Load Balancing Question - Please help

[slacker]

Hello,
Firstly, I have to say, this is an impressive product.

We have three test workstations set up with trial copies of TSPlus, and I'm experiencing an inconsistency in behavior.

Please see below.

• hosts are named ws1, ws2, ws3
  access is via web portal in html5
  
  First account: Station1
  Sessions are sent to one of the three host. This looks good and expected from a load balanced set up. This is even when we open multiple sessions on different tabs of the same browser.
  
  Second account: clsstudent
  First session will be sent to one of the three host, and then subsequent sessions are sent to that same host regardless of the load of the other hosts.
  If that host is restarted, subsequent sessions are sent to one other host.
  
  Third account: student
  Same behavior as the second account.

The documentation mentions that if there's a user session on one machine, subsequent sessions of the same user will be sent there. However, this is not consistent with what's happening to the first account.

The problem we're trying to solve:

• We have a high volume web site that serves over 60,000 user accounts. Our web content requires plugins and configurations that would prove difficult to an average computer user. The assigned application feature of TSPlus makes our application more accessible. Our concurrent user sessions are about 150.
  
  I am looking for a way to allow anonymous access to the sessions. I can create one account to allow this, but if we use the same login for all the users, and the load balance server sends all the sessions to one host, it will overload one and leave the others idle.
  
  I am trying to avoid having to synchronize the web user database with the host computers
  
  Is there a way to use external authentication instead of the Windows account?
  
  is there a way to make the load balancer send sessions to the lowest load regardless of previous session state?
  
  Is there an anonymous access mode that will work with the load balance?

Any advice or recommendations would be much appreciated. We have hardware and software purchase orders on hold until I can get over this hurdle and finish the evaluation.

Thanks in advance,

Toan

[admin]

I am looking for a way to allow anonymous access to the sessions. I can create one account to allow this, but if we use the same login for all the users, and the load balance server sends all the sessions to one host, it will overload one and leave the others idle.

Yes you can use one anonymous access to the session.
No, in such case, the use of the same login will not send all session to one host.
Possibly you "feel" it but it isn't true. Probably you will have to open 5 session before to see the sixth one which will go to the second host because the load of the fifth ones has not been enough to be consider as significant by the load balancer algorithm.

I am trying to avoid having to synchronize the web user database with the host computers

This is possible. The result of the synchronization is in a flat .ini file named AssignedApplication.ini
You can edit this file manually or manage it programmatically.

Is there a way to use external authentication instead of the Windows account?

Yes it is now possible. You will find more information about this feature here : docs.terminalserviceplus.com/web-credentials
The external authentication can be a simple PIN code or a user email address.

is there a way to make the load balancer send sessions to the lowest load regardless of previous session state?

It is exactly what it does.
Again, I think that in your test your "feeling" was simply due to the fact that 5 users connected but doing nothing are not producing significant loads.

Is there an anonymous access mode that will work with the load balance?

Yes, it will.

Our advice:

Please apply the latest Update Release patch on each of your servers.
Then test the new external authentication feature.

[slacker]

Thank you for the response.

We received an updated trial version, and the results are still as described. The "Station1" account load-balances nicely, jumping to different stations each time. However with "clsstudent", all sessions would be sent to machine1, even after it has maxed out its memory and CPU (approximately 10-15 sessions). We have even tried to create additional accounts, but they all did the same. It may have to do with "Station1" being the primary Administrator account on the machine, but that's just a guess at this point.

I will research the anonymous login feature as well as manipulating the AssignedApplication.ini as advised. I really like TSPlus's affordable price range and responsive support and will try to make this work.

Thanks again.