Blast Protocol Zero Client Recommendation

[kwilliamson]

We have been running View for about 10 years, have been doing well with Tera 2 Thinclients (Wyse P25/Dell 5030 and LGs All in ones)

Being Teradici is charging $$$ for firmware downloads on version 6 of their code and it will cost us over $20K a year just for firmware updates and management console,

I'm wondering what other people are using to connect to view desktops.  We are looking for Zero Clients that support the Blast Protocol as that appears to be where VMware is heading currently.

I looked at some offerings from Dell that have embedded Windows and Linux but it reminds me too well of the days before Teradici ThinClients.  WDM still looks be same ol mess it has been for years.  Teradici Management Console 1.X was been pretty good.  I'm not sure how many View upgrades I can do while still running 4.8.2 code on the thin client.  We are running View 7.0.2.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

[MattConnor]

have you looked at the igel offering

https://www.igel.com/products-hardware/zero-client-comparisons/

[BenFB]

We were in the same boat and decided to pilot Dell/Wyse 5060 running ThinOS. With the introduction of fingerprint scanner redirection in 7.4.0 which is only available for Windows Clients we are considering moving to Dell SFF PC that would be configured in a kiosk mode to just run the Horizon Client. The Horizon Client always get's the latest features and functionality so that is something to consider. You also have to consider your management. Since we already have a large amount of physical PCs it's easier to manage more of those than to add ThinOS.

[strizzz]

HI, i'm working on the same, problem and after many test I can confirm that in this moment no dell's thinclient is capable to work in a good way with blast protocol.

I usually deploy virtual workstations with horizon view and grid cards.

if you want to use pcoip you can use the dell 3040, is quite good also for some cad workloads. dell has just relased the new versione of its console and works very well.

I've test 3040 thinOS, 3040 thinlinux, 5060 thinos (with the future release of8.5 firmware), 5060 windows 10iot and none of them is capable to work with blast extreme.

After that i've received 2 demo units from 10zig (5800q series and 4400q series) and I can confirm that this zero client is a monster with blast extreme!.

It works with this protocol better than a traditional pc

[Seranor20111014]

Same case here,

the HP t730 is one of the thin / zeroclients we are looking into.

We are currently using Fujitsu L620 with 4 display ports and therfore 4x 1920*1080.

The only ThinClient we found with 4 display ports is that HP t730 and as a surprise the HP Smart Zero OS supports PcOIP as well as BLAST (we are using Horizon 7.3.2 by the way).

We experiencing differences between BLAST and PCoIP on that. So BLAST is a lot slower and has more display issues like fragments and things like that, but maybe we need to customize the values. But PCoIP on the HP t730 works as well as the former Teradici (FujitsuL620) did and as bonus there no disconnects until now, only one short Black Screen without a disconnect, so maybe this HP t730 will be our next client to replace the teradici. Forgot to mention that the t730 has graphics unit that should be used for H.264 offloading but I am unable to check if this really works.

As a common suggestion we are looking for a client that will be usable for BLAST but not only for this, we want to be as flexible as possible so more protocols supported by the client will be fine. Also a big point is the management side. We are looking for something that is simple to manage, we all do not have the resources to spend a lot of time into managing thinclients. The HP Smart Zero Services are easy, but you have no control or feedback or a database for history, it is just fire and forget. There is a HP Device Manager to achieve such functionality but it needs a lot of ports to be opened for Broadcast, Multicast and so on, which is a nightmare on a network with a lot of VLANs,

So we are still searching for something better to fill the gap with teradici.

[TonyCCC]

I've seen many migrating to Wyse 3040 or 5060 WTOS caombined with their free Wyse Management Suite downloads.dell.com - /wyse/WMS/1.1/ 

Base WTOS models all support Blast and if you need PCoIP as well you can order them with that as a addition as well.

[ksliger_pnfp]

I can give a solid nod to the Wyse 5060 with ThinOS as well. It's a work horse and very stable. It can technically support BLAST now but apparently there are still issues to be worked out. The good news is that it will support BLAST or PCoIP and when issues are sorted out and the world moves to BLAST eventually the 5060's will be viable. We are also looking at the 5040 all in one as it is pretty seamless. Our field services guys love them because there is less to setup and less potential issue for users to plug in something wrong. I do know the 5070 is coming soon and a new all in one as well. I think they will have capacity for more than 2 diaplays. The Cloud based or on prem Wyse Management Suite is very nice and very powerful. As much as I loved the Teradici based zero's it just doesn't seem like they are going to be a good long term investment.

[ArnoM]

Have seen these in a demo, looked very promising. Very easy to mange, you can update the firmware using a server in the cloud or on premise.

https://www.10zig.com/resources/vdi-blog/vmware-horizon-7-10zig-blast-extreme-zero-clients-now-certi...

[BenFB]

The management console could use some improvement but from our brief testing we liked the units. We ran out of time due to other projects and plan to demo them again at some point.

[kwilliamson]

We have Thin clients across many VLANs as well.  We haven't looked at igel.

I'm just not sold on thinos, as we used this in the past and many reboots that was needed to get base firmware, then the view client. Plus they had to reboot to download to see the ftp server.  It didn't seem as clean as the old teradici MC, where it would download in the background and then reboot when it was needed.  I guess it good to know that Blast isn't ready yet.  Just would not want to recommend to buy a signaficant number of thin clients and find out 3 or 4 years later we chose badly because the product didn't add feature X and we need to replace them as we did in the past.

I haven't looked 10zig or HP thin clients or their management consoles yet.

[markadams123]

Hi.

You might want to check out IGEL and 10ziG’s Blast Extreme zero client solutions. They provide more or less the same UX in virtualized environments but you will have to do some research on which endpoint would deliver relevant results for your business. As you know, VDI isn’t a one-size-fits-all technology.

While I’ve tried both, my best experience is with the ClearCube CD5011 ZERO+ client. Apart from getting a true PC-like end UX, the endpoint integrates cloud desktop OS that supports VMware® View with Blast Extreme. This is a safe option if your users often implement workloads that require high-quality multimedia in VDI deployments.

It’s also better than traditional zero clients because it offers a choice of both Blast Extreme and PCoIP protocols which you can consolidate into VMware environments.

I found that the CD5011 solution best suits the computer usage of task and knowledge users as it provides Full HD on two DVI monitors at 1920 x 1200 resolution. I’m still exploring the other benefits it offers but if there are many power users in your organization, you might want to consider other endpoint options.

Let me know if you have any questions.