Solo Technology

Here’s a tip about something I “re-learn” every few months. Perhaps writing it down will help me remember?

If your job has you working with Windows Servers, you no doubt are well familiar with the Remote Desktop Protocol. Windows users have Remote Desktop Connection (RDC), linux users can use tsclient/rdesktop and I’m sure there are other options as well. Why get up and walk to the server room (or drive to the data-center) when you can just fire up RDC and get a session on the server?

Thing is, you may have messages, errors or assorted other dialogs on the server’s console. Traditionally, you’d never see those. Thus, I’ve always had a bit of a “belt and suspenders” approach for my servers and install UltraVNC as well, just so that I can keep an eye out for console messages.

With Windows 2003 servers, there’s a much easier way. From a command line, type:

mstsc /v:servername /console

and you’ll be connected to console of that server.

I remembered this, yet again, earlier today when I found the Remote Desktop gadget for the Vista sidebar. I spend most of my days in remote desktop sessions and this is nice little “accelerator” for me.

The gadget has two checkboxes. The rightmost is for full screen. The left one is for console (my mouse was hovering over it in the picture to the right). Very handy.

Oh, and if folks have already tied up the two “admin” sessions alloted per server, you can use this to grab that remaining console session without having to leave your seat.

If only there was a way to add the “/console” capability to Windows 2000 servers as well.

2 Responses to “Windows 2003 Remote Desktop to Console”

1. » pingback » More on Remote Desktop: Royal TS » Solo Technology on August 23rd, 2007 8:32 pm
   
   
2. » pingback » Remote Desktop: No Console from Vista? » Solo Technology on May 15th, 2008 8:08 am
   
   

Leave a Reply