VMware’s 2.1 release of VDM brought with it the option to ‘Allow blocking of incoming RDP connections that are not from VDM Clients’.
This is great, but what if you want to administer the Virtual Machines using RDP? There isn’t a way of changing this behaviour in the web interface, so what do you do?
It transpires that there is a registry tweak that a customer of mine (thanks Tony) forwarded to me that can change this feature.
This registry tweak needs to be completed on all the Virtual Machines with the VDM agent installed.
Firstly create a new key called Configuration if it doesn’t already exist here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Agent\Configuration
Then add a new String value under the Configuration key called AllowDirectRDP and give it a value of true.
You may need to reboot the Virtual Machine if the change is not immediate.
You can download a reg file here to speed up the process.