When a VCL reservation is over, VCL must make a decision on what to do with the node. Typically, it loads the node with an image so that the node will be mostly ready for another user to use it rather than the user having to wait for a full deploy time. VCL calls this Predictive Preloading. The idea here is that since a VCL system has many nodes, rather than leaving them in a state that is not particularly useful, load them with an image that has the potential to be useful to a future user. Once reloaded with an image, the node is considered to be in a hot standby state. At this point, only things like adding a user account need to be done to make the node ready for a user to log in. This decreases the deploy time and makes for a better user experience.
Through the 2.4.2 release, this was controlled as a management node setting that was then applied to all computers controlled by that management node. In later releases, this is controlled by setting the Predictive Loading Module field for a each computer.
There are 3 modules available from which to select:
There is 1 other case in how nodes are handled at the end of a reservation. If a new reservation for the node is coming up within a somewhat short amount of time, the node will be preloaded with the image for that reservation.