Why does my WorkSpace frequently disconnect and reconnect?

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I want to troubleshoot why my connection drops and then reconnects when I use the Amazon WorkSpaces Personal client to connect to my WorkSpace.

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Note: Make sure that you use the latest WorkSpaces client version.

Troubleshoot RTT issues

High round-trip time (RTT) or an unstable internet connection might cause intermittent WorkSpaces disconnections.

For a healthy network connection to the AWS Region that your WorkSpace is in, use the following guidelines:

For PCoIP WorkSpaces, the RTT must be less than 100 milliseconds (ms).
For DCV WorkSpaces, the RTT must be less than 250 ms.

To check the network health of the machine that the WorkSpaces client runs on and your WorkSpace, complete the following steps:

Open the WorkSpaces Personal client.
Select your WorkSpace registration code, and then choose Continue.
Choose Network.
Check the internet connectivity and TCP and UDP port connectivity to the WorkSpaces endpoints.

To check network health, you can also monitor Amazon CloudWatch metrics such as InSessionLatency and UDPPacketLossRate.

Note: Connection issues might occur when you're connected through a VPN, and then connect to your WorkSpace. Check whether the issue occurs only when you use the VPN or proxy.

Make sure that you correctly configured your WorkSpace

Complete the following steps:

Open the WorkSpaces Personal client.
In the navigation pane, choose Settings, and then choose Manage connection settings.
Make sure that your proxy server and port details are accurate. Also, make sure that your local device network configuration, such as local and network firewalls, allows the required ports. You must add the required domains and IP addresses to the allow list.

Troubleshoot streaming issues (DCV WorkSpaces only)

For slow networks, use the UDP protocol to reduce the TCP overhead. PCoIP WorkSpaces can stream only over UDP, but DCV WorkSpaces can stream over both TCP and UDP.

To make sure that your DCV WorkSpace uses only the UDP protocol, complete the following steps:

Open the Workspaces Personal client.
Choose Settings.
Choose Connection settings.
Under DCV streaming settings, clear Use TCP transport protocol only.
Note: If you configured a proxy server, then you must select Use proxy setting when you use TCP connection.
Choose Save, and then connect to your WorkSpace to monitor its performance.

Troubleshoot sessions that disconnect mid-session

A session randomly disconnects

Monitor the MemoryUsage, RootVolumeDiskUsage, and CPUUsage CloudWatch metrics.

To troubleshoot high resource usage, see How do I diagnose high CPU utilization on my EC2 Windows instance when my CPU is not being throttled? Also, see Why is my EC2 Linux instance becoming unresponsive due to over-utilization of resources?

Make sure that that antivirus software excludes the required WorkSpaces service components.

WorkSpaces Personal shuts down automatically

For WorkSpaces Personal, the High performance power plan is turned on by default. However, a Group Policy for a power plan can cause a WorkSpace to automatically shut down. For example, DCV WorkSpaces doesn't support the Set time limit for active but idle Remote Desktop Services Sessions Group Policy. For more information, see Manage your Windows WorkSpaces in WorkSpaces Personal.

To set a Group Policy to block an automatic shutdown, open the file path, Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options. Choose Shutdown, and then set Allow system to be shut down without having to log on to Disabled.

A session disconnects after a specific duration (SAML 2.0 WorkSpaces only)

With SAML 2.0 authentication, you can use the SessionDuration attribute to set the session duration. If your WorkSpaces disconnect mid-session at specific intervals, then increase the value of this attribute.

For more information, see My users are getting disconnected from their WorkSpaces session every 60 minutes.