What needs improvement with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?

The current process I have to go through to get a Windows 11 VM up and running is difficult. Windows 10 worked a whole lot better than Windows 11.

When we update the environment, we face problems sometimes, and the users cannot use the system.

We face frequent disconnections.

The stability must be improved.

Teams component can be a bit cumbersome to use. It takes some time to get it working as expected, but it's fine once you get used to it.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services needs to improve its security.

Microsoft should be more compatible with other operating system.

The biggest reason we don't use the solution for our company's clients is the solution's prices. In our company, we do our own hosting through a hosting partner since this method offers a much cheaper price. Finding entry-level servers that are limited in the IOPS is frustrating. In our company, we feel quite restricted on the speed that we can get out of the entry-level type of service that we use, making it difficult to sell the solution, especially when clients compare the cloud solution to an on-premises solution.

Users have reported that sometimes when we try to initialize an application, the session disappears one out of ten times. So, maybe it can be one of the areas of improvement. We are still investigating the issue, but we believe it might be due to a network or server issue. Because this was the only issue I experienced was with the initialization of the session, which affected the stability of the service.

When a change is made in Box, it affects all the services, which is annoying. The performance of Remote Desktop Services could be better.

The solution should introduce a chat feature for end users.

We'd like more granular security control of the desktop services. Right now, we have a third-party solution that does this. We need to control via group policies. We need to be able to implement these policies in a simpler way in order to control users in a more granular way.

I don't really like the solution in general. It's like Microsoft made me use it. I didn't have a choice per se. The price is too high. I can use a VPN and get the same results while using an actual desktop. I'd like to have more courses or training available.

There isn't any feature missing. I don't like Windows too much. The whole idea of the remote desktop is nonsense in the Unix world. The pricing could be better.

What needs improvement in Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is the connection when I'm outside the network. It should be more accessible. For example, if I use a public network, I want to connect remotely more effortlessly, from my internal network, without much requirement. I want to connect easily from an external network even when I'm not in my enterprise or company. It should be easy to connect or integrate Microsoft Teams, for example, with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services.

The solution isn't as good as the Citrix option.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services could improve by allowing the sharing of the office application. For example, the ability to replace a PC when something is wrong.

There is a limitation on the number of concurrent users. The limitation is 20, and you have to spin up more than one server, which is not needed at this stage because of customers. So they reduced it to 12 active users. So if you want to deploy more than 12, you should assess other solutions.

Users have to re-enter their ID and password every time they log on, which is tedious and repetitive. It would be better if the system could save users' passwords between sessions.

We'd like to see more integration with other vendors. The solution could offer better, easier scalability. Technical support response times could be better.

The performance depends on connectivity. The refreshing screen rate is based on the internet and the bandwidth. It can therefore be unstable. It would be nice if they had a portable version. This would make it much better. Sometimes we cannot install it on some machines. We just want to use it once and don't need to actually install it anyway, yet we can't.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services could improve by having a better application for managing multiple sessions. There used to be one but they stopped supporting it.

I can't think of an area that is lacking currently. We had some instability during the implementation process. This has since been resolved.

If anybody who's going to be using this, I’d warn that some of the dependencies that are very helpful when the window servers are running it would be best if they have network-level access enabled. It can speed up authentication. However, it really it also works well with TLS security as well as others on the certificate level. That said, I really don't know if I would start swinging in the dark after that. Usually, during a privileged session, you don't want the privileged credential password being visible, nor maybe would you want keystrokes or screen scrapes to take place. One of our first problems was the only time RDP ever gave me a problem was when an organization would build a new server. They would automatically build it. They would name it. They would put the connection settings on it. And then they would also put a certificate on it. Then the engineering team that ordered the server would then rename the server, which would nullify the certificate. That's the only time that RDP or remote desktop ever gave me a problem. And that was not the remote desktop's problem. It was a process flaw. The only problems that you're going to have with the remote desktop are going to be firewall ports, security, and NLA, which is a net network level access control, or TLS transfer layer security or some other SSL-type of security. Those are the only times you get into any issues. And that's only due to the fact that the originating site is not compatible with the target site. However, that's rare. That said, even then, that's more on the rare side. I'm a PAM architect, a privileged access management architect. I usually knock down those problems before we get to them since I ran it all a hundred times.

Sometimes the server stops working, and we don’t know why. Occasionally we’ll get a message to the effect of "There is no remote license."

The product can be improved by ensuring that people can access it from anywhere and be leveraged on any kind of device virtually. We are leveraging it on some laptops and PCs, but not on mobile devices. I would like to see Virtual Desktop leverage these devices in the future. Furthermore, I would like to be able to leverage it on other operating systems. Currently, we only leverage it on Microsoft Windows. By being able to access other technologies, companies and users can use multiple technologies.

We've had issues with security breaches. The main problem is that if we are using this with the individual computer and using a remote desktop, there are some loopholes there. When I implemented this on an individual computer within two or three days it got captured. There is a problem with the printing and sharing of this program. There is a lot of customized software leaving the market due to this. If somebody wants to run a specific program with the specific settings, they don't want full access to the computer. Then there are some problems that have to be resolved. We'd like to have an additional control panel available in order o more easily give resources to the computers. There are a lot of restrictions and having a program panel would make things easier. It would help us set up the right access and permissions.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services could improve by having graphical acceleration.

