To help users manage their credit burn rate, and avoid unpleasant surprises of workstations that have been consuming credits in the back end, and help users that tend to forget to turn off their workstation, we have developed a small tool that automatically shuts down a workstation.
Please note that this feature is not activated by default.
If you’d like to activate this feature on your Dekstop(s), please contact our support team via support@gdaas.com.
Two notes that are important considering the use of the automated shutdown:
- The forced shutdown will close down all applications left open, without saving work in progress.
It is important to save your work, before disconnecting from the cloud workstation. - The feature will, by default, be turned on upon connection.
For example, an architect that needs to run some rendering tasks can turn the feature off, so that he doesn’t have to stay connected while the virtual machine is rendering. After the rendering, he should not forget to turn off the cloud workstation manually or turn on the automated shutdown. - You have to connect to your Desktop to trigger this feature.
Example: Powering on your Desktop without connecting to it, will not trigger the tool. Thus the Desktop will remain powered on. Once you connect to your Desktop, the tool will be active. - The tool is active from the second time you power on your Desktop.
The first time, the login event isn’t triggered within the Automated Shutdown.
The automated shutdown tool has 2 different functions with the same outcome:
- Shutdown after disconnect
- Shutdown after idle time
Below, these functions are described in detail.
1. Shutdown after disconnect
The first part of our tool, will trigger a shutdown when you disconnect from your Desktop. The disconnect can be initiated by:
- Closing your laptop, or shutting down your local workstation
- Internet connection problems
- Shutting down the Receiver or Tab/Browser you were using to connect to your cloud workstation
- Disconnect your session
- etc.
To avoid and minimize the risk of losing work in progress, because of an accidental disconnection (eg.: due to internet connection issues), we built in a buffer time of 20 minutes. If a user reconnects within 20 minutes after initial disconnection, the workstation won’t automatically shutdown and he will be able to continue working.
This enables a user to close his laptop, go to another meeting, and connecting back to the cloud machine without losing his unsaved work. The buffer time value can be adjusted as described at the bottom of this article.
Below, you’ll find a schematic overview of the automated feature’s working:
Definitions:
Credit Usage Time: time frame where credits are billed, exists of session and buffer time.
Session Time: time frame when your session is active. Once you’ve disconnected from the Desktop, this time frame ends and the buffer time frame starts.
Buffer time: time frame where the system waits for a reconnect. If no reconnect is detected, the Desktop will shutdown.
2. Shutdown after idle time
The second part of our tool, will trigger a shutdown when your Desktop was idle for a certain period or time.
Your Desktop is considered idle when it hasn’t had mouse or keyboard input during the buffer time.
From the moment there’s no keyboard/mouse input anymore, the buffer time starts running. It’s reset once you’ll give input again.
When the buffer time is expired, the Desktop will not shutdown immedialely. A popup message is shown to remind you that your Desktop will be powered off. In this window you can cancel the automated shutdown by clicking the “Cancel” button.
You’re not obliged to use this part of the feature, as you can bypass this by setting the Idle time to an infinite amount of minutes (for example: 1440 minutes –> 24 hours).
Usage tool
The tool is located in your toolbar, in the bottom right corner of your screen.
When you right click on our tool, a little menu will pop up.
The menu has 3 features: Disable/Enable, Status & Configure.
- Disable/Enable
With this button, you can disable & enable the Automated Shutdown feature.
Note that every time the Desktop is booted, the Automated Shutdown is automatically enabled. - Status
This shows the current status of the Automated Shutdown
- Configure
This allows you to adjust some timings; You can adjust the buffer time (interval to reconnect) & the idle time.
- Buffer time is the time (in seconds) between the disconnect & the (automated) shutdown. If you reconnect during the buffer time, the shutdown is cancelled. Default value is set to 1200 seconds (20 minutes).
- Idle time is the time (in minutes) while there’s no input, after that time the Desktop shuts automatically. Before this happens, we give a popup where you can cancel the shutdown triggered by the idle time. Default value is set to 30 minutes.