VMware Horizon Community
Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Appstacks not attached

We set up a Horizon 6.2 environment with linked clones and appvolumes 2.9. We are using vCenter 6.0

We have an issue that a user doesn't get his assigned appstacks attached some times. In the console of app volumes we see that the user is logged in to app volumes, when we select the user we see that the user is assigned to certain appstacks, but there are no attachements. If the user logs out and logs in again it works without any other intervention. As this is quite annoying for the users, I have tried a lot of things:

1) change FQDN in app volumes agent to ip-address

2) Work with different app volumes managers (load balancing)

3) Different pools

4) Different administrator accounts in appvolumes.

It happened with different users on different machines on different pools.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

26 Replies
Lakshman
Champion
Champion

During assigning AppStack, what type of method have you selected? Next login/Reboot or immediate assignment?

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

All appstacks are assigned via a security group in AD. They are attached when a user logs in to a VDI. Normally I select attach at next login. But it concerns here users that are not logged in at moment of assignment.

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Could you please try and check the activity log when the user logs in??

You can find it by logging into the manager and then going to Activity --> Activity log,.

normally you should see attachments happening there.

Are the disks added to the VDI the user is logging into? And how do you check that the appstack isn't attached? Are the folders actually created on the machine? And wht do you see when you go to the C:\SnapVolumesTemp\MountPoints  folder?? There should be just as many mountpoints as there are appstacks attached to the user.

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Ray,

All activity logs are sent to VMware, a case for this problem is open since mid September.

The users in our environment get 3 appstacks. If the user is affected, he doesn't get any appstack attached.  I made a modification to our login script to track the issue.   This morning it happened 6 times on about 85 logins.

In the agent log file I could see that the connection to the app volumes manager is OK. The rest is difficult to understand.

In the console I see that the user is logged in, but there are no appstacks attached. One minute later the same user logs in again and he has appstacks attached.

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hmm, strange. And when you look at the configuration of the VMWare in VCenter the disks aren't added either?

Do you happen to have some registry keys in golden image in svservice or svdriver that could cause this??

Could you please post reg keys in:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\svdriver

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\svservice

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I will check the VM again in VCenter the next time the issue occurs. I remember to have done it already and I think the disk were not attached.

Attached the registry settings of the golden image.

Beginning of this week VMware support asked me to install and reinstall the appvolumes agent in the golden image. This didn't resolve the issue.

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Looking at it I would suggest removing this key

"WaitForFirstVolumeOnly"=dword:00000000.

It seems as if the machine would wait for all volumes to be attached but my guess is that it just logs on without waiting and doesn't attach afterwards.

It is worth a try..

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

You could be right. I noticed in logins that this is ignored and that during login the attachment was still ongoing.

Let me add the description from the manual:

WaitForFirstVolumeOnly:

Defined in seconds, only hold logon for the first volume. Once the first volume is complete, the rest will be handled in the background, and the logon process is allowed to proceed. To wait for all volumes to load before releasing the logon process set this value to 0.  If undefined, default is 1

We set this value to 0 to be sure that all volumes are attached before proceeding to login.

Do you mean to remove this registry dword completely or change the value?

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I'd say try and remove it, not change the value. We never set this and it still waits for the appstacks to be attached before logging in. It could well be that it tries to attach appstacks, gets a timeout and then just proceeds without these.

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I removed this regisistry entry and recomposed the linked clone pool. This morning we had again the same issue. I checked also the affected machines in vCenter on the moment of the issue. The VM's don't have the appstack disks attached. I don't see any failing events/taks in vCenter. It is like the command to reconfigure is not sent from appvolumes manager to vCenter.

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Jason_Marshall
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Do you have Direct to Host mounting enabled?

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Mount On Host is not enabled.


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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

How many groups are these users member of in your AD?? There is a max of (I believe) 255 groups. If they are member of more groups it might be that group membership is not recognized.

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If this was the case it would go wrong each time a user logs on. All users are only sometimes affected by this issue. When they have the issue, log our and  re-logon a few minutes later again, they have their appstacks.

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

To be honest i'm lost with this issue. We never had an issue with attaching appstacks other than after we moved groups from 1 OU to the other. But then it failed every single time.

The reason I asked regarding the groups is that it seems to be more of an AD issue (looking at symptoms) then a VMWARE/Appvolumes issue. The reason that I think that is because there is no logging in Appvolumes whatsoever. Normally, if attaching fails, you would at least see any errors in logfiles of appvolumes.

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virtualkim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Noticing the same issue now and then: AppStack is not attached but is assigned and on a second try it will be attached and assigned.

I also noticed that 'assign on reboot or next login' works better than 'immediate' when the user is not logged on yet .

More testing will be done... I will keep you posted.

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Kris_vL
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

‌I sent gigabytes of logs to VMware support. The log files don't show any issue. Fact is that when a user logs on we see a logon in the console of app volumes. At that moment it goes wrong, but only in about 10 percent of the cases, the appstacks are not attached just after the login In appvolumes.I hope that VMware support Will put some more effort in this case next week. A developer should look in the code what to check what happens between the user is logged on in app volumes and the commands that are sent to vCenter for attachment of vmdk's. These commands are not sent or I do not see any trace of this on the VM's (LinkedIn clones).

VIrtualKim, do you have also a case open for this issue? I'm glad we are not the only one with this issue.

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elgwhoppo
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I would try a couple things.

  • First, rule out any AD by using direct AppStack entitlement for a subset of your userbase. Not sure why it would work for some and not others, but hey, worth ruling the AD group delivery out.
  • Also, I would try implementing mount on host. If there is any breakdown in communication between the AppVolume brokers and vCenter then the Appstack won't get mounted. It's a best practice because it removes vCenter from the critical path of application delivery, plus it's faster, and in my opinion, more reliable.

From Known Issues section of the App Volumes 2.9 Release Notes:

"When establishing concurrent connections from more than 1700 VDI desktops in multiple virtual centers to the AppVolumes Manager, Writable Volumes and AppStacks fail to attach randomly from some VDI sessions."

Methinks you might be experiencing the same issue, just with less desktops. Lack of response from support would indicate that as well. Give those two things a try. Keep us posted too please on the status of your case.

VCDX-Desktop
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clay7494
Contributor
Contributor

Hey Kris, did VMware get back with you regarding a solution?  Or were you able to figure out why the volumes were not consistently attaching?

Thanks.

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