Since VRDP is backwards-compatible to RDP, you can use any standard RDP viewer to connect to such a remote virtual machine. For this to work, you must specify the IP address of your host system, not of the virtual machine, as the server address to connect to. You must also specify the port number that the VRDP server is using.

The following examples are for the most common RDP viewers:

• On Windows, you can use the Microsoft Terminal Services Connector, mstsc.exe, that is included with Windows. Press the Windows key + R, to display the Run dialog. Enter mstsc to start the program. You can also find the program in Start, All Programs, Accessories, Remote Desktop Connection. If you use the Run dialog, you can enter options directly. For example:

  mstsc 1.2.3.4:3389

  Replace 1.2.3.4 with the host IP address, and 3389 with a different port, if necessary.

  • IPv6 addresses must be enclosed in square brackets to specify a port. For example: mstsc [fe80::1:2:3:4]:3389

  • When connecting to localhost in order to test the connection, the addresses localhost and 127.0.0.1 might not work using mstsc.exe. Instead, the address 127.0.0.2[:3389] has to be used.

• On other systems, you can use the standard open source rdesktop program. This ships with most Linux distributions.

  With rdesktop, use a command line such as the following:

  $ rdesktop -a 16 -N 1.2.3.4:3389

  Replace 1.2.3.4 with the host IP address, and 3389 with a different port, if necessary. The -a 16 option requests a color depth of 16 bits per pixel, which we recommend. For best performance, after installation of the guest operating system, you should set its display color depth to the same value. The -N option enables use of the NumPad keys.

• You can use the Remmina remote desktop client with VRDP. This application is included with some Linux distributions, such as Debian and Ubuntu.

• If you run the KDE desktop, you can use krdc, the KDE RDP viewer. A typical command line is as follows:

  $ krdc rdp://1.2.3.4:3389

  Replace 1.2.3.4 with the host IP address, and 3389 with a different port, if necessary. The rdp:// prefix is required with krdc to switch it into RDP mode.

• With Sun Ray thin clients you can use uttsc, which is part of the Sun Ray Windows Connector package. See the Sun Ray documentation for details.