Zoom and SmartConsole

[Bryan_Harrell]

Anyone know why when a ZOOM session is established by either a VAR or Checkpoint support, and the remote user requests, and is granted remote control, they can remote control the desktop and they can access the WUEB GUI f the firewalls, and SSH sessions using Putty, or any other app, but when the CheckPoint SmartConsole app is selected, the remote user basically looses any meaningful remote control until we minimize the SmartConsole app?

[Dorit_Dor]

Zoom is sensitive to cpu and gpu on the desktop and may get stuck when cpu is high so even if the desktop could work without zoom, your “spare” may not be enough for zoom...so check what is the desktop cpu & gpu when running smart console.

This phenomena is not specific to smart console but a generic zoom issue that impacts any app when desktop is “heavy”

Dorit

[Bryan_Harrell]

Thanks Dorit_Dor,

CPU utilization is only running around 8% utilization with Smart Console running (it’s a very beefy workstation!), so I seriously doubt the CPU utilization of the workstation is the issue – I’m leaning more towards something with whatever it is that Zoom is programmed in, has a bad interaction with the SmartConsole app and whatever it’s programmed in, or there are some security permissions with the GPO our end-point solutions team is using to control administration of our workstations with, or the security apps installed by Network Security team. Just not sure exactly where to begin looking to find the root cause, so I can figure out what I ned to do to resolve the issue…

FWIW, I do recall this issue started happening at first, that coincided when Java was first upgraded few revs back, at aboutthe same time we upgradee from R75.40 to R80.10, but only suffered this type of remote control failure occasionally, but it has continually gotten worse over time, until now when the the vendor we are working with, loses all remote control of the desktop as soon as they click on the smart Console to do anythgin, until I minimize the SmartConsole App from the console.

FWIW, based on our experience during a cut-over attempt last weekend, This does not seem to be limited to only Zoom, as we discovered it also does the same thing when we attempted a remote session using Cisco's WEBEX, so now I'm seriously confused, and wondering if Checkpoint accidentally wrote SmartConsole in, so the GUI app can’t be run from a remote interface (works OK, if I RDP the workstation from on-site or from the data center, or a VPN session, so fairly certain it’s not an issue with all remote access apps, I just do not want to attempt setting up an RDP session over the Internet due to security concerns with that).

[PhoneBoy]

Yeah, you wouldn't want to run RDP over the Internet directly, at least not without tunneling it over some sort of Remote Access (either Mobile Access Blade or CloudGuard Connect Corporate Access (aka Odo).
As I recall, we use .NET for SmartConsole.
We are also working on a web-based version of SmartConsole.
We've released the first version (albeit read only) as part of the first R81 JHF. 

[Dorit_Dor]

Our EA team use smartconsole remote over zoom, quite a lot - they do not see  issues - note that zoom uses gpu so maybe the specific machine you use is blocked by other resource

take a new computer that has modern cpu and gpu and do it over normal internet line... now try to change the different factors to see what is impacting the issues

you can approach TAC and the EA team  and see what is the difference between what you use and what they use

[Tal_Paz-Fridman]

Hi

I ran a few tests using Zoom to work with SmartConsole as you described (requesting Remote Control).

I used SmartConsole from R80.10 and R81 in various flows, and in all cases I did not encounter the problem.

Does it happen on a specific machine? Would it be possible to test it using a different machine running SmartConsole?

Thanks

Tal

If you would like to contact me directly tfridman@checkpoint.com