External customers connecting to our horizon frequently disconnects.

[carymiller]

Have a situation. External customers that are connecting to our Horizon workspace (using credentials provided by our company) frequently get disconnected. 

These companies are using horizon or Azure as well for their own companies, and their user id's are not federated to our company.

If the user logs into our Horizon environment using a non domain joined machine, it works fine without disconnects.

Need a solution so that external customers do not get disconnected frequently.

[ymagalif]

carymiller,

Possibilities:

1. Machines that are domain joined have Group Policies coming down that adjust Windows Firewall Ports and thus may periodically block some ports.
2. There may be other Group Policy settings that affect Horizon Client and work OK for their own internal Horizon, but do not apply to your situation.
3. Are there Group Policies for Windows, like screensaver or time-out policies that are different between the customer's environment and yours?
4. Domain joined machines may have corporate security software (antivirus or behavioral security), that can detect connections and restrict some ports/addresses. Make sure external customers have exclusions applied for Horizon Client and exclusions to allow connections to your Horizon URLs.
5. Are the customers connecting to the VPN first (either on domain or non-domain joined), and is that behavior different for the other method?
6. This also may be something else rather than domain:
   1. Are non-domain joined machines being used from a different point on the Internet (i.e. Domain-joined on corporate network, Non-domain joined at Home), and as a result there are different connection quality characteristics between them (latency, jitter, bandwidth)?
   2. Do non-domain machines have a different build of Windows and/or a different version of Horizon Client with different settings?

Sincerely,

Yury Magalif

[lirick]

Hi carymiller,

There are too many factors might cause disconnection, below questions should be benefit to narrow down the issue besides the possibilities provided by Yury:
1. When saying External Customer gets disconnect, which client are external customers using? and what's version of Horizon?
2. How is this issue for different clients, does it happen to other clients(like HTML Access, Mac clients, etc.)?
And on the same client host where disconnect happens, does HTML Access show same behavior?
3. Regarding to "disconnect", is it Horizon remote desktop/application "disconnect" or Horizon Server session disconnect?
If only desktop/app disconnect, credential will not be asked again when connecting to Horizon Server from Horizon Client. or that should be Horizon Server session disconnect.
4. Considering different Horizon Server and settings are being used for the connection from Domain Joined and Non-Domain Joined client hosts, network policy might be used, if Horizon connection from external domain joined client host, then disconnect after a specific time, if Horizon connection is from non-domain joined client host, session will not be disconnected, in this case, LB policy might be used.
5. Is Workspace ONE Access being used by the customer? in this case, different network range for connection might be used for domain joined and non-domain joined computers, which might have different Horizon connection path.

[ymagalif]

Lirick,

All excellent suggestions!

Carymiller,

Please follow lirick's and my questions to narrow down the problem. However, much more discovery and data collection is necessary to get to the bottom of such an issue.

Sincerely,

Yury Magalif