My uplinks execute long running Excel, CAD or other software scripts that require the user to be signed in and have a GUI, don’t work on Windows server and can’t have 2 concurrent sessions on the same machine.
So I have 3 2-core Windows VMs running my uplinks. 3 machines are enough for now, but I can add more machines in a few minutes by cloning one of them and changing just a few settings.
They are configured to login the user at reboot and run as the signed in user. Unfortunately you can only do that by creating an user without password, so our IT guy worked to isolate them and make sure they are not a vulnerability for our network.
Having 3 of them allows me to go to one of them, close the uplink windows, do whatever updates I need and restart the uplinks. Then I can send some requests and if something goes wrong, I can shut the uplinks down again. It allows me to use one machine to test the updates while the other two manage the production load.
I have a monitor app that shows what machines does what. If I see only 2 working machines and some jobs on the queue, I know that one of the 3 machines has a problem and I can investigate.
I never heard about this… I will look it up!!!