display settings, local resources and so on.

There are several applications for remote desktop connections on the market, and some of them got these settings as a per server setting. It`s nice to be able to group servers and configure common settings.

Dynamically creating the connection list

When you work in larger environments with hundreds, maybe thousands of servers, setting up each connection manually isn`t an option.

Since Remote Desktop Connection Manager stores the config-files in xml-files, it`s rather easy to create dynamic config-files for a domain using Windows PowerShell. I`ve created a script to accomplish this, called New-RDCManFile.ps1, available from here. It uses Microsoft`s PowerShell-module for Active Directory, which is available in Windows Server 2008 R2 and RSAT for Windows 7.

The script does the following:
Creates a template xml-file
Inserts the logged on user`s domain name in the file properties
Inserts the logged on user`s domain name in the group properties
Inserts the logged on user`s username in the logoncredentials section
Inserts the logged on user`s domain name in the logoncredentials section
Retrieves all computer objects from Active Directory with the word “server” in the operatingsystem property
Adds each computer object as a server object
Saves the XML-file to %userprofile%\domain-name.rdg

When done you can open the rdg-file in Remote Desktop Connection Manager. I would recommend you to insert your password in the Group Properties to avoid being asked for credentials for each connection.

Feel free to customize the script to your needs, in example by editing the XML-template to edit the Group Properties. Another customization might be creating a group for each server OU for enhanced overview in larger environments.

If you would rather use Quest`s PowerShell Commands for Active Directory (which works on downlevel operatingsystems like Windows XP and Windows Server 2003), or any other way to retrieve the server names, you may customize this on line 110.

You might also want to schedule the script to run on a regular basis, saving the file to a central location. This way the IT personnel will always have access to the latest version with the most recent servers added.

If you got any further ideas or comments, please let me know in the comments section below.

Administrasjon av Active Directory med Windows PowerShell

Hva er nytt i Microsoft Exchange 2010

Konfigurer Single Sign-On mot Remote Desktop Services

Single sign-on is an authentication method that allows users with a domain account to log on once to a client computer by using a password, and then gain access to remote servers without being asked for their credentials again. See more details here for Windows Server 2008 and here for Windows Server 2008 R2.

On the client-side SSO are currently available for Windows XP with SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Configure SSO on the server-side

To configure SSO on the server-side (Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services or Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services), set the option “Security layer” to either “Negotiate” or “SSL (TLS 1.0)”:

Best practice would be to configure this in a common GPO for all Remote Desktop Services servers in the domain:

This setting resides under Computer Configuration->Policies->Administrative templates->Windows Components->Terminal Services->Terminal Server->Security.

Configure SSO on the client-side

Using a common GPO would also be the best practice to deploy the client settings needed for SSO to work.
The “Allow Delegating Default Credentials” resides under Computer Configuration->Policies->System->Credentials Delegation:

Enable “Allow Delegating Default Credentials”, press the “Show”-button and either specify the domain pre-fixed with * to allow delegation to all servers in the domain, or specify specific servers:

Next, create a RDP-file and deploy this file to the client computers.
Before deploying the file, open it in a text editor, e.g. Notepad, and add the following line: enablecredsspsupport:i:1
This will enable SSO for the RDP-file.

I would also recommend to sign the RDP-file with a Code Signing certificate. This can be accomplished using the utility rdpsign.exe:

Sample signing:

When a RDP-file are signed, the following will be added to the bottom of the file:

signature:s:AQABAAEAAADBCgAAMIIKvQ……..

For Windows Vista and Windows 7 clients, the configuration would now be completed when the RDP-file are deployed.

For Windows XP clients the following would be necessary in addition to the steps above:
-Service Pack 3 needs to be installed
-At least version 6.0 of the Remote Desktop Client
-Turn on the CredSSP Security Provider

The steps to turn on the CredSSP Security Provider are described in this kb-article.

I would recommend deploying these registry settings using Group Policy Preferences:

Also the RDP-file may be deployed in the same way:

I`ve covered the usage of Group Policy Preferences in a previous post.

Also, SSO can be combined with Remote Desktop Services Web Access. The Remote Desktop Services Team has posted an excellent post describing how to set up SSO in RDS Web Access.

Since Excel Add-ins are per-user based, this was in the first place a manual setting. Of course we wanted to automate this process, so I researched a bit on the internet and found mostly VBScripts. I`ve used this KB-article as a template.

Although this worked very well, I`m trying to leverage the use of PowerShell as much as possible. Many would say that VBScripts load much faster, and are more effecient as logonscripts.
Even though PowerShell v1 was a bit slow due to the lack of assemblies not being ngen`ed, as described on the PowerShell Team`s Blog, this bug is fixed in v2 and I`m quite happy with the loading time now.

I basicly re-wrote the sample VBScript in the KB-article, the result are uploaded to PoshCode.org and available from here.

I used an if-statement to check if the Add-in are already installed, to avoid installing it on every logon.

When tested and ready for production, the script may be distributed as a traditional logonscript, or alternatively with Group Policy: