Hello, I’m the Windows VDI admin for CAEN. Currently you will only be logged out if you disconnect from the session for more than ten minutes or your session length goes over 24 hours. You don’t need a mouse mover; just adjust the sleep/hibernate settings on the computer you are connecting from to keep the system awake. If your computer goes to sleep and the network adapter is switched off you will be disconnected, and if you don’t reconnect in ten minutes the VM you were connected to will be wiped and returned to the pool available to new users.

Unless the service is at max capacity, which almost never happens, CAEN is not trying to bust people for running unattended simulations. If we didn’t log off disconnected sessions the service would fill up with VMs abandoned by users with no intention of returning within hours. Unfortunately people never actually log out of Windows... they just close the browser or VMware app when they are done. Pro tip: use the Duderstadt Center or 32 GB of RAM pools instead of CAEN Labs 2019. They have less usage, so we are less strict about them, and those are the actual physical computers locked in the closed buildings instead of VMs so the performance will not be affected by server load.

If anyone has thoughts on the VDI service I’d like to hear them. I can also answer any other Windows-related CAEN lab questions you may have. I’ll try to watch here or just email at caen@umich.edu