Scheduling workstations: Operation types

When configuring the workstation schedule in the 7fivefive Lens portal, you have a number of different options that control how Lens starts or stops your workstations.

Operations

Maintain Availability (Recommended)

With the introduction of Lens 2023, we have added the ‘Maintain availability’ operation. This is a very powerful operation that is suitable for most workloads when minimising costs and maximising availability is important. This operation enables Lens to automatically handle situations where there may not

The operation will automatically maintain a customisable number of available workstations. Workstations are started and stopped in order to maintain the desired number of available workstations. Available workstations are ones that are ready to accept a connection from users.

In the event of an issue with a workstation, it will automatically be shutdown and another workstation will be started.

Self-serve (Recommended)

Another new operation introduced with Lens 2023 is the ability for users to start up workstations on-demand. With this operation administrators can define which pools can be started and for what period of time. This operation type is great for reducing costs to an absolute minimum, and for workflows where a small wait (usually 1-2 minutes) to start a workstation is not a problem

When a user logins into the Editor Centre, they can select a pool to connect to and Lens will start a workstation in the background for them. The user will be informed of an ETA until the workstation is ready, and will be automatically connected once it is ready.

Once the user disconnects, the workstation will be shutdown.

Start

This operation will start a defined number of workstations at a defined time. This operation can be useful if you have a large amount of users connecting at one time.

For example, you could use this operation to start 20 workstations at 9am on Monday, and then after 09:30am use the 'Maintain Availability' operation to reduce the number of unused workstations and maintain a level of available workstations throughout the rest of the day.

Stop

This operation will stop a defined number of workstations at a defined time. The operation can be configured to shutdown all workstations too.

This operation may be useful for shutting down all workstations at the end of the day.

Inactive shutdown

This operation will shutdown any workstations that have not been in use for a defined amount of time. It can be configured to run for a number of hours.

This may be useful for turning off unused workstations that have been started by a ‘Start’ operation.