Question

Could you please provide information regarding the current values for both IFS session timeout and application timeout in the HA configuration?

11 months ago
April 12, 2024
4 replies
210 views

+8

feng
Sidekick (Employee)
46 replies

Hi

Application timeout logs out users after a certain period of inactivity. Session timeout, on the other hand, determines the duration of maintaining a connection when users access IFS Cloud in a high availability (HA) configuration, connecting to either server #1, #2, or #3.

Could you please provide information regarding the current values for both IFS session timeout and application timeout in the HA configuration?

Currently, I believe the application timeout is set to 60 minutes (the duration after which re-login is required if no activity is detected). In this case, what should be the appropriate setting for the session timeout value? Should it also be 60 minutes, or should it be set to a higher value?

I'm asking this question for clarification and confirmation due to concerns that if the application timeout time (e.g., 60 minutes) exceeds the session timeout time (e.g., 30 minutes), there might be instances where users are redirected to another server before being logged out due to application timeout, potentially causing undesirable behavior.

Thanks & Best regards,

Feng

+10

Robert Bellemare
Hero (Employee)
94 replies
10 months ago
April 18, 2024

Hi Feng,

From the perspective of Maintenix in IFS Cloud, the Session and Absolute timeouts are controlled by configuration parameter in the database. These values can be configured for each deployment to meet the needs of the business, even in cases where multiple systems are sharing infrastructure.

In our terminology Idle/Inactivity/Session timeout represents the concept of invalidating a session after a period of inactivity. This is a short timeout. Session timeouts are used to ensure that an unmonitored computer does not give unintended access to the system.

Absolute timeout will end a user’s session after an inelastic quantity of time after login, regardless of whether they are actively using the session or not. Absolute timeouts are intended to represent a work shift, and thus the default value is 8 hours. The user sessions will be invalidated after their shift ends.

In your presented scenarios, we recommend absolute timeout to be larger than session timeout, in order to avoid the issue you illustrate in your example.

You can read more detailed information in the “Session management” of the Installation and Configuration Guide. The table below is an excerpt.

Configuration parameter	Default	Description
IDLE_SESSION_TIMEOUT	60 minutes	Specifies the amount of time in minutes that a user session can be inactive before the session terminates and the user has to log in again. Background polling, such as for new alert notifications, does not count as activity.
ABSOLUTE_SESSION_TIMEOUT	480 minutes	Specifies the maximum period of time in minutes after which a user session terminates regardless of user activity. If you don't want user sessions terminated after absolute intervals, specify zero or a negative number.