Nagios Terminal Services check?

Question

Most of our servers are licensed for 2 concurrent remote desktop sessions. This is fine, so long as everyone does their administrative task and logs off, but some people accidentally close sessions (disconnect but remain logged in) instead.

I know that you can force someone off with the right Admin tools, but it's a bit ugly and may hurt productivity or maybe even the server(?). I was thinking that a nightly Nagios check of remote sessions available nagging people would help enforce build discipline on the subject. Can anyone recommend a service check that can monitor terminal service availability?

Solution 1

Why not time-limit inactive sessions?

Solution 2

i have a couple of terminal services in a load-balancing cluster being monitored with nagios. i use nsclient++ agent on the servers and these checks on the services.cfg file:

define service {
  use                   default_service
  hostgroup             term-serv
  service_description   check_nt_term_serv_tot
  check_command         check_nt_wrapper!"\\Terminal Services\Total Sessions"!30!45
  }

define service {
  use                   default_service
  hostgroup             term-serv
  service_description   check_nt_term_serv_act
  check_command         check_nt_wrapper!"\\Terminal Services\Active Sessions"!30!45
  }

define service {
  use                   default_service
  hostgroup             term-serv
  service_description   check_nt_term_serv_ina
  check_command         check_nt_wrapper!"\\Terminal Services\Inactive Sessions"!30!45
  }

i also feed the results to a rrd file for graphing. i think there are more terminal serivces performance counters that may better fit your need, just look in the windows under config panel->admin tools->performance->right-click on graph->add counters and see what is available.

Comments

[Kyle Brandt]

serverfault.com/questions/48543/… , See Micheal's Answer.

[Zoredache]

I can't find the reference anywhere, but I am almost certain I found a page describing where you could get a count of sessions via snmp.

[jldugger]

SNMP, I like. Some of the admins fear NPRE.

[jldugger]

I'm intrigued and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Could you elaborate?

[Keith Stokes]

In Windows 2003, go to Start>Administrative Tools>Terminal Services Configuration. There is a similar app in 2000 and 2008. Double-click Connections and RDP-Tcp. Choose the Sessions tab in the properties. Click "Overide User Settings" and set "End Disconnected Sessions", "Active Session Limit" and "Idle Session Limit" accordingly.

[Berzemus]

For those who wonder what check_nt_wrapper does, the same can be obtained by: "check_nt!COUNTER!-l "\\\\Terminal Services\\Active Sessions" -w 30 -c 45"