PCOIP REVIEW
I’m smack dad in the middle of a terminal review to see if PCoIP is all it’s cracked up to be. I am testing two terminals the P20 by Wyse and the FX100 by Dell. I am pretty familiar with VDI and have been a proponent of this technology since the get go, it is my hope that PCoIP will take the technology out of the infant stages and into the main stream.
TERADICI
Setting up the Teradici PCoIP appliance, while simple, could be made much easier by changing the format it comes in. Currently it is shipped as a VMDK file, which I thought was great, until I imported it to my SAN and tried to add it to my cluster. The VMDK is designed for Workstation/Player use only and I had to use converter to get it to work on ESX. Not a huge deal, honestly I just thought this was weird as View requires ESX so why would you make an appliance that runs on something else.
Understanding the PCoIP Management Console was simple enough, I still haven’t read all of the instructions but I was able to figure out enough to get my terminal up and running in a short amount of time. My first take is that they could improve on this interface but overall it gets the job done and has some pretty cool features (I really like that it can detect what devices are plugged into the zero client).
The only thing I had to do outside of installing this appliance was a small DNS change, with that setup it was time for me to plug in the terminal.
Wyse P20 verse Dell FX100
I’m not really sure what to review on theses terminals. All I did was take it out of the box, plug it in and it worked; honestly isn’t that exactly what we want in a zero client? In a comparision I could not find a single difference between the two devices, the branding is obviously different and I like that the Dell has an old school on off power switch on the back, but besides that these units are 100% identical. UPDATE: Wyse has informed me that the P20 has 64MB of RAM whereas the Dell has 32MB... upon further investigation I found that the only difference this makes is if I was running dual 24 inch monitors and both monitors where running at full frame rate, I'd see some display issues on the second monitor.
USB
I do not try to hide my allegiance to Citrix, they’ve been around much longer than VMware and know a thing or two about getting a desktop to an end user. However, even with the most advanced Citrix system I still have to do some magic to do anything with a USB port. What impressed me the most with all of this PCoIP stuff was the simplicity in USB; I’ve put in some random devices in this USB port and every one so far has worked. My favorite part about it is that it shows up identical to a USB device plugged directly into a workstation. I’m sure there are plenty of things that don’t work, but the integration I’ve seen so far has been very impressive.
CPU
Admittedly the first thing I wanted to see on PCoIP was some rockin video, so I went to youtube and did a search for HD Trailer and clicked on whatever I found. Initially my results were terrible. The CPU would max out and the video would sputter along as did the sound. Warren Ponder took the time to set the record straight about this issue in a great forum post and I learned a bit about Client Side Rendering and Host Side Rendering. The short version is that View ues Host Side Rendering which burns more CPU cycles but allows more flexibility in video formats. The solution to this according to “wponder” is to get over my mind set of 1-CPU per VM and move on to 2-CPU per VM. This makes perfect sense as HD Video is going to choke on just about any PC with 1-CPU, so the work around was simple enough. After adding a second processor I had the best looking HD video I’ve ever seen over a remote connection, however my CPU was still burning about 40% on both processors. With the HD video running at acceptable rates I moved on to a glaring issue, my second monitor wasn’t working.
Update: As of View 4.6 (and now 5.0) I see far less CPU being used to watch HD video, plus with the APEX card I can further reduce this.
MULTI-MONITOR SUPPORT
Getting the second monitor to work was a huge hassle that I made for myself. I was following too many google searches and didn’t realize a simple truth. The settings in View Manager override the settings for the VM. View Manager actually modifies the VMX files in the VMs to match what is set on the Desktop Pool. Many online articles were having me modify the VM video RAM, which is important, but did not solve my issue (Note: I had a lot of success setting the Video RAM to 40MB). As I was on a Wide Screen the calculations are incorrect in View Manager (thanks again to wponder who clarified this for me) so all I had to do was increase the resolution in View Manager, completely shutdown the VM (very important step) and low and behold I had dual screens… on Windows XP. For Windows 7 I had to do some non-documented tricks (again thanks to wponder), I’m not sure if I’m not supposed to tell but oh well: basically all you do is remove the WDDM video driver and replace it with the SVGA video driver located: C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMWare\Drivers. I have been warned that this can cause BSOD but I want my dual screen to work so I’m dealing with the looming threat.
Update: Windows 7 is fully supported and no special driver is needed. Out of the box Windows 7 will support Multi-monitor, no tweaking required.
UAC
Out of the box UAC on Windows 7 just doesn’t work, period. Switching to the SVGA driver solved this issue, also switching off UAC also solved it… but that resolution is a bit more obvious. I have been told that VMware is working on an updated driver for Windows 7 that will solve this and the Mult-Monitor issue, however it is what it is for the time being.
Update: This issue has been resolved, although I'd still recommend disabling UAC.
BLACK SCREEN
While troubleshooting my multi-monitor support problem I managed to screw the entire VM so that neither monitor worked. I’m pretty sure I did this while fooling with the amount of video RAM to give to each VM. The only solution I had for this was to reinstall both VMWare Tools and the View Agent. Once those were reinstalled I was back in business with at least one screen.
Update: Even with View 5.0 this black screen issue can still show its head. Often it is caused by UDP being blocked somewhere. Other times it is caused by the SGVA driver not syncing properly to the Zero Client. The good news is that this is becoming much less frequent.
