Overview

Pre-launched sessions reduce the time it takes for users to connect to a VirtualUI application in Thinfinity Workspace by preparing Windows sessions on the server before the user clicks a profile icon. In a typical VirtualUI flow, three steps run when a user starts an application: a new session is created on the server, that session is converted into a disconnected user session, and the application is then launched. The first step usually accounts for most of the connection time, so pre-launching sessions can deliver a noticeably faster startup experience.

This article explains how to enable pre-launched sessions, describes the available session management modes and parameters, and shows how to deploy agent pools on a separate server for load balancing.

Configuration steps

You configure pre-launched sessions from the VirtualUI tab in the Thinfinity Workspace management console.

1. Open the Thinfinity Workspace management console and navigate to the VirtualUI tab.
2. Locate the pre-launched sessions option and enable it.
3. Adjust the parameters described below to match the workload of your published VirtualUI applications.
4. Save the configuration and apply the changes.

Session management modes

Thinfinity Workspace offers two modes that control when sessions are created:

• On Demand: the standard mode. A session is created at the moment the user clicks a profile icon.
• Start with Service Start: sessions are created and disconnected automatically based on the configuration as soon as the Thinfinity service starts, so they are ready before any user connects.

Configuration parameters

The following parameters control how many pre-launched sessions are kept available and how they are shared.

The maximum number of applications a server can run in this mode is #Sessions × #Shared Users. When more than one shared user is allowed per session, applications launched by the same user are not guaranteed to land in the same session. You can install several agent pools to scale capacity.

Any change to the pool definitions drops all related sessions and disconnects users currently connected to those sessions. Plan changes during a maintenance window.

Each new empty session consumes approximately 38.2 MB of RAM. Size your server accordingly when increasing the number of pre-launched sessions.

Installing an agent pool on a different server

You can install agent pools on multiple computers to enable load balancing across servers. To do this, you must adjust a registry entry on each server so that the workspace agent runs in VirtualUI agent mode.

For the base installation steps, see How to Install and Configure Thinfinity Workspace in Agent Mode before applying the registry changes below.

1. Complete the standard agent-mode installation on the server that will host the new agent pool.
2. Open the Registry Editor (regedit) and navigate to:

   Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cybele Software\Thinfinity\Workspace

3. Delete the existing AgentMode entry.

1. Create a new DWORD value named VUIAgentMode and set its value to 1.
2. Restart the Thinfinity Workspace service so the agent picks up the new mode.

After the change, the registry should show the VUIAgentMode entry as illustrated below, with the previous AgentMode entry removed.

Verification

After enabling and saving the configuration, verify that the feature is working as expected:

• Restart the Thinfinity Workspace service and confirm that the configured number of disconnected sessions appears on the server shortly after startup.
• Launch a published VirtualUI application from the workspace and confirm that the connection time is shorter than with the on-demand mode.
• When using multiple agent pools, confirm that applications are routed to the correct pool by the assigned tag.