Load Balance Connection Server?

[VMMikeC]

Hi All,

I know with the replica server, you can have multiple connection servers so if one goes down, you can redirect your users to the other connection server, or you can use multiple connection servers to split up the load. What is the best method(best deployment practice) for making  the connection server highly available? Should you make use of vSphere's fault tolerance feature?

I'm posing this question in partly in regards to this below message. I really don't understand this part "Depending on your View Connection Server configuration, you might see a message such as There is no secure connection to the View Connection Server. In some cases, no message is displayed"

What setting are they referring to? Also, the only time that I've come across this message in production is when users are connecting to View via VPN connections. Are there specific settings that should be set to better support vpn connections to the connection server?

What to Do If View Client Exits Unexpectedly

View Client might exit even if you do not close it.

Problem

View Client might exit unexpectedly. Depending on your View Connection Server configuration, you might see a message such as There is no secure connection to the View Connection Server. In some cases, no message is displayed.

Cause

This problem occurs when the connection to View Connection Server is lost.

Solution

♦	Restart View Client. You can connect successfully as soon as View Connection Server is running again. If you continue to have connection problems, contact your View administrator.

Thanks,

Mike

[andrew_axon]

Mike,

You can utilise multiple View Connection Servers to provide high availability through the shared use of the ADAM instance which is replicated between these servers.

Depending on the size of your organisation and budget you may use something as simple as DNS round robin to load balance connections from View clients, or Windows Load Balancing which provides more intelligence to the load balancing and failed node detection. Large organisations with the budget will probably go for high end load balancers that have extremely intelligent algorithms and options as well as integrated options for View environments such as F5.

The issue regarding view clients losing connections will not be prevented through the use of multiple connection servers. Even if direct connections are enabled whereby the view client communicates directly with the virtual desktop after being authenticated through the broker, the broker maintains session state information. If anything happens to the connection server such as a reboot or corruption, the view client will lose connectivity to the virtual desktop but can reconnect by looging on through another available broker.

Although you can use FT to protect a connection server, if there is an OS corruption, that corruption will be copied to the mirror copy.

You are better off using multiple connection servers.

Hope that helps.

Andrew

[VMMikeC]

Andrew,

Thanks for the reply. My environment is small, a small pilot right now but will probably be less than 100. I will check the documentation NLB and round robin...hopefully something is in there.

I am curious now as to the second part of your reply. If I have load balanced connection servers and I have 20 users connected to connectionserverA and 20 connected to connectionserverB.....if I install MS patches on serverA and reboot the server, all 20 connected users will lose the connection??? Will they automatically login to serverB or will they have to manually reconnect?

Thanks,

Mike

[andrew_axon · Accepted solution]

From what I understand they will disconnect and have to manually reconnect.

You can easily test this with even one connection server by logging into a virtual desktop and stopping the View Connection service on the broker.

Andrew

[VMMikeC]

Turns out they do not disconnect. In my lab environment, I connected to a View desktop, once I was connected, I then went into vcenter and restarted the view connection server vm.....my connection to the desktop never dropped.

[VMMikeC]

actually, I take that back. It actually stayed connected throughout the reboot of the connection server, but then after a few minutes, I got this message. I attached it

[tacticsbaby]

Another reason to not use FT for your View connection servers is that if you need to use more than one virtual CPU you will be out of luck. Currently FT only supports 1 vCPU. Look at the spec for the View connection server, they are recommending anything from 2-4 vCPUs. Of course this depends on your environment, but the issues with corruption being transferred to your FT VM and only being able to use 1 vCPU are enough to make me NOT use FT for connection server. MS NLB should be ok. You could also use DNS round robin. Good luck and please let me know how it works out.