Introduction
Some Workspot customers have power management enabled for their desktop pools. To save money and energy, desktops are paused when not in use and resumed as required. This paused state can be thought of as being equivalent to Microsoft Windows hibernation: the desktop's virtual machine's state is saved and the VM is powered down. When the end-user reconnects, the machine resumes operation, powering back up and restoring its state. Again, this is equivalent to resuming from hibernation.
Because desktops are powered down when there are no interactive users, maintenance tasks such as software updates can be difficult to perform during off-peak hours. To allow such maintenance, Workspot has created Maintenance Policies in Workspot Control to allow you to power up all the desktops in a pool prior to a maintenance period. After the maintenance period, the desktops are allowed to shut down again.
Prerequisites
Maintenance Policies are currently available only to GCP (Google Cloud Platform) customers with the power-management option enabled. Other customers will not be shown the option to define or apply these policies.
Maintenance Policies currently apply only to persistent desktop pools.
How Maintenance Policies Work
Maintenance periods are defined per-pool, using a Maintenance Policy specific to that pool.
At the start of a maintenance period, Workspot Control powers up all the desktops in the pool.
Any desktops with signed-in users are already powered up, of course, and continue as usual. (If you require that the users be signed off, you must enforce this by other means.)
Control simply guarantees that the desktops in the pool are powered up; it does nothing to them otherwise.
Once the desktops are powered up, you can run your maintenance tasks on them using your usual automation.
At the end of the maintenance period, the desktops without interactive user sessions are shut down. Sessions with users continue as usual.
Creating Maintenance Policies
To create Maintenance Policy:
Sign into Workspot Control as an Administrator.
Go to "Policies > Add a New Policy."
On the "Add a New Policy Page,"
Type in a name for the policy.
Select "Maintenance" as the policy type.
Select how often to run the policy (monthly, weekly, or just once).
Select a time zone for the date/time fields that follow. The default is the time zone set for Control.
Choose a starting time.
Monthly policies run on, for example, the third Thursday of the month at 01:33 in the selected time zone.
Weekly policies run every week on, for example, Friday at 23:35.
One-time policies start on the specified date and time.
Choose a duration in the range of 1-5 hours. Desktops without interactive users will be shut down at the end of this period.
Click "Add Policy." The policy will run at the specified times.
Assigning Maintenance Policies to a Pool
Assign your policy to your persistent desktop pools as follows:
Go to "Resources > VDI Pools > poolname > Edit."
Near the bottom of the "Edit Virtual Desktops" page, find the "Maintenance Policy" entry.
Select the desired Maintenance Policy from the list.
Click the "Save" button.
You can use the same Maintenance policy for as many pools as you like.
Skipping a Maintenance Period
If you want to skip a meantenance period, you can do this from the "Resources > VDI Pools" page.
Go to "Resources > VDI Pools > poolname" and select "Skip Maintenance" from the "Action" menu.
Confirm that you want to skip the next maintenance period.
Ending a Maintenance Period Early
The pool's "Action" menu also gives you the option to "End Maintenance." This terminates the maintenance period early and allows the desktops to shut down, saving you money. This menu option is available only during a maintenance period.
Notes and Best Practices
You are not allowed to edit the pool or the Maintenance Policy during the maintenance period.
Control powers up the desktops before the maintenance period. For this reason, you are not allowed to edit the pool or the Maintenance Policy during the 30 minutes before the maintenance period.