You may want to see which users are logged on to your Windows 2016 Server at any given time and may want to logoff a user. Users can be “active” on a server or in a “disconnected” session status which means they disconnected from the server but didn’t log off. Since disconnected sessions continue to utilize server resources, we recommend you enable a group policy to log off disconnected sessions automatically after a specific time period such as 5 minutes or X hours – easiest method is to enable a group policy to set session time limits for all users as follows:
- Cmd prompt, gpedit.msc
- Computer Configuration, Admin Templates, Windows Components, Remote Desktop Services, Remote Desktop Session Host, Session Time Limits
- Enable appropriate group policies and modify as needed
- We recommend setting this one because it will prevent disconnected sessions from consuming server resources — “Set time limit for disconnect sessions”
- After modifying group policies, you can force an update without rebooting by typing “gpupdate /force” at cmd prompt
- Applies To: Windows Server (Semi-Annual Channel), Windows Server 2016 Remote Access Server Role documentation provides instructions to deploy any of the three role services (Always On VPN, Routing and Remote Access Service, Web Application Proxy) individually or on the same server.
- Step by Steps are better than high level constructs. (I am familiar with tools like server manager, windows server essentials, ect but not with specific services like AD, Direct Access, VPN, ect.) Details: Company has approximately 15 users; We have branches in different locations we would like to give access to the files.
- In this article. Applies To: Windows Server 2016 Essentials, Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Remote Web Access in Windows Server Essentials, or in Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Windows Server Essentials Experience role installed, provides a streamlined, touch-friendly browser experience for accessing applications and data from virtually anywhere that you.
The Remote Web Access functionality in WSE 2016 is similar to RWA in WSE 2012R2. It offers easy, touch-friendly, access to data on your server. Before we can use it we have to run the Access Anywhere wizard on the server and install an SSL certificate for your domain.
Remote Access Management Windows Server 2016
By default, we now release Windows 2016 Servers with the disconnected session limit set at 5 minutes. We strongly recommend keeping this group policy at 5 minutes or change it to another time amount that you want. We don’t enable a default policy to log off “idle” sessions after X period of time but it is recommended that you enable this at X hours or X days.
To see detail on each users session (how long it has been active, if disconnected or idle, etc.), you can open a command prompt and type in “quser” which will show each user with session stats.
Remote Access In Windows Server 2016 Wikipedia
We haven’t seen this happen very frequently, but if a user logs on to the server and the screen remains black, it is likely because the user has an existing disconnected session that has not be fully logged off. To resolve this, log into the server as an Administrator and log off the User’s disconnected session. When the User logs in again, they should see their full desktop session without any issues.
Steps to view and log off users:
Remote Access To Windows Server
- Login as Administrator or account with administrator rights
- Open Task Manager by right clicking the bottom tool bar
- Click on “More” or “Detail” to view all tabs of Task Manager
- Go to the “Users” tab which will show the users that are logged on the server
- Right click on a username and select “Log Off”
We recommend that users be educated to log off from the server when their tasks are completed (start, click on username, select log-off or sign-off) instead of just disconnecting the session by clicking the X in the upper right corner which doesn’t log the user off and only disconnects the session.