Connection Protocols

Remote connection protocols supported by Keeper Connection Manager

Keeper Connection Manager and Apache Guacamole support multiple protocols through a common, centralized gateway. The "guacd" service sits between the Guacamole web application and the remote desktops and dynamically translates between low-level remote desktop protocols and the Guacamole protocol, applying additional optimization and compression in the process.

Installing support for a protocol

Within Keeper Connection Manager, support for each protocol is provided via separate packages. Only the packages for protocols that you will be using need be installed:

Protocol	Keeper Connection Manager package
HTTP/HTTPS (Remote Browser Isolation)	kcm-libguac-client-http
VNC	kcm-libguac-client-vnc
RDP	kcm-libguac-client-rdp
SSH	kcm-libguac-client-ssh
Telnet	kcm-libguac-client-telnet
Kubernetes	kcm-libguac-client-kubernetes
MySQL	kcm-libguac-client-mysql
PostgreSQL	kcm-libguac-client-postgres
Microsoft SQL Server	kcm-libguac-client-sql-server

When using any particular connection, the package providing support for that connection's underlying protocol must already be installed on the server running the guacd service. If support for the underlying protocol has not been installed, users attempting to use the connection will see an error message, and system administrators will see a message like the following within the systemd journal:

guacd[8]: WARNING: Support for protocol "rdp" is not installed

If a needed package was not installed and a message like that above is logged, installing the needed package will solve the problem. If using the keeper/guacd Docker image, all protocol support is already installed. If using the @kcm-guacamole package group, as described within the installation instructions, protocol support for HTTPS, VNC, RDP, and SSH is installed.

Configuring the protocol of a connection

When using one of the supported databases, administrators can define new connections using Guacamole's web interface, selecting the protocol to be used for that connection from a dropdown menu labeled "Protocol":

Protocol Selection

If defining a connection through a mechanism which does not leverage one of the supported databases, such as via /etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml, LDAP schema modifications, or encrypted JSON, the protocol will must be specified using the unique, internal name for that protocol:

Protocol	Internal name
HTTP/HTTPS	http
VNC	vnc
RDP	rdp
SSH	ssh
Telnet	telnet
Kubernetes	kubernetes
MySQL	mysql
PostgreSQL	postgresql
Microsoft SQL Server	sql-server