Error: SOI Console user logged off due to session timeout or DNS re-resolution

Products

• CA Service Operations Insight (SOI)

Issue/Introduction

Users of the Service Operations Insight (SOI) console, particularly on version 4.3 using Java 11 / OpenWebStart, may experience intermittent session timeouts causing users to be logged off prematurely. This article provides steps to address generic session timeout configurations and workarounds for session affinity loss caused by DNS re-resolution.

Symptoms

• Users receive the error: "User has been logged off from host () because its web server session timed out."
• Issue occurs intermittently and affects specific users.
• Log analysis indicates the web server has not received a request from the SOI client within the configured timeout window (default 1 minute).

Environment

• Service Operations Insight (SOI) 4.3
• Java 11 / Open Web Start runtime
• Environments using DNS round-robin load balancing.

Cause

There are two primary causes for this behavior:

1. Generic Timeout: The web server session timeout is too short for the client's activity level.
2. Session Affinity Loss: During an active console session, DNS re-resolution causes the client to switch to a different UI server. Since sessions are not synchronized between UI servers, the new server does not recognize the existing token, triggering a session timeout.

Resolution

Step 1: Increase Global Session Timeout If the issue is generic, increase the default session timeout following the steps in Change the default console session timeout in SOI.

Step 2: Workaround for DNS Re-resolution - If you are using DNS round-robin and suspect session affinity loss, apply the following workaround:

1. Navigate to the SOI client installation directory: \OpenWebStart\jre-soi\conf\security\
2. Open the java.security file.
3. Add or uncomment the following property: networkaddress.cache.ttl=-1
4. This configuration tells the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to cache successful DNS name lookups infinitely, preventing the client from switching UI servers during an active session.
5. Restart the SOI client.

Additional Information

Optionally, if a load balancer is in place, you can consider applying persistence (source affinity or cookie persistence)  configuration.