It's not as reliable a protocol as, for example, Citrix. The training profiles could be better. I'd like to have more granular remote profiles. We'd like to see on-site multi-fact authentification.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is only available for the professional version of the Windows operating system. This restricts a lot of users. The feature should be available for all versions.

The solution is under the Microsoft infrastructure and therefore does not allow for service under other operating systems. We'd like, in the future, if it would work with Linux or Unix-based operating systems or even Mac.

There are times I get disconnected from the service and when one or two attempts to establish a remote connection. Microsoft should show where the problem is, I have to find it by myself.

I've sometimes had trouble setting up an RDS connection if I want a specific user to be able to log in with their credentials and have the RDS element retain those settings so that the password isn't required each time. There can be issues with that.

From the perspective of an IT professional, Microsoft Remote Desktop is very easy to use. However, it could be made easier to use for the end user, especially when it comes to activating it. Microsoft could also improve the sustainability of this product, especially in terms of account redundancy. They could also add something like a log to make more easy to use so that they can easily prevent some of the failures. I think Microsoft can do better.

Microsoft Desktop Services is stable but it takes up a lot of resources in the CPU. It's a bit heavier than some solutions.

We've had a few occasions when the application has crashed suddenly, possibly due to updates. Microsoft updates should not directly impact the application and rather than releasing post hotfixes, it would be better to carry out testing before releasing it to the environment. It's a challenge for us; the new application is upgraded, but there's an incompatibility. It should be the other way around - testing in the lab environment and then commercially released. An additional feature we'd like to see would be cross-platform support. With more OSs in the market whether Microsoft, iMac or Android applications, it would be good to have a smooth transition between cross-platform support both in terms of operating system and in terms of devices. Moving from tabs to mobiles to desktops to laptops to notebooks - the transition between multiple OSs and multiple hardwares.

The solution should have better security. It is overpriced.

In a future release, they could improve by providing more advanced technology and better buffering for if the connection is degraded or lost. For example, if I am connected on my LAN or WAN, and there is any latency in the network while I am connected it will stay connected for one or two minutes. Without any buffering, the connection will be disconnected, and the work is lost.

There could be some improvement in the integration of the solution.

It could be made simpler from a management perspective. It should be easier to set it up for desktop printing.

Its look and feel could be updated. In Azure Remote Desktop Services (RDS), which is a VDI solution, we would like to see linked clones. It is a Hyper-V solution, and it doesn't support linked clones and uses a lot of storage. That's why we don't use it. VMware has a similar solution that supports linked clones for the master image.

It would be helpful if there was a feature that notifies you when the internet is down so you're not working for nothing, it should be something that pops right up where you can see it. The internet is always going to go down and the product seems to notice that it's down before my VPN notifies me that it's gone down. You're working and nothing's happening and it takes time to get the notification. For an additional feature, I'd like to see Remote Desktop specify which computer Zoom meetings will run on. I've joined a couple of sessions from home, and when I turn on my video, all you see is my empty desk chair at the office.

The user interface needs improvement.

While it's not expensive, the pricing could always be better. I would like to see a web-based interface, instead of client installation to refresh the UI through HTML. When comparing with other vendors offering applications not with a client module, but through the web through HTML, this should be the next step for Microsoft.

I would like to be able to access the remote desktop using a web-based interface, rather than having to use the client.

There are problems with using Microsoft Teams within a virtual desktop on a mobile device. Specifically, if you are using Teams and conferencing, then there is no microphone capability. To be clear, if you install Teams directly on your mobile device then it will work. However, if you use it as an application within the virtual desktop that is running on the mobile device, it does not work. This is something that needs to be fixed.

The DB card needs improvement. I have a lot of experience with other competitors and Citrix is better than VMware and Microsoft. Citrix has more extensive features.

My customers are worried that the RDP protocol can be easily compromised and would like the option to use an alternative like Blast. The details of RDP are available to everyone and it has been used in industry for many years, so people know what points are vulnerable. If there were a patented protocol available as an option then people would be happy because they will be more assured of the security. Tweaking this would be really good in terms of security.

Security in the connection between us and our clients' servers is something that can be improved.

We are searching for a product with better remote access and remote sessions. The user experience needs improvement.

Microsoft still has some really bad remote desktop appliances for Mac. This is really frustrating because if I'm on windows I can remove the Microsoft remote desktop applied for Windows, but I'm already using windows, I always have an option B. I can still plug directly with Microsoft management console from the windows station and still do something remotely. But on a Mac, I have to rely purely on the Microsoft Remote Desktop. If I need to pass second-factor authentication, not a one-time password thing, if I do a Microsoft remote desktop session, I have to reach the first server, which is my best one. From that server, you're actually going inside your protective network. Then on the second spot, you are not able to pass a YubiKey and go any farther. That creates the problem. We have had many support tickets.

We need to extend over a potentially slower network, and we have heard that performance over slower networks is not as good. I understand that there are other products out there that work better over slower networks. In the next release, I would like to see better performance over slower networks, and integration with Linux, but this is something that we're going to get out of Microsoft in terms of a unified solution. It rolls out to bigger issues and access management with being unified with Microsoft and Linux. This hasn't quite come together, I would have to get other products outside of Windows to get this to work. The unified solution may be a cross-platform solution, which would be great in the future.

We find the services are not as transparent as we would like for our integration with Citrix.