Alert when unable to RDP or Putty

For windows there is the SAM template: Windows Remote Desktop Services

It checks a lot of things, the two most important are that the service is running and that the port responds

You can get the same thing on linux, checking for the sshd process and checking tcp port 22.

Disclaimer: These tests don't actually authenticate, so they are not 100%.  What we need are "User Experience" monitors.  We can get user experience for SSH using scrips, but I don't have a clue how to do it with RDP.

Thanks Brian. That was insightful. Please do share the user experience script for SSH. Also I suppose there is a possibility wherein RDP service might show as running but the server is hung.

Unfortunately there is a lot of ways to do this, my method for this is antiquated using plink and ssh keys.  If I were doing this new today, I would probably use Powershell+OpenSSH

Here is an article on powershell and OpenSSH:

Windows 10 SSH vs. PuTTY: Time to Switch Your Remote Access Client?

Use the SAM component for powershell scripts

Make sure on the monitoring template that you set the polling method to "agentless" so your not trying to execute powershell on the remote linux system. 

I would create a login on the linux system called like OrionSSHTest

I would add the following two commands to the bottom of ~OrionSSHTest/.bashrc

echo -e "Stastic: 0\nMessage: Success\n"

exit

Sorry I don't have it spelled out in detail, this is a case of "do as I say not as I do".