Consolidating Connections Is Just a Couple of Clicks Away

In my organization, we've standardized the naming convention for servers to

<country-code>XXX

where XXX are numbers. Over the years, we've grown to more than 100 servers worldwide, which makes managing Remote Desktop Connections for these servers tedious. For example, our administrators use the Remote Desktop Connection program (mstsc.exe) to view or manage servers running Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS), Microsoft SQL Server, and other applications. Therefore, when they manage the servers, they must either remember the server name or create multiple Remote Desktop Connection shortcuts with meaningful names that point to the servers.

A better solution is to consolidate those Remote Desktop Connection shortcuts. That way, all the remote servers can be displayed in a single window, making it easier to find and use them. To achieve this consolidation, you use the Remote Desktops snap-in, which you install through the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack (adminpak.msi). Follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, select Run. Type tsmmc.msc, then click OK.
2. Right-click Remote Desktops and select Add new connection.
3. In the Add New Connection dialog box, which Figure 2 shows, provide the necessary information, including a meaningful connection name. Click OK.
4. After the connection is created, administrators can right-click it and customize the properties so that the servers they need to access are displayed.

Figure 3 shows an example of what a consolidated Remote Desktop Connections window looks like.

James Lim