Hi Folks, I'm writing to get some thoughts on the current VCL reservation timeouts. I'm looking for some ideas or a consensus on what would be desired options for end-user reservation timeouts. What would be flexible enough that would work for all sites.
As of late here at NCSU we are seeing complaints with various users that are making the wrong assumptions about VCL timeouts and are loosing work, or just becoming frustrated in general. The user ranges from long-time users or new ones. The initial idea, years ago was to timeout the reservation if: 1) no user ack - (they don't hit the connect button in 15 minutes) 2) they ack the reservation, but never login (within 15 minutes) 3) User leaves the machine - either logout or disconnect for more than 15 minutes For 2&3 above, we simply check for an active connection on one of the defined ports for the related connection method, (ssh on port 22, rdp on port 3389, vnc on port x, etc). this can be any unused port defined in the connection method for that image. These timeouts are currently hardcoded values set at 15 minutes. The reason for the timeouts were to prevent users from consuming resources needlessly, but allowing them to get their work done. It's worked fairly well for years, but now 15 minutes is likely too short. Over the years we have added in features to add more flexibility for different sets of users, for example: * If reservation duration is greater then 24hrs, the system will skip user checks 2&3 above. The user still needs to ack the reservation. * If image profile is set to skip user checks "Check for logged in user: NO" under advanced settings, skips user checks for 2&3 above. The user still needs to ack the reservation. * Server reservations, This one skips 1,2,& 3 all together and goes straight into the inuse state. No end-user ack required. So I think it's time to re-visit this before the next release in order to build in more flexibility. Some things I'm thinking about are to use variables that are pulled from the db for each of the above stages 1,2,&3. 1) no user ack --- enforce ack on|off 2) User ack's --- enforce successful login (yes|no) --- if enforce_login=yes time to wait=x 3) User leaves the machine --- check for connection (yes|no) --- if yes, time to wait=x (The server reservations would not be affected.) This could be global system wide variables, affiliation variables, and maybe user group variables. This would also need to coincide with the image profile setting. As one might have an image that is limited by licenses and needs to be available than sitting idle in a active reservation. Also maybe stop doing user connections checks if reservations are greater than 12hrs instead of 24 hrs. Anyways, just trying to get some thoughts/ideas on what would be the best and most flexible way to handle timeouts. And to get feed back on what you like dislike about the timeouts. Thoughts? Thanks, Aaron -- Aaron Peeler Program Manager Virtual Computing Lab NC State University All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
