(2025.03) Enabling hibernation for RedHat 8 and RedHat 9 VDIs

RedHat Virtual Desktops (VDI) with hibernation enabled fail to properly hibernate. When users attempt to hibernate the VDI, it instead will stop the instance. Upon restarting the VDI, user processes and open windows do not persist, resulting in loss of work context.

2025.03

1. Download patch.py and rhel_hibernation.patch for version 2025.03 by replacing with the directory to download the patch script and patch file and with the name of your RES environment in the command below:
   1. The patch applies to RES 2025.03
   2. The patch script requires AWS CLI v2, Python 3.9.16 or above, and Boto3.
   3. Configure the AWS CLI for the account / region where RES is deployed, and make sure that you have S3 permissions to write to the bucket created by RES.

OUTPUT_DIRECTORY=<output-directory>
ENVIRONMENT_NAME=<environment-name>
RES_VERSION=2025.03

mkdir -p ${OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}
curl https://research-engineering-studio-us-east-1.s3.amazonaws.com/releases/${RES_VERSION}/patch_scripts/patch.py --output ${OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/patch.py
curl https://research-engineering-studio-us-east-1.s3.amazonaws.com/releases/${RES_VERSION}/patch_scripts/patches/rhel_hibernation.patch --output ${OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/rhel_hibernation.patch

2. Navigate to the directory where the patch script and patch file are downloaded. Run the following patch command:

python3 ${OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/patch.py --environment-name ${ENVIRONMENT_NAME} --res-version ${RES_VERSION} --module virtual-desktop-controller --patch ${OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/rhel_hibernation.patch

3. Restart the Virtual Desktop Controller instance for your environment. You may also terminate the instance from the Amazon EC2 Management Console.

INSTANCE_ID=$(aws ec2 describe-instances \        
        --filters \        
        Name=tag:Name,Values=${ENVIRONMENT_NAME}-vdc-controller \
        Name=tag:res:EnvironmentName,Values=${ENVIRONMENT_NAME}\
        --query "Reservations[0].Instances[0].InstanceId" \
        --output text)
     
aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids ${INSTANCE_ID}

4. Verify the Virtual Desktop Controller instance status by checking the activity of the auto scaling group starting with the name -vdc-controller-asg . Wait until the new instance is launched successfully.

Once the patch has been applied and the Virtual Desktop Controller has launched successfully you will be able to hibernate VDI instances.