Who is logged into Windows-2008

Question

We are running multiple virtual (currently four) windows-server-2008 servers. In order to be able to take down (shut down) thows servers from a central point, we would like to know if all remote sessions to those machines have been closed (logged out).

Is there a tool that would allow us to detect who has an active gui-session

• from a remote machine
• from within each virtual server?

UPDATE we are using Hyper-V

Answer 1

I'd need to know what virtualisation platform you're using in order to tell you if you were able to tell from outside of the machine, but if you're logged on to one of the VM's you can find out in Task Manager.

Right click the taskbar, select 'Task Manager' from the pop up menu and then navigate to the 'Users' tab on the dialogue box that appears.

It should tell you the username, which physical machine they're running the session on, the status and the session ID.

Answer 2

Here are some command-line utilities that you can use to list user sessions on local or remote servers.

Query user (Microsoft)

Displays information about user sessions on a terminal server.
Syntax:
query user [<UserName> | <SessionName> | <SessionID>] [/server:<ServerName>]

TSListUsers

command line utility to list both the currently connected and disconnected users, hostname, IP address and RDP session number on either the local or a remote Windows Terminal Server/RDP Server.