Multiple Sessions Occurring per User

[oiler110]

We have several floating pools where users will sign in on a second device while a session is active on another device and end up with a new session rather than joining their previous session. Allow multiple sessions per user is set to no, and automatic logoff after disconnect is set to never (as per http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100758...). The cases I have personally witnessed were using a secondary device to connect, but I am wondering if some users are just trying to reconnect after a session timeout and ending up with a new session as well.

Has anyone else had issues with users receiving new sessions rather than successfully connecting back to an existing session that they are just disconnected from?

Thanks.

[memaad]

Hi ,

Can you disable this setting on pool "Allow multiple sessions per user"

Regards

Mohammed

[oiler110]

Hi Mohammed,

Thanks for your reply. I edited the original post just after posting to include that we have "Allow multiple sessions per user" set to no in these pools.

Tim

[memaad]

Hi,

If user connect from same machine, then do users get the existing desktop or new. Also what is version of view. From when you started noticing this issue.

Regards

Mohammed

[oiler110]

Hi Mohammed,

I haven't personally experienced or witnessed users connecting from the same machine getting a new session - they tend to get the existing one. I have witnessed a user get a new session rather than their existing one when connecting from a different machine/device. It doesn't happen every time either, most times it will successfully connect you to your existing session (it's hard to reproduce as it seems fairly random). View version 5.2. I guess I would've first noticed this a few weeks ago when I was looking at the desktop inventory in view administrator and noticed that one user had two sessions - one which was connected and one which was disconnected.

Thanks,

Tim

[memaad]

Hi,

Are you using view persona management ?

Regards

Mohammed

[oiler110]

Yes we are...

[memaad]

Hi,

How many connection server do you have  ? if you have more than one, then you have to check if there is replication problem between these servers.  Also check if there is any time skew between desktop and view connection server.

Regards

Mohammed

[oiler110]

Sorry for the delayed response. We have two connection servers. A member of our server group mentioned that the time is the same across both servers as well as the desktops. He also checked the replication status and mentioned that things were fine there as well.

I performed our weekly refresh on Sunday, and there has yet to be a duplicate session this week. A bit frustrating that there is no easy way to replicate the issue.

[nzorn]

I've seen this issue as well, but have been unable to duplicate.  Problem started with View 5.1.2, had not seen it before that.

[kingmarino]

Having the same problem here with Horizon View 5.2  We can reproduce the problem by stoping the VMware View agent on a VDI worstation and reloging to View.  What think the probleme is that the agent gets fuzzy somewhere in time and from that moment does not send its status to the connection server(s).  When the users log back to view, he gets a new session because the status of the first session was not updated correctly.  No, how to solve this problem ? Help needed

[memaad]

Hi ALL,

What I suspect is persona management not synching properly. Worth looking into persona management logs.

Regards

Mohammed

[kingmarino]

Mohammed,

We also tough about Persona Management being possibly the problem but we don't understand why it could related to reconnecting to a second VDI session instead of reconnecting to the original VDI session.  If I remember correctly, I also saw this problem with View 5.1.x without Persona Management.  If you really find concluding evidence that Persona is the problem, don't hesitate to send us info's about it..

Regards

[nzorn]

I believe we are installing the persona management option, but we are not using it.

[memaad]

Hi kingmarino ,

As of now  I dont have any data to review. However if you are able to replicate the issue without persona management.  Then raise support request with VMware.

Also make sure that there is no Time sync issue  between the view connection servers and domain controller.

Regards

Mohammed

[stevied82]

Hello,

Did anyone find the root cause to this issue? Is this related to the Connection Server or client(s) - View client version or Thin\Zero Client firmware version?

Please advise.

[nzorn]

I've also seen this happen when I rebooted a Connection Server, the user(s) were then kicked off, and when they logged back in they were given a new session.  It then shows they have 2 sessions (1 connected & 1 disconnected).

[memaad]

Hi,

We see this issue, if you are using some application which has agent need to be installed on virtual desktop. If you create support request with VMware, we can have look at it.

Regards

Mohammed Emaad

[ooScouseoo]

We have seen this a number of times, A pool set to disallow multiple connections but users having multiple vm's assigned.

This usually occurs when there is either an issue with the view agent installed on the base image.. We frequently see protocol errors also when this occurs when reviewing the desktops in the view management console.

The fix is to remove the VMware view agent completely from the base image, reboot and then reinstall the agent. This fixes the protocol errors and hence stops the duplicate sessions occurring.

We are using PCOIP display protocol.

[nzorn]

I've also noticed that for some reason you can starve the View Agent of it's resources.  For instance if a process starts to consume a lot of memory it will eventually starve the View Agent of it's resources and disconnect the user from the session.  The user will not be able to reconnect until you kill the process that is consuming all of the memory and then the user can resume the session.

So why doesn't the View Agent have some type of priority or reservation ahead of other applications?