VMware Horizon Community
blabarbera
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Pool power policy ignored

Has anyone run into an issue where the pool power policy is being ignored, or not applied to all VM's in the pool? I am having an issue right now with one pool in particular in which I can't seem to get the power policy to apply in part or entirely. For instance, I originally had the policy set to "ensure VM's are powered on", but I wanted to change it so that no power action was taken. When I set the pool power policy to "Take no action" and then attempt to suspend the VM's, they are all immediately powered back on.

I've tried restarting the connection server, and even gone as far as completely reinstalling VMware Tools and the View agent - no joy.

Any other ideas to try? Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior? A web search doesn't turn up much.

Thanks!

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11 Replies
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Is it a case where you have the available VM option to high?   I think if you have that set to 10 then it will always make sure 10 machines are powered on no matter what the power on policy is set to. 

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blabarbera
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I don't see this setting anywhere. These aren't linked-clones. I think the setting you speak of only applies to a linked-clone pool, no?

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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

That setting is located under the provisioning section of the Pool settings.

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blabarbera
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

2014-07-11_09-41.jpg

These are the only settings I see...

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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Ok, so this looks like a manual pool.  Is it a dedicated or floating pool?

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blabarbera
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Right. It's dedicated.

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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Per the documentation for a manual dedicated pool the power policy is only applied to unassigned desktops unless you use the "ensure all the desktops are powered on".  

Manual pool with dedicated assignment

To unassigned desktops only.

On assigned desktops, power operations are initiated by session management. Virtual machines are powered on when a user requests an assigned desktop and are powered off or suspended when the user logs off.

Note

The Ensure desktops are always powered on policy applies to assigned and unassigned desktops.

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blabarbera
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

That's the problem I'm having. The power policy is set to "Take no action", however when I suspend an unassigned VM it is immediately powered back on. The previous setting for this pool was "Ensure desktops are always powered on." - which seems to be sticking, and it seems to be sticking to an unassigned VM at that.

I'm not aware of any other settings that could be interfering.

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eeg3
Commander
Commander

Is the account View uses powering it up? If you place the desktop into Maintenance Mode, does it not power it up then?

If the answer to both is yes, then I'd say something is wonky. Are you able to move it to another pool and see if it does it then with the "take no power action" option enabled?

Blog: http://blog.eeg3.net
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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

I like eeg3's suggestion of moving one of the machines to a different pool and see if the settings will apply correctly.    Given the manual nature of the pool it shouldn't be to much of a hassle. 

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blabarbera
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Ok. So I did a bit of reading as clearly my expectation of what a power policy does and how it should behave is slightly different from VMware's. The screenshot from mittim posted is essentially correct. The power policy is only applied once the user logs off. So, in my case a change to the power policy does not result in an immediate change to the power state of the VM - which is kind of what I was expecting.

I could use some clarification on this point though -

If you read the previous page of the admin guide it states:

"For manual pools with desktops that are managed by vCenter Server, View Manager ensures that a spare desktop is powered on so that users can connect to it. The spare desktop is powered on no matter which power policy is in effect."


What classifies a spare desktop? I am assuming  a spare is an unassigned desktop? If so, then the documentation is a little misleading. According to the excerpt that mittim posted the power policy should be applied to unassigned desktops, but the documentation also states that one desktop in each manual pool is essentially immune if it is designated as the spare.


If I can get the definition of a "spare", then I can figure out whether that's what's causing my problem, as the affected VM is the last unassigned desktop in the pool - which makes me think it's being designated as a spare and thus ignoring my power policy.

VMware View 5.2 Documentation Library

Why can't I just decide how I want the VM's to be managed?!?

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