Using Get-HVMachineSummary and Understanding HZ Assigned User in VMware Holirzon View on ControlUp

In Horizon View, the assigned user of VDIs is not showing in the Real-Time console, but there is a registry key that can be used to turn it back on. This was turned off by default due to a performance concern, but it is believed that the underlying issue has been addressed. In version 9 of the integration, assigned user can be retrieved without extra data. @member may have more insight on this. Use with caution. Title: Registry Key to Retrieve Assigned User in Horizon View

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In Horizon View, I can pull the assigned user of a specific VDI with the Get-HVMachineSummary cmdlet. In Real-Time console under the Machine view, I see a column called HZ Assigned User but it’s empty across the board. I’m not sure what that value correlates to if that’s not the assigned user field under the machine summary.

Collection of that metric was turned off by default due to a performance concern related to the horizon connection server. I believe VMware has addressed the underlying issue since.

There’s a registry key you can use to turn it back on. Just keep an eye on connection server cpu.

I’ll get you the registry key in a bit.

On your data collector

Path – HKLM\SOFTWARE\Smart-X\ ControlUp\Agent\Horizon Data Collection

Value name – Collect User Info

Value type – REG_DWORD

Value data – 1

Again. Use with caution.

Oh! That’s interesting! Any chance you have a doc discussing that problem? I am probably going to need go over that one with my engineer.

Either way thank you for the info!

I don’t think so. As far as I remember, so take this with a grain of salt.

When the ControlUp horizon integration was designed, the API to get assigned user on the horizon side also includes other data. So ControlUp only cares about the username. But the api also retrieves group membership (and perhaps recurses through nested groups?).

For a single user, not that bad. For a big environment or one with a complex AD group membership design? It can take quite a while.

CU will time-out the request. The connection server however will continue to resolve group membership. Eventually causing the connection server to run out of threads (has a max of 100 I believe).

And since normal operations (like the horizon client brokering sessions) also uses that same pool of threads… eventually you’ll get into a situation where all threads are busy running a (relatively long) AD group resolve task.

We didn’t see this often. Most environments aren’t big enough or the query doesn’t run that long. But the large impact for a relative small gain (hz assigned user) meant that we decided to turn this off by default. Out of abundance of caution.

Since then VMware (I believe) has addressed the inefficient API. They’ve also made just the assigned user retrievable. Without the extra data we never cared about anyway.

I believe the plan is to implement this in version 9 somewhere. But @member might know that better.

CC: @member in case I’m totally wrong with my explanation.

Again. This is all of off memory. So take it with a grain of salt and be cautious using the key.

Thank you for the salty background! I’ll do a smidgen of research then run it by my engineers. My guess is we won’t proceed but if we do, it’ll be very cautiously. Thank you again Dennis!

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