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Accops Managed Automatic Power Management

The Session Team Power Management feature provides a way to reduce the unused resource consumption. This is done by managing power operations for managed SHD server teams based on the resource access demand.

Resource cost matters significatly in case of cloud infrastructure. Every minute is chargeable and the Power Management feature plays a vital role in cloud infrastructures to reduce the cost by powering off or deleting the resources during non-working hours.

HyWorks v3.3-R2 or later is integrated with the feature sets to dynamically deploy the Session Host Servers in a team on an on-demand basis as well as automatic power management as per usage inside a session team. To configure and use capacity planning, the following information is provided in this section:

Supported Controller Version

HyWorks v3.3-R2 or later is integrated with features for an on-demand session host server provisioning and automatic power management.

Capacity Plan

The Capacity plan defines the required number of servers at any given point of time. The purpose of the Capacity plan is to keep the SHD servers ready for sessions as per the plan and to save resources by powering them off when they are not needed or not in use. Based on the session load pattern, plans can be assigned to teams, for example, plans for the weekday and the weekend. Each team can be assigned multiple plans based on their session usage pattern.

The figure included below shows the live user session pattern on weekdays and weekends. Resource utilization or user sessions are at a high point during working hours, but is low during the non-working hours on weekdays and very limited on the weekend. As such, the Capacity plan needs to be defined as per the usage patterns on the weekend and the weekdays.

Figure: Typical user session pattern on the weekday and holidays.

The image included below shows a sample of the Capacity plan definition UI for a weekday.

Figure: Sample capacity plan for a weekday, based on the user session pattern

Architecture and Components

The automatic power management of Session Host Servers requires the following components:

  1. HyWorks Controller: v3.3-R2 or later
  2. Scheduler
  3. Action Processor
  4. VM Scale Booster (Optional, but recommended to have for faster Session Host Server status syncing)

Components and Role

  • Scheduler: The HyWorks Scheduler has two sub-components: Scheduler Worker and Scheduler Service. It is installed on both the primary and the secondary HyWorks Controllers. The Scheduler performs the two important functions listed below:

    1. Receives input from the Controller on the Capacity plan creation, modification and deletion and creates corresponding schedules in the Controller database
    2. The Scheduler worker works as a clock, sends the input to the queue, whenever a respective plan (schedule) is to be executed. The Action Processor receives it from queue and acts accordingly.

  • Action Processor: The Action Processor is the brain of Capacity planning. It takes inputs from the Controller, decides the current capacity, and takes actions accordingly. It is installed on both the primary and the secondary HyWorks Controllers. It processes the two types of messages pushed by the Scheduler:

    1. Plan Implementation: Simply saving capacity recommendations in the Controller
    2. Team Scale: Triggering power-on, power-off, cloning jobs as per the schedule or scaling requirements

  • VM Scale Booster: Optional component but highly recommended for large deployments. VM Scale booster works as a micro-service to receive updates from the Session Host Servers and the DVM agents on the service status and regular heartbeats. By doing so, it reduces a large overhead on the Controller to manage the status of all the Session Host Servers using polling.

Interaction of the Scheduler and Action Processor with the Controller

  • The figure given below describes the interaction between different modules

HA Deployment of the Scheduler and Action Processor with the Controller.

  • The diagram given below describes where the Scheduler and the Action Processor modules should be installed with the HyWorks Controller cluster.
  • The Scheduler service is a stateful service, so it can not be run on multiple nodes. Therefore, it is shown in red on the secondary controller. The HyWorks Controller manages the Scheduler service's state based on it's mode.
    • The Controller will attempt to keep the Scheduler services running on the Primary node and stop the services when the Controller mode is other than the primary.

Note

  • The Administrator needs to enable the Manage Scheduler Service setting from the Advanced config to manage the Scheduler service state through the Controller. Based on the Controller mode, such as if it is false, the Controller never starts or stops the Scheduler service.
  • The figure given below describes where the Scheduler and Action Processor services installer.