VMware Horizon Community
ZyBeR
Contributor
Contributor

Are you happy with the PCoIP performance in your P20?

You that are running Wyse P20 clients, what do you think about the PCoIP performance?

I got five of them up and running in my View 4 environment, I've tested both XP and 7 desktops and I must say that the performance is awful!

It's nothing even remotely related to what we saw on the videos before it was released.

I know Wyse is coming out with firmware 3.1 soon but I haven't seen any list of what's addressed, does anyone know?

The performance issues aside I also are having connection problems, sometimes it looses the connection during log on and takes the user back to the first log on screen. This never happens on my V10L's...

I was hoping P20 with PCoIP would give the end user a better experience, but as it is today I sorry to say it doesn't. I really hope Wyse will address these issues soon.

Tags (1)
Reply
0 Kudos
58 Replies
PCoIPinsider
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello Grizman,

One cause of your symptoms might be high packet loss on your network -

You can check this by logging into the web console and checking the

statistics for "Number of PCoIP Packet Lost" (on the main page).

Another possibility might be server loading - although the VM I'm

running right now is on a server shared by a number of users and I've

not experienced such bursting caused by VM scheduling.

Ian

Reply
0 Kudos
gunnarb
Expert
Expert

I've seen it on my slower workstations, I have also experienced a disappearing mouse multiple times.

-Gunnar

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
Reply
0 Kudos
Mickelonis
Contributor
Contributor

I agree with gunnarb...

We have a few P20 devices and I am impressed. I would challenge any "user" to tell me it's not a full computer, it respons "that well". Originally we were going to go with the V10L, performance was good, but after about 45 minutes it seemed that performance would go down.

P20's are great little devices. We're slated to purchase 500 of them.

Reply
0 Kudos
ZyBeR
Contributor
Contributor

I just got information about the upcoming 3.1.0 firmware, it will be released for Wyse P20 during next week.

I've attached the release notes if anyone is interested.

Reply
0 Kudos
gunnarb
Expert
Expert

What the fudge? How did you get a hold of that? I thought 3.1 wasnt' due for a few months yet. To bad it doesn't have a bug fix for the right shift key in a RDP session that is setup within a PCoIP session. Or auto-login (non-smartcard).

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
Reply
0 Kudos
SWCS833
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

That damn right shift key issue is starting to become an issue for my users. I wish VMWare and or Teradici would resolve it.

I heard 3.1 is coming by the end of the month.

Reply
0 Kudos
DaIceMan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello all,

we are also testing the Teradici zeroclient and host solution (Leadtek VP200P/H, but the zeroclient hardware is the same as all others except for Clearcube). We have firmware 3.1.1 on host and zeroclient already upgraded (released the 15th of March). Performance of the zeroclient with a 1600x1050 monitor on 1080p resolution fullscreen youtube video is incredible, even if not completely smooth but absolutely acceptable! The Zeroclient connects to an XP SP3 VM with 1Gig and 2vCPUs as recommended. Naturally the VM eats up a lot of CPU on the host side when running 1080 fullscreen but that's understandible (3GHz). It performs way better than on my XW8200 workstation with a rather old Nivida6800GPU with the same monitor and resolution. For the ordinary office user, there is no perceivable differance in performance respect to an ordinary desktop PC. Bandwidth has not been limited (max 20mbits). If limited to around 4Mbits, the "office desktop experience" is fine while youtube flash videos are evidently sloppier and lower in resolution but still acceptable.

Connection from zeroclient to host of course is fine but incredibly the zeroclient to VM experience seems more "real" as the rendering of certain parts of the screen appears to be more immediate!

Unfortunately we have had no success in brokering with VIEW Manager the zeroclient or soft client to Hardware host on our Windows 7 x64 workstation. However this is not completely supported yet plus the most recent Vew Agent released does not even install on x64 OSs! We used the prior version without USB redirection, which works through broker but only through RDP protocol. Setting PCoIP, with the Teradici HOST driver enabled and installed and the prior VIEW Agent installed, both clients (software and hardware) report that the desktop does not support the required protocol. I hope VMWare will release the 64bit VIEW agent for Workstations for brokering hardware host cards for high performance desktops.

If any of you have successfully brokered a zeroclient to hardware teradici host card through VIEW (on XP or Windows 7 64bit platforms), we'd be glad to know!

Cheers

Reply
0 Kudos
gunnarb
Expert
Expert

I haven't but I'd love to try if you wouldn't mind doing a webex. So long as you are using the PCoIPMC, I think it should be pretty simple.

-Gunnar

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
Reply
0 Kudos
DaIceMan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

No we're not running the PCoIP MC as we only have one Portal and one Host to test so it's really not necessary for now. But I have imported the latest MC in our Vsphere infrastructure though we don't use it as it's not necessary to broker hardware portals to VMs or Hard hosts. After running some tests I believe that the second latest view agent (build 210939 - installs on Windows 7 without USB redir) does not correctly recognise the Teradici host card through their driver so when you attempt to connect using PCoIP with either a zeroclient or a soft client it simply reports that there is no supported protocol. What it should do, is advertise the Teradici Host's IP address to the client and redirect the connection there so the connection can complete but it fails to do this. I was hoping to find some registry tweak to manually set this (if build 210939 supports this), but I haven't had enough time to look into it.

