Horizon Floating Pool to shift workers?

[romatlo32]

Hello folks,

I have a pool of two VMs that are to be shared by many users in shifts around the world.

I know I can set the pool to logoff if a user were to disconnect to avoid the next user not being able to login.

But what about if a user does not disconnect and just walks away?

Are there idle timers that could be useful here?

Curious if others have addressed this scenario in the Horizon environment?

Thanks

[BenFB]

Are the shift workers using a shared account or do they each have their own accounts?

You can use GPO to configure idle timeout to disconnect a user that is not active. Then set the pool "Automatically logoff after disconnect" setting to "Immediately" or a low value.

[romatlo32]

Thank you!!!

They each have their own account.

Would this work for PCoIP as well?

Going to try it...

[BenFB]

I just verified that it works with both Blast and PCoIP. I've not seen an official way to implement this from VMware. What I've found in the past is a few creative ways that all involve calling tsdiscon.exe. One is to configure a scheduled task that runs when the user has been idle. I've also seen users leverage the screen saver.

[romatlo32]

Thank you BenFB​

Could you please share the GPO setting that you are referring to?

[BenFB · Accepted solution]

I don't have the specifics since another team manages GPO. They said they created a scheduled task that runs when the user has been idle for X amount of time and then executed "tsdiscon.exe". I did a search and these articles seem to cover it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/7ia3g8/disconnect_vmware_horizon_7_session_when_idle/

VMware View – Implementing Idle User Auto-Logout | J. Gregs Brain Corral

https://robbeekmans.net/uncategorized/disconnect-vmwareview-vdi-session/

[romatlo32]

Thank you for that.  I've read about that and have been trying to get the stupid task scheduler to kick off when idle and having a hard time with it...which I believe is common.

I will review your articles, thank you!!!

Will close this thread asap.

[BenFB]

Good luck! If you have any questions I can ask our GPO team for more info. If you don't mind marking my prior response as the correct answer I would appreciate it.

[romatlo32]

Thanks.  Well, since you said that. 

It would be overly great if you had a couple of screen shots of the task schedule settings.

The articles I've read are so confusing and I have mine setup, but does not kick off.

Otherwise, if I don't hear from you, I will mark you last answer correct.

Thank you again.

[BenFB]

This is what they sent over. I hope this works for you.

[romatlo32]

Thank you!!!!!