SCREEN SAVER
Another issue I had with the WDDM driver is the screen saver. As soon as the machine kicks on the screen saver I would lose all access to the VM. After chaning the driver this issue also went away.
Update: No longer an issue.
WINDOWS XP VERSE WINDOWS 7
It comes as no surprise that I did not have any major issues with Windows XP. Maybe I should read a manual because it probably says somewhere that Windows 7 is not supported. If it is supported then it’s a ways off from working properly from the get go.
Update: When I wrote this article Windows 7 was not supported, it is now, and I run it on a Zero Client every day.
CONCLUSION
Well obviously I had some issues with my setup, but 1 day of work to get both XP and 7 working isn’t that big of a deal. If I were deploying this for a customer I’d have no issues doing it with XP, truly USB and HD video is VERY impressive. Setting up the Teradici is very simple and a great relief to an admin who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time fooling with zero clients. As for Windows 7, like I said, it is probably written somewhere that it’s not support, in which case I’m just wasting my own time. Windows XP however works very well in just about every area I tested.
I’m writing this article on my PCoIP terminal and am pretty happy with the results. I’ve decided for the time being I’m going to give myself the PCoIP treatment and see how long I had take it. Right now, I’m pretty happy. We’ll see what the future brings.
I’m really interested in your comments as I’d like to continue to push both XP and 7, so please let me know if there is anything I can do in my lab that you’d like to know about.
UPDATE
I am on week 4 of my PCoIP review. I have moved off of my P20 to a Dell FX100, not for any reason other than to see if the Dell performed as well as my P20, no surprise it does. These two terminals are identical. Anyway, I'm a pretty high end user and honestly my dual screen terminal has done everything I've wanted it to. I do have some sound sync issues with Windows 7, but I'm told that it's a known issue, that Windows 7 official support will be around June, at which time it will be resolved. But what I want to communicate is that I'm running this 24x7 and it works for me, ME the guy that manages all this stuff! If it works for an admin who breaks every policy on the network with the random stuff he puts on his workstation, I'm sure it'll work great for a standard user image.
UPDATE 2:
Its been a couple years sense I wrote this article. Since then I have had the privledge to become an expert in this field. Reading this blog makes me smile as this was my first real deployment of PCoIP in large scale, I've now tackled countless PCoIP projects. I can say that I run PCoIP every day, not just from a Zero Client but from iPads, airplanes, and one to one systems. I have become a huge advocate for PCoIP and hope it continues to improve with each release of View. So far Teradici has done a termendous job turning this Citrix fan boy into a View fan boy. 
Gunnar Berger
EUC Consultant
VCP3, VCP4, VCA-DT, VCP-DT, CCNA, MCTS
It's more than similar, its the identical chipset, with the exception that the FX100 only has 64MB or RAM. I too have heard that Wyse intends to make the V10L have a software based PCoIP component, this is one of the reasons they went down to a 800Mhz requirement for PCoIP, it originally was posted at 1Ghz as a requirement. I like the V10L approach, but I like the zero client approach even better. V10L at least gives you an out if PCoIP bombs in the long run.
If you already have hundreds of V10Ls then obviously riding your Wyse rep is the best solution. I know that Wyse is working on it and I've heard dates of this past December, January, and Q3 of this year. At least they are working on it.
As far as Zero clients go, the FX100 and P20 as you have seen are identical, if you have a requirement for dual 24 inch monitor then you have to go to the P20. I personally think Wyse is the better company of the two, they will support that terminal much better than Dell. Dell would have no issues just walking away from the terminal if it doesn't sell, Wyse will most likely stay there for the long haul. I'd recommend getting competive quotes for both because the FX100 was winning in the cost department but when I let my Wyse rep know he worked his butt off and got me a much better deal on the P20. The P20 comes with mouse and keyboard with the mouse daisy chaining off the keyboard, which is nice because all PCoIP clients only have 4-USB ports. So between those two units I'd "personally" choose Wyse.
HOWEVER!
I also have the Samsung NC240, I'm using it right now to reply to you, and man is it slick. My Samsung rep just got me great pricing on this guy and it rocks. Once again this thing is completely 100% idential to the P20 as far as the chipset is concerned, however this bad boy is all built into one monitor. Personally I think it's super slick and love it. I love showing off that I don't have a computer in my office. From a cost stand point it rediculous NOT to buy this as I'm getting a 24in monitor with the client built into it for maybe $50 more than the stand alone unit, and my Samsung guy is working to get that down even further. If you want my Samsung contact send me a private message.
I really like the Samsung approach to this as the NC240 also works as a stand alone monitor, so even if PCoIP does bomb, I still have a very nice 24 monitor that I can use anywhere. It also supports daisy chaining a second monitor on it which is pretty slick. Mainly I just like that I use 55watts and have very little clutter around the desk. From a TCO stand point Samsung wins, the problem I'm running into is that we don't necessarily need new monitors so replacing a hundred desktops just gives me 100 monitors to figure out what to do with.
Interesting, I will take a look in the NC240, but again, I still need to solve my problem with the V10Ls!. I can not even use them as a paperweight! 
Thanks for sharing all these info. Let's keep in touch.
