Overview

itopia CAS supports a maintenance mode feature for Session Host VMs that will prevent users from logging on to the VM and, optionally, logging off any existing users. This is useful for scenarios such as troubleshooting an issue with a particular Session Host or applying software patches.

How It Works

When enabled, Session Host Maintenance Mode makes the following changes to the selected Session Hosts:

• The Session Host is excluded from new user connection routing. For RDS-based Collection Pools, this is performed on the RD Broker; for Windows 10-based Collection Pools, CAS' internal routing table is updated to omit the server
• If Dynamic Uptime is enabled for the Collection Pool, the Session Host is excluded from capacity calculations and uptime actions (power on and power off)
• Optionally, administrators can choose to log off existing user connections within a period of time: 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes. Users will receive a message that the Session Host is being placed in maintenance mode and they should log off and reconnect to access a different Session Host

Maintenance Mode remains enabled until it is manually disabled; even if the Session Host VM is rebooted, it will remain in Maintenance Mode.

Configuration

Administrators can enable or disable Maintenance Mode for Session Hosts from the Collection Pools module in the CAS Admin Console (cas.itopia.com):

1. Log in to CAS as an administrator with Deployment Editor permissions or higher. You may also use a custom Security Role with the Collection Pool - Create/Edit/Delete Collection Pools permission.
2. Navigate to Cloud Desktops » Collection Pools. Click on the appropriate Collection Pool to open its details view.
3. At the bottom section of the page, switch to the Collection VMs tab.
4. Select one or more Session Host VMs using the checkboxes, and click the Maintenance Mode toolbar button.
5. Select whether to Enable or Disable maintenance mode for the selected Session Host VMs.
6. If enabling Maintenance Mode, you will be prompted to confirm the action and can choose whether to log off existing user sessions. Select whether to log off existing users and the desired timeframe, and click Enable.

Considerations

• Session Host Maintenance Mode is available for all Collection Pool types: RDS Shared, RDS Dedicated, Windows 10 Dedicated, and Windows 10 Pooled.
• Session Host Maintenance Mode does not exclude the Session Host VM from Scheduled Uptime actions. If the VM is part of a Scheduled Uptime schedule, the scheduled actions will occur regardless of Maintenance Mode status