Multizone desktop pools address the problem of Cloud Providers sometimes running low on virtual machines of the desired type and being unable to create Workspot desktops on demand.
How it Works
All major Cloud providers have multiple zones within the same region, usually called availability zones. For example, Google’s GCP Cloud has four availability in its us-west-2 region in Oregon (us-west-2a through us-west-2d).
With a Workspot Multizone desktop pool, Workspot Control creates new desktops by first requesting them in its preferred zone for the region, such as us-west-2a. If this fails, the other zones are tried.
For example, if you are creating a pool with 100 desktops and the preferred zone can provide only 95, the remaining five are provisioned in one of the other zones in the same region. Thus, all 100 desktops are provisioned unless there are fewer than 100 desktops available across the entire region.
Limitations
The Multizone desktop feature currently has the following limitations:
This is a selective feature: contact Workspot to have it enabled.
GCP Cloud only.
Both persistent and non-persistent pools are supported.
GPU desktops are not supported.
Disaster recovery pools are not supported.
Once enabled for a pool, Multizone cannot be disabled (contact Workspot for assistance).
Implementation Details
Everything works as before with the exception that new desktop VMs may be created in a non-default zone in the same region.
The Multizone option is selected on the “Resources > Add/Edit Cloud Desktop Pool” page.
The preferred zone is initially the lowest-numbered zone (such as us-west-2a).
All desktops are provisioned in this zone unless capacity issues are encountered.
If capacity issues are encountered in this zone, the lowest-numbered zone (such as use-west-2b) for which no capacity issues have been seen recently becomes the new preferred zone. Any desktop VMs that were requested but not created in the old preferred zone are created in the new preferred zone.
This applies to all newly created desktop VMs: desktops in newly created pools, auto-create on delete, provisioning via a warmup policies, creation on demand, etc.
Once a desktop VM is created in a given zone it remains in that zone until deleted.
If resuming a paused non-persistent desktop fails, it is deleted and recreated in the new preferred zone. (Note: non-persistent desktops are not paused during user sessions, only between sessions).
If resuming a paused persistent desktop fails, the user will be unable to connect to the desktop until the error is resolved (not deleted and recreated in a new zone like a non-persistent desktop).
The preferred pool selection has a time-to-live that expires in 24 hours, ensuring that the default preferred zone is reselected eventually.
Enabling a Multizone Desktop Pool
On the “Resources > Add Pool” or “Resources > poolname > Actions > Edit” page, select the “Use All Zones for High Availability” checkbox after selecting a GCP cloud a Desktop Pool Type of “Nonpersistent.”
