Forum Discussion

garymansell's avatar
garymansell
Brass Contributor
Nov 12, 2020
Solved

Get-AzWvdSessionHost returns Status of "Shutdown" instead of "Unavailable" when VM's are powered off

Why do Session Host VM's show the status of "Shutdown" when they are powered off instead of "Unavailable"?   I have been successfully utilizing an auto-scaling script that powers on/off VM's based ...
  • TravisRoberts's avatar
    TravisRoberts
    Nov 15, 2020

    garymansell I modified the script to include the status of "Unavailable" and "Shutdown" to include VM's in the start function.  Testing shows it's now starting VM's in either state.

Hussayn's avatar
Hussayn
Copper Contributor
Nov 13, 2020

I've also noticed something similar in the last week when I added a vm to an existing hostpool, the new vm has a shutdown state not the regular unavailable state when its deallocated by the scaling script.

However I added yet another vm and that shows the regular unavailable status when the vm gets deallocated by the scaling script. Not really sure why

 

 

In my case the scaling script can power on and power off the all the vms.

I am curious what the difference is between the 'Shutdown' status and 'Unavailable' status as there is no detail on the docs page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/desktopvirtualization/sessionhosts/get#status.

 

Perhaps Christiaan_Brinkhoff or AzureAcademy can shed some light?

  • garymansell's avatar
    garymansell
    Brass Contributor
    Nov 13, 2020

    Hi Hussayn thanks for confirmation that others are seeing this.

     

    I am using the (popular & useful) Travis Roberts scaling script (https://www.ciraltos.com/auto-start-and-stop-session-hosts-in-windows-virtual-desktop-spring-update-arm-edition-with-an-azure-function/) which checks for hosts in the "Unavailable" state to start, so the new hosts being in "Shutdown" state breaks the script.

     

    I could probably modify the script, but I wanted to understand what this (new?) "Shutdown" state was all about first as my old hosts are all still showing state "Unavailable" even when running the same latest agent version as the newly added VM's.

     

    I would very much appreciate some light shedding from  @Christiaan_Brinkhoff or @Dean Cefola if they knew what this was about?

    • TravisRoberts's avatar
      TravisRoberts
      MCT
      Nov 15, 2020

      garymansell I modified the script to include the status of "Unavailable" and "Shutdown" to include VM's in the start function.  Testing shows it's now starting VM's in either state.

      • VenkataKrishnamurti's avatar
        VenkataKrishnamurti
        Copper Contributor
        Mar 11, 2021

        TravisRoberts  Thanks for posting the script and its helpful, however I am getting the below error

        : Host pool not set to Depth-First load balancing. This script requires Depth-First load balancing to execute
        + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException
        + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException

         

        I have set the host pool to depth first and using Get-AzWvdHostPool I can see the loadbalance type is set to Depth First

    • Hussayn's avatar
      Hussayn
      Copper Contributor
      Nov 13, 2020

      Hi garymansell, the scaling script I used was the one they have in the wvd docs

      https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/set-up-scaling-script

      The logic is a bit differnet from the one you mentioned, both are really good.

       

      It takes a bit of time to setup (or via ps script which I ended up doing as part of my wvd deploymet) but worth it to realise the cost savings.

       

      This overview video really helped to understand whats going on

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zDazJsa2Zk&t=4s

       

      Additionally, I built a new environment today with 7 vm as personal desktops, all the vms show Shutdown state when they are deallocated.

Resources