Mobile Allowance - iPhone App FREE this weekend only!

For those of us that like to keep an eye on our mobile phone spending this App is definitely worth the download. It logs into the o2 site and displays your total usage with how much of your inclusive minutes and texts are left. These can be displayed in a number of ways including hours and minutes, just minutes or out of your allowance (just in case you can't remember what you get). It displays your currents spend broken down by minutes, texts, roaming and roaming internet. However its worth noting that these prices exclude VAT, so bear that in mind. A feature I like is that the App displays the next update by days left or the actual date when your bill is due and your allowances / bill resets.

It's a great little app and in my opinion was well worth the 59p yet alone the chance to get it for free this weekend!

Provide remote support from your iPhone

The other weekend I was enjoying the weather when I got a call asking for my help to resolve an issue. Of course I was more than willing to help, problem was that I was over an hour away from home and I didn’t have my laptop on me. However I did have my iPhone on me and for once had a strong 3G signal.

Literally days before I was browsing the Apple App Store when I came across iRdesktop. iRdesktop made by ThinStuff is a Remote Desktop Client for Windows Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services as it is now called in Server 2008 R2. This App is capable of natively using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to view and control any PC or Server allowing RDP connections using your iPhone and iPod Touch. To be honest if you search the Apple App Store there are a few Apps offering RDP access but what made this one catch my eye was that it was free.

So the first time I used iRdesktop was in the line of action. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised of how good this App is. First off you can create an unlimited number of predefined connection entries that allow storing the servers details including login credentials, resolution and color depth. Nothing new there but some great additions that can also be stored are the port number, ideal if you secure your RDP sessions by using a different port. You can also enable console mode which is one of my favorite features as I often connect to Media Centre at home and need to use the console to access an app I have installed.

Once connected to an RDP session the first thing you notice is that the session is not scaled to the iPhone screen. You can simply use your fingers to scroll around the edge of the iPhone screen to move to pan to the relevant point of the RDP session. You can rotate your iPhone to change from portrait to landscape and you can even zoom in and out to make the screen easier to read using the familiar iPhone controls. To work within the sessions is relatively simple and somewhat impressive with full mouse emulation using your finger. To left click you just tap the screen, to right click you simply hold your finger down a bit longer. Double click as you can imagine is a couple of quick taps and you can even drag and drop files. To enter text there is a keyboard button at the top of the screen which opens the familiar iPhone keyboard.

A couple of features also worthy of a mention is that it works through WIFI, 3G, HSDPA, GPRS and Edge. I was very impressed with how responsive it was over 3G, with little lag. You can also have multiple connections open at the same time which was useful to solve the problem I dealt with. To change between sessions you are provided with a Safari-like page view for switching. Probably one of the key features for System Administrators will be the fact that irDesktop is compatible with the iPhone's built-in VPN (L2TP, PPTP, IPSec) for secure access to corporate networks as most businesses don’t publish RDP externally.

The only drawback I think the App has is that there is no password security built in, so if someone picks up your iPhone they can connect to any of the servers you have stored. Admittedly you could choose to not store the user credentials and then enter them when the connection is established.

So could you work remotely on your iPhone? Technically yes, though I would not want to use Office products and try to do many hours work on it. However if you need to access a server quickly to resolve an issue it certainly worked for me, and did I resolve the issue? Of course I did.

Remote connection to SQL over the web using the Management Studio

I have been asked by a few developers recently how can they connect to a remote SQL server over the web using their locally installed Management Studio.

By default the SQL instance listens on port 1433 so all that needs to be done is the opening of a port within the remote firewall. Obviously there are some security implications of doing this but you can lock traffic down to your own IP address if the remote firewall permits this. However what if the server has multiple instances running on the same server say SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 and you want to connect to a specific one how can this be achieved. You may think well how often does that happen. This can occur as part of a migration or if you have applications that require specific SQl versions.

When another instance in installed on the server by default it uses Dynamic TCP ports. To connect to the instance you will need to configure it with a static port. This is done in the SQL Server Configuration Manager on your SQL Server. Here you will see all the instances installed.

If you look at the first instance that was installed under TCP/IP settings you will see that the TCP Port is set to 1433. On the other instances you will see that the TCp Dynamic Ports will have a value in. Simply remove this value and set the TCP Port to a value. As you can see from the image above I selected the next port along 1434. You will need to restart the SQL service for the changes to take effect. Then you need to allow the port you slected through the firewall.

To connect your local Management Studio type the IP Address and port in the server name box seperating the IP address and port using a comma not a semicolon as most applications use. To connect to the other instances all you need to do is change the port number. I have found it easier to create a SQL account in each instance and use SQL authentication to connect to the SQL server rather than Windows Authentication due to the remote connection.

Goodbye Terminal Services, Hello Remote Desktop Services

With Windows Server 2008 R2 coming just around the corner (October 22nd) it's time to see what we get in the new release. In this post I will take a look at the improvements in Terminal Services, or should I say Remote Desktop Services.

