In my day-to-day work, I typically connect to over a dozen servers via Remote Desktop Protocol(RDP). While I don’t connect to every one on a daily basis, there are days that I connect to nearly a dozen, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t connect to at least 2-3. Up until now, I’ve been using Windows 7 jump lists. This is OK, but I ran into a limitation, in that Win7 limits the ‘most recently used’ items– so all my servers don’t always show up.
Well, I recently found a solution. The “RDCMan”, or “Remote Desktop Connection Manager” tool, directly from Microsoft. This is a free tool that lets you manage multiple connections, configure groups, sub groups, etc. You can also define settings at the group or server level, which makes things very quick to setup(i.e. many of my servers use the same credentials, so I can set the credentials at the group level, instead of the server level).
The GUI is a little dated, but still fully functional. I can connect to the desktops within the RDCMan frame, or I can ‘undock’, and have the RDP connection free-floating– this is particularly good for a specific RDP connection that I leave open all day, and need quick and easy access to.
Here’s a screenshot, and an associated link to more information:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2010/06/11/3410093.aspx
Download link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=21101