Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager

September 30, 2024

Let’s talk about Remote Desktop Managers. Devolutions (DVLS) Remote Desktop Manager (RDM) has been a leader in Remote Desktop Management solutions for a long time. If you need to connect to whatever type of system, DVLS RDM likely supports it. Check out the DLVS RDM Tech Sheet and take a look at all of the RDM features. In this blog, we’ll take a look at using Devolutions’ Remote Desktop Manager for my home lab.

Note: My company, KeyVault Solutions, is a proud member of the Devolutions Reseller program. At the time of the writing of this blog, I’m a paid contractor for Devolutions.

Prerequisites —

Access to your target server(s) via RDP, SSH.
Devolutions RDM — https://devolutions.net/remote-desktop-manager
Windows and RHEL server to connect to

Let’s take a look around —

In using Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager, there are a lot of options and customizations however you don’t need to worry about that out of the gate. We’ll take a look around the RDM interface to get more familiar.

Open Devolutions RDM
See below for the RDM UI areas.

You can adjust the Ribbon layout from the top right drop-down arrow. Choose which one that works best for you.

If you end up with lots of RDM entries and need to quickly find one? Set your favorites. Right click on the entry and click Favorite.

Then in the Navigation Area, click on the Star on the bottom middle to see your favorites.

Want to see your recent RDM connections? Click on Recent at the bottom of the Navigation area.

In need of Dark mode? See below.

We’ll take a look at creating new RDM entries next.

RDP to a Windows Server —

There are a number of out of the box templates to choose from. Let’s set up an RDP connection to our server first.

Open Devolutions RDM if not already running.
On the left navigation pane, right click and click New entry…
Search for RDP, then click and select the RDP (Microsoft Remote Desktop) option.

Name the entry, RDP-Server.
Populate the host we’ll be connecting to. For example, Server.acme.com
Populate the Username and Password fields you’ll be using. For example, administrator is the username, and it’s password.

Click Add.
Your new RDP-Server entry is shown in the navigation pane.

Double click the RDP-Server entry. You’re immediately logged into the server with the entry’s set credentials.

You’re connected!

Create another RDP connector —

Let’s create another RDP connector, but this time for our Utility server.

Right click on the RDP-Server entry, click Duplicate.

Adjust the name for this one to be RDP-Utility.
Update the host name that we’ll be connecting to — Utility.acme.com.

Click Add.
Double click on the RDP-Utility entry on the left navigation pane.

You’re now connected to the Utility server.

SSH to a RHEL Server —

Let’s switch things up and connect to our RHEL server via SSH.

Right click on the navigation pane and click Create New entry.
Search for SSH, then select the SSH terminal template.

Name the entry, then set the host, username, and password fields. In this example for my home lab, I’m using SSH-RHEL, RHEL as the Host, and keyvault as the username with the password set.