mab2

Hi Junyi

This looks really good with the improvement to web session sizes! Is it live now in the current Gateway version?

Will the recording work for all sessions including web? This is one of the primary ways we work.

About video recordings, the problem is that video in high fps takes a lot of space, and video in low fps can be finicky to playback in many players.

Is there an internal tool that can properly playback videos, even at low fps? Or a recommended external tool?

The review process of the recording needs to be stable and consistent.

Another question to make sure i understand how recording works:

Is the whole RDM recorded constantly at once? Or is each session recorded individually? Individual recording could cause a lot of clutter due to inactivity in background sessions. We need to have a logical streamlined layout of the files when having to review actions from a user.

1. In your example, it is both a and c. It is mainly audit related for our selves and our ISO 27001. However we also sometimes use it on demand as evidence or to see how a certain change was made.

2. We are not locked to screenshots per se. It's just the solution we found that encompasses a good mix of stability, storage space, and traceability - without a lot of empty documentation (since it only captures on click). If a superior alternative is found, we wouldn't mind switching.

3. They are all opened as embedded tabs inside RDM and thus they are screenshotted as well. We never use a server's browser to do work. When we connect to a server entry in RDM it is to manage something related to that specific server.

4. A technician shouldn't be able to disable or pause it. It must be controlled and configured centrally, and it needs to survive auditor scrutiny as it's important for our certifications and contracts.

5. Typically we check the logs in RDM itself from when a given user was logged onto a session, then we use this datestamp in TS Monitor where we can sort both on RDS server, username and of course time. There may be a lot of screenshots in this time period so sometimes we have to navigate back and forth before we find the right one. TS Monitor has a web interface where the screenshots are essentially shown in a gallery.

6. I'd say a typical operations employee (typically very often in RDM) is around 150 MB per day, ca. 1500 screenshots. It uses webp for compression.

One thing is the storage consumption of the video, another thing is the potential hours of inactivity which would cause needless clutter and be annoying to search through.

Hi Marc-André

Yes we are using RDM on a remote server through Parallels Client and on that server we are using SoftActivity TS Monitor to take screenshots of every click so we have documentation of all changes made. Since it takes screenshots of the entire app, it only records the active session, where as how i understand the native RDM recording feature will record every open session simultaneously even if they are not currently worked on.

This makes our current solution a lot more storage efficient, while also being easier to sort through since low fps videos that the RDM screen recording uses can often cause trouble during playback. And high fps video captures a lot more data than necessary. Especially if it also records inactive sessions. In our work flow we often have multiple sessions open that we use throughout the day, which would quickly congest the storage server.

If RDM could only record the current session in screenshots, either every second or two, we could use RDM natively and locally for hopefully much smoother performance than our current remote app solution - and maybe even take advantage of some other devolutions gateway features such as Entra SSO.

-Malthe

I see on your roadmap that you plan on rebuilding the session recording engine. Perhaps this can be implemented alongside that?

I feel like this would benefit many customers, not only us. Especially in the EU where GDPR is important

We are currently using RDM via Parallels Client where a software is installed to record every click so we can document all changes made on our customers as an MSP. Both on servers and on websites such as M365, Azure and DNS. This is a requirement for our ISO certification.

We would however love to use RDM locally with the gateway screen recording, but we had a meeting and got told that only possibility was screen recording on all open sessions simultaneously and optionally in low framerate video which can have play back issues and take up a lot of storage.

A feature that screen captures only the active session or the entire app window on every click or every 1 to 2 seconds through the gateway instead of video would solve our issues and would allow us a hopefully better and smoother experience with the RDM.

Screenshots take up less storage and don't have compatibility issues with viewing / playback.