How to monitor number of active Terminal Server sessions?

Hi, I wrote s small exe that can be used as a user defined program sensor. It needs a installed Microsoft Net 3.5 environment. Programm and source can be found here: http://www.obeco.de/termseraszip.exe

you could use a custom WMI sensor using these WQL querys

depending on the OS...

2003

Total Sessions

SELECT TotalSessions FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_TermService_TerminalServices

Active Sessions

SELECT ActiveSessions FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_TermService_TerminalServices

2008

Total Sessions

SELECT TotalSessions FROM Win32_TerminalService

Active Sessions

SELECT ActiveSessions FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_LocalSessionManager_TerminalServices

If you try the above WMI request or the WMI Sensor on a Server 2003 machine, you might find that it lies to you if you are using a non-admin account to make the request. You have to add the non-admin account to Remote Desktop Users on that machine.

This is not true on a Server 2008 machine. The numbers returned by a admin and non-admin account are both accurate without adding the non-admin to Remote Desktop Users. BTW, ActiveSessions doesn't exist in 2008 - there is DisconnectedSessions instead.

The non-admin account I use for PRTG monitoring has been added to DCOM Users, Performance Log Users, and Performance Monitor Users.

The EXE Advanced Sensor worked for us . We have several (35) RD Servers (2012) (Under the PRTG's Max of 50 Channels) and instead of having multiple sensor graphs, this script was created to scan all the servers and report back to one sensor graph. It works for Windows 2012 and 2008 servers.

Save this script to the C:\Program Files (x86)\PRTG Network Monitor\Custom Sensors\EXEXML folder. (If the RDS.txt file can't be created when the script is run you may have to adjust the permissions on that folder.)

Add parameters/arguments to the sensor settings using quotes. The QWinsta program reports all sessions to a text file. The script than reads the text file and converts it into XML.

It creates a channel for Total users and each server with the number of logged in users. Options to include disconnected sessions and exclude user accounts. (Services account)

DIM XMLStart, XMLEnd, xmlResult, XmlTotal
DIM strRDServer, TotalUsers
Dim ArgObj, ARG

Set ArgObj = WScript.Arguments 

XMLStart = "<?xml version=" & chr(34) & "1.0" & chr(34) & " encoding=" & chr(34) & "Windows-1252" & chr(34) & " ?>" & vbCRLF & "<prtg>" & vbCRLF
XMLEnd = "</prtg>" & vbCRLF
XMLResult = ""

for each ARG in ARGobj
	strRDServer = UCase(trim(ARG))
	'msgbox strRDServer
	AllUsers()
next

xmlTotal = "<result>" & vbCRLF & "<channel>" & "All Remote Users" & "</channel>" & vbCRLF
xmlTotal = xmlTotal & "<value>" & TotalUsers & "</value>" & vbCRLF
xmlTotal = xmlTotal & "</result>"
XMLFinal = XMLStart & xmlTotal & xmlResult & XMLEnd
wscript.echo XMLFinal

Sub AllUsers
	strError = ""
	'msgbox strRDServer
	Count = 0
	xmlChannel = ""
	xmlValue = ""
	Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
	cmdQuery = "%comspec% /c QWinsta.exe /server:" & strRDServer & " > rds.txt"
	'msgbox cmdQuery
	objshell.run cmdQuery,0,1
	Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
	Set objFile1 = objFSO.OpenTextFile("rds.txt", 1)
	Do Until objFile1.AtEndOfStream
		strSessionID = objFile1.ReadLine
		if left(trim(strSessionID),8) <> "services" Then
			if inSTR(strSessionID,"Active") > 0 Then
				 Count = Count + 1
			end if
			if inSTR(strSessionID,"Disc") > 0 Then
				if instr(trim(strSessionID),".") = 0 or instr(trim(strSessionID),"administrator") = 1 then
					'strError = strError & vbCRLF & "Unknown user" & vbtab & replace(trim(strSessionID)," Disc","")
					'Count = Count + 1 'Optional
				else
					Count = Count + 1
				end if
			end if
		end if
	Loop
	TotalUsers = TotalUsers + Count
	xmlChannel = "<channel>" & strRDServer & "</channel>" & vbCRLF
	xmlValue = "<value>" & Count & "</value>" & vbCRLF
	xmlResult = xmlResult & vbCRLF & "<result>" & vbCRLF & xmlChannel & xmlValue & "</result>" & vbCLRF
end sub

This is exactly what I'd like to do, but the exe page is no longer there? Does anyone have a copy of the exe they can share?

Thanks, Mike

Hi Mike,

you don't need the exe file, as there are native PRTG sensors you can use for this purpose:

• WMI Terminal Services (Windows 2008) Sensor
• WMI Terminal Services (Windows XP/Vista/2003) Sensor

Kind regards,
Matthias Kupfer - Team Tech Support