What are the advantages of workstation mode? (4273709)

In what situations is workstation mode appropriate?

Workstation mode allows you to limit the size of the user cache by only caching user information for users who actually logon to a particular workstation. When workstation-mode is set to true, vasd will not load all available users, but instead will cache users as they log in or are requested by applications through the getpwnam() function. Groups are initially cached without their full group memberships, which are then updated as users log in. This option is useful for deployments on systems like laptops that will be used by very few individuals and avoids the overhead of caching all the available users.

Workstation mode also allows you to limit the amount of cache updating. This is useful for large installations where there is a lot of AD churn; for example, organisations that update many AD users frequently. In a case like this, the user cache may be contantly updating on many QAS clients, and may consume excessive CPU and bandwidth trying to keep the cache up-to-date for users that may never log on to a given system.

Client systems in workstation mode have optional settings that allow preload of user and/or groups to ensure than admin users are always cached.

To set workstation mode you would do the following command on the client:

/opt/quest/bin/vastool configure vas vasd workstation-mode true

You can also use the Vintela Group Policy (VGP) to set the vas.conf workstation mode setting.

There are some other workstation mode setting which can be put in the /etc/opt/quest/vas/vas.conf that may benefit your situation.

Here are a list of some of the Workstation mode settings.

workstation-mode = <boolean>
workstation-mode-users-preload = <comma-separated group list>
workstation-mode-group-do-member = <boolean>
workstation-mode-groups-skip-update = <boolean>
ws-resolve-uid = <boolean>

For information on this settings please read the vas.conf man page.