Secure Global Desktop 4.40 Administration Guide > Getting Started > Understanding User Sessions and Application Sessions

Understanding User Sessions and Application Sessions

You can keep track of what your users are doing by monitoring the user sessions and application sessions in progress.

User Sessions

A user session begins when a user logs in to SGD and ends when a user logs out. User sessions are hosted by the SGD server the user logs in to. The user name and password they type, determines the type of user they are.

If a user logs in and they already have a user session, the user session is transferred to the new SGD server and the old session ends. This is sometimes called session grabbing.

User sessions can be standard sessions or secure sessions. Secure sessions are only available when SGD security services are enabled.

In the SGD Administration Console you can list user sessions as follows:

• The Sessions tab (in Navigation View) shows all the user sessions that are running on all SGD servers in the array
• The User Sessions tab for an SGD server shows all the user sessions that are hosted by that server
• The User Sessions tab for a user profile shows all the user sessions associated with the user profile

The Sessions and User Sessions tabs allow you to select and end user sessions. The User Sessions tabs allow you to view further details about the user session, for example the information the SGD Client detects about the client device.

On the command line, you use the tarantella webtopsession command to list and end user sessions.

Application Sessions

An application session begins when a user starts an application and ends when the application exits. Each application session corresponds to an application currently running through SGD.

An application session can be hosted by any SGD server in the array. This might not be the SGD server the user logged in to.

Each application session has a corresponding Protocol Engine process. The Protocol Engine handles the communication between the client device and the application server. The Protocol Engine also converts the display protocol used by the application to the Adaptive Internet Protocol (AIP), which is understood by the SGD Client running on the client device.

You can use application session load balancing to spread the load of the Protocol Engines among the SGD servers in the array.

Some applications can be configured to keep running even when they are not displayed. These are resumable applications. Each application object has an Application Resumability attribute that determines an application's resumability. Applications can have one of three Application Resumability settings:

Setting	Description
Never	The application exits when the user logs out of SGD. You cannot suspend or resume, non-resumable applications.
During the User Session	The application continues to run until the user logs out of SGD. While they are logged in, the user can suspend and resume these applications.
General	The application continues to run even after the user has logged out of SGD. When they log in again, they click the resume button to display the running application again.

If an application is resumable, it is resumable for a period of time, specified by a timeout. If the SGD Client exits unexpectedly, the timeout period is the configured timeout plus 20 minutes.

Resumable applications are useful for these reasons:

• Applications that take a long time to start can be left running even after users have logged out of SGD
• Mobile users can leave applications running while they travel
• Users can easily recover from web browser or other crashes

In the SGD Administration Console you can list application sessions as follows:

• The Application Sessions tab for an SGD server shows all the application sessions that are hosted by that server
• The Application Sessions tab for a user profile shows all the application sessions associated with the user profile
• The Application Sessions tab for an application server shows all the applications that are running on that application server

The Applications Sessions tab allows you to view details about each application session. You can also end and shadow application sessions. Shadowing a session lets you and the user see and interact with the application at the same time.

Note You can only shadow Windows and X applications, and the application sessions must not be suspended.

On the command line, you use the tarantella emulatorsession command to list and end user sessions.

Anonymous Users and Shared Users

There are two special cases:

• anonymous users - these are users that log in without typing a user name and password
• shared (guest) users - these are users that log in with the same user name and password

To be able to distinguish between these users, SGD assigns guest and anonymous users a temporary user identity when they log in. This has the following effect:

• User sessions do not transfer if the user logs in to SGD more than once
• Application sessions end as soon as the user session ends, regardless of the application's Application Resumability setting

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