Connecting Remotely to Servers for Administrative Purposes

When you want to connect to a specific RD Session Host server to change its settings or manage a user session, you want to connect to a specific server. You don't want to go a random server in a farm and you don't want to pay an RDS client access license (CAL) when you aren't using the server, just managing it.

Prior to Windows Server 2008, to make an administrative connection, you'd use the /console switch with the server name. Beginning in Windows Server 2008, this changed to the /admin switch, which does not connect you to the console but does allow you to administer the server. Functionally, /admin is equivalent to /console.

Although the /admin switch is functionally equivalent, it is not syntactically equivalent. If you use the /console switch from Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 6 or later, you might not notice that it doesn't work. The /console switch is ignored-you still log on, but you will use up an RDS CAL. To start a remote session for administrative purposes, start RDC from the Run dialog box or command prompt and add the /admin switch like this.

You can also specify the /admin switch when adding connections to the RSAT. The /console switch creates an admin connection when connecting from an older RDP client to a Windows Server 2008 R2 RD Session Host server. Plug in /admin when working from RDC 5.2 and Mstsc.exe will open a dialog box that explains the proper syntax for the command, because that version of the RDC client is not aware of the /admin switch. Unfortunately, this means that you'll need to change the connection syntax depending on whether you're connecting from a current or older version of Mstsc.exe.

In Windows Server 2003, you could make two remote administrative connections and one console connection from the physical console, all without using a Terminal Services client access license (TS CAL). Windows Server 2008 and later permit two simultaneous administrative connections. This might look like a reduction in licensed connections, but the previous model was also a convenience. It was possible for two administrators to make connections, leave them connected, and effectively block anyone else from making an administrative connection to the terminal server because the remote logon count was at capacity. You had to have the console connection just to reset one of those remote connections.

Beginning in Windows Server 2008, you could choose to disconnect an administrative connection if you needed to make one and the number of admin connections was already at capacity. The other administrator will find his or her session as it was left, and you are not forced to log on from the console to disconnect the session.