Question 68 - 2V0-51.23 discussion

Load balancing is a feature that allows administrators to distribute the load of published desktop and application sessions across multiple RDS hosts in a farm. Load balancing can improve the performance and availability of the sessions and the hosts. Horizon offers two ways of configuring load balancing for RDS hosts: using load balancing settings in Horizon Console or using custom load balancing scripts.

The load balancing settings in Horizon Console allow administrators to define how Horizon calculates the server load index, which indicates the load on each RDS host. The server load index can range from 0 to 100, where 0 represents no load and 100 represents full load. A server load index of -1 indicates that load balancing is disabled. Horizon uses the server load index to determine which RDS host is the best candidate for placing a new session request.

The load balancing settings in Horizon Console include the following check boxes that can be selected to influence the load balancing behavior:

The use custom script setting for customized RDSH load balancing: This setting allows administrators to override the default behavior of the load balancing settings and control the placement of new sessions by writing and configuring custom load balancing scripts. The custom scripts must write the server load index to a specific registry key on each RDS host. Horizon will use the value from the registry key instead of calculating it from the other settings.

The Include Session Count setting to include the session count on the RDSH for load balancing: This setting allows administrators to include the number of sessions (connected, pending, and disconnected) on each RDS host as a factor in calculating the server load index. By default, Horizon uses the following formula to calculate the server load index based on the session count: (connected sessions + pending sessions + disconnected sessions)/ (maximum session count). If the maximum session count is configured as unlimited, Horizon falls back to using the absolute number of total sessions.

The other options are not check boxes that can be selected in the load balancing settings in Horizon Console:

The floating dynamic host profile setting, created in the vSphere profile section: This option is not related to load balancing for RDS hosts, but rather to dynamic environment manager for instant-clone desktops. A dynamic host profile is a vSphere profile that contains configuration settings for instant-clone desktops, such as network settings, domain join settings, and customization scripts. A floating dynamic host profile is a type of dynamic host profile that applies to floating desktop pools, where users are assigned a random desktop from a pool at each login.

The Horizon DRS setting for fully automated vSphere load balancing: This option is not related to load balancing for RDS hosts, but rather to distributed resource scheduler (DRS) for vSphere clusters. DRS is a feature that monitors and balances the CPU and memory resources across multiple ESXi hosts in a cluster. DRS can also migrate virtual machines between hosts using vMotion to optimize resource utilization and performance. Horizon DRS is an extension of DRS that integrates with Horizon and provides additional capabilities, such as affinity rules, maintenance mode, and power management. Horizon DRS can be configured with different automation levels, such as fully automated, partially automated, or manual.