The obvious change is the name, Microsoft have decided to change the name Terminal Services which has been used from NT4 up to Windows Server 2008 to Remote Desktop Services (RDS). As you would imagine the name change has also been reflected in the Role names. Here are the name changes between 2008 and R2.

Terminal Server - Remote Desktop Session Host
TS Licensing - Remote Desktop Licensing
TS Session Broker - Remote Desktop Connection Broker
TS Gateway - Remote Desktop Gateway
TS Web Access - Remote Desktop Web Access

There is also a new Role Service listed called Remote Desktop Virtualization Host. This service provides virtual machines that can be used as personal virtual desktops or virtual desktop pools by using RemoteApp and Desktop Connection. The service has to be installed on a server with the Hyper-V role installed. User accounts can then be assigned a unique personal virtual desktop or be redirected to a virtual desktop pool where a virtual desktop is dynamically assigned. This is a big new feature and is part of Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution and really deserves it's own post. I will report back once I have had a play.

Though the product has been renamed the management consoles have not changed much at all and provide the familiar feel administrators of Windows Server 2008 will be used to. Apart from the name change there are some significant improvements in Remote Desktop Services.

Windows Installer compatibility has been improved. Prior to R2 there was a limitation that only one Windows Installer installation was supported at any one point time. This meant that if you had multiple users logging and invoking an application for the first time like Microsoft Word the first user session would run the installer but the other user sessions would see an issue. With Remote Desktop Services in R2 the per user installations or first runs are queue up and then handled by the Windows Installer Service. This results in a lot smoother end user presentation.

Client Experience has some impressive new features. A key reason for 2008 R2 is to bring the server platform alongside the Windows 7 platform. This has not been ignored in Remote Desktop Services enabling Desktop Composition on the server installs the Desktop Experience Feature to make your server look like Windows 7, including some of the interface elements of Windows Aero like transparent windows. And yes, if you hold the Windows key and press tab you get the nice 3D roller task switching.

Both audio and video playback is available for users with RDP 7.0. I have to be honest out of all the customer deployments of Terminal Services I have done none of them have ever really required video but I had to give it a test. All I can say is that I am very impressed, I successfully watched a full screen 1080p wmv video with no issues, obvioulsy my session was over a LAN and set to 32Bit colour depth but even still very impressive. I can imagine all the shouts that if we let all our staff watch videos it will kill the Server, that's not actually the case. In RDP 7.0 some file types such as wmv are rendered by the local machine and not the server meaning there is little impact on the server. However not all file types can be, for example Flash animation is still rendered on the server and does have an effect. Potentially more useful for businesses is the ability to now enable audio recording redirection, so you can use the microphone on your local PC to record or pass audio through to the server. Does this mean we can use Skype over Remote Desktop Services? Certainly Sound Recorder worked a treat but thats very different to a two way conversation. I don't know if it will be that useable but it is next on my To Do List to give it a try on my test server. I will let you know the results.
For users that like to use multiple monitors RDP 7.0 now supports up to 16 monitors connected and the ability to span of an RDP session. In fact RDP 7.0 now supports a maxium resolution of 4096 X 2048 per monitor.

Remote Desktop IP Virtualization is a new feature that allows you to assign an IP address per session or per application. This can come in handy with applications that are licensed via IP address where you cannot connect or access multiple times with the same IP address. Either each session or actual application can be provided its own IP address from your DHCP server allowing these applications to work with RDS.

User Assignment has been introduced when publishing Remote Applications. By default when you publish an application all authenticated domain users have access to it, however in R2 you can now specify which domain users or groups have access to the application. In fact if the user does not have permission to access the application they cannot even see it listed.

Remote Desktop Connection Broker formerly the Session Broker Service has been expanded to provide administrators with a unified method of setting up user access to both virtualized desktops (running as a full Windows client OS on top of Microsoft's virtualization infrastructure) and traditional session-based remote desktops. Microsoft have introduced a new management console called Remote Desktop Connection Manager to manage the Broker server.

With Windows 7 client PC's you not just limited to publishing .RDP and .msi packages but you can create a config file on the Connection Broker Server which is the installed on the client PC. This creates a feed from the RDS Web Service of all the applications and / or desktops in the Start Menu. This connection periodically checks the Connection Broker Service for updates such as newly published applications or User Assignment changes and applies them instantly on the client machine. In the control panel on the local machine you will find RemoteApp and Desktop Connections where you can view the resources available to you, check the status of the last update or remove the connection. This uses a single sign on so connections use the currently logged on account.

One of the key issues administrators had with the previous incarnations of Terminal Services was load balancing sessions across servers and managing how the sessions took resources from the server they were running on. This was sort of addressed with Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with session reconnection it was not until Server 2008 that we got built in load balancing in the form of the Session Broker Service. However this still didn't fully address the issue of sessions fighting for resources on the server that they were running on. 2008 R2 introduces the Fair Share CPU Scheduling policy. This service dynamically distributes the processor time across all sessions based on the number of sessions running on the server and each sessions demand for processor time. This effectively balances the CPU across all sessions but can be used to prioritise CPU for certain groups of users. This is managed in the Windows System Resource Manager.