Additionally, it appears that Zero client connections through the VIEW Manager broker only support resolutions starting from 1280x1024. I have a standalone XP VM in a manual pool which switches automatically from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 when attempting to connect from the zero client (I see this through the console) but the zeroclient gets disconnected (it's connected to a 1024x768 LCD monitor) as it can't set the proper resolution. Furthermore, the latest release of the VMware Connection Server (4.0.1.233023) has removed lower resolutions and starts from 1600x1050 upwards.

Reply
0 Kudos
DaIceMan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I can confirm that you need the latest VIEW Agent build which only supports 32bit OS for brokering towards Hardwart Teardici Host to work. We tested this on an older XW8200 with XP 32 bit SP3 and it works fine with the latest Teradici host driver installed from soft or hard client. For audio to work through the teradici host you need to install the HD Audio driver on XP as this is the only supported solution (the card implements this kind of audio solution and it is seen as such but the OS when you enable the host driver option and reboot).

Now we're hoping to see a 64bit VIEW Agent released soon with USB redirection support as all new high performance workstations really do not have any 32bit OS (it would be paradoxal)!

Reply
0 Kudos
Icereval
Contributor
Contributor

Current we run Wyse Terminals in Production with Windows XP here are a few things we've discovered:

VMware View Client

Issues

  • Right Shift does not work when logged into a Virtual Desktop then you RDP into another machine, this can make typing passwords difficult.

  • Num Lock keyboard light status is lost when connected to a Virtual Desktop.

  • Caps Lock keyboard light status is lost when connected to a Virtual Desktop.

Wyse P20 Zero Client

Works

  • USB Scanners work well. A noticeable delay when scanning papers over PCoIP USB vs. a direct attached USB2.0 scanner (approximatly 2-3 seconds more), however this is acceptable.

  • USB Printers work well.

Issues

  • CtrlAltIns does not work, it always sends the command to your Virtual Desktop (this gets annoying when attempting to login to the VM Console via vCenter)

  • Display Resolution cannot be capped at a smaller resolution, say 1024/768 (or compatible wide-screen resolution). Resolutions are always set to the maximum display resolution upon each and every connection to the virtual desktop.

    • Workaround #1: Connect a smaller monitor that is not capable of such high resolutions, unfortunately this prevents us from using newer and better quality 22+ inch displays.

    • Workaround #2: Users change their display resolution every single time they login from the Windows Display Settings tab. A BIG issue with this, the virtual desktop displays all possible resolutions as potential options. If the user selects an incompatible display resolution for the monitor, it kicks them out. Sometimes it takes staff several tries to find a compatible resolution.

    • Workaround #3: Although untested you could potentially set the display memory on the virtual desktop very low, however this property can only be applied to an entire Desktop Pool, not individual desktops (when using the View Management Console).

  • CD/DVD USB drives can work but you need to take a step back and get some coffee every time you attempt to access/read data. We cannot burn to media.

  • Philips SpeechMike's do not work. Connecting one spins the pcoip server process up to 100% CPU.

Overall we have been able to work around many of these limitations and the users do enjoy the desktop experience. Users love the ability for the desktop to "follow" them (disconnect/login at another terminal).

Be sure you've patched your ESX servers up to March 2010 rollup:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1018403

  • Specifically KB1017465 fixes a Dev Tap issue with PCoIP and resolution changes that would cause the VM to crash (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1017465).

Reply
0 Kudos
gunnarb
Expert
Expert

I haven't run across the resolution issue but I will. All of your workarounds don't work for me. Do you know if VMware is working to gives us a solution to this?

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
Reply
0 Kudos
Icereval
Contributor
Contributor

The resolution issue is a limitation with the Wyse P20 Zero Client. I've been in contact with my sales engineer, but as of yet I have not heard anything. Also the latest firmware for the P20 v3.1.0 (release Apr 5th) does not address the issue.

Reply
0 Kudos
hmartin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I believe it's an issue with any thin client device that uses the Teradici processor and firmware and not specific to the Wyse P20.

Reply
0 Kudos
gunnarb
Expert
Expert

I agree with hmartin, if its on the P20 it would be on any Teradici device as they are identical. Looks like it time to yell at Teradici.

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
Reply
0 Kudos
SWCS833
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

You currently cannot change the resolution on a Zero Client with a Teradici Chip. When you connect into VMWare View, it uses the max supported resolution. You can change it once inside View, but once you log off and log back in, it will reset itself.

Teradici has already stated that they are looking at this for a future firmware release. It will probably make it into the next version of their firmware as many people have asked.

Please see this topic for more details.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1498051#1498051

Reply
0 Kudos
DaIceMan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes, exactly. If it's running the Teradici chip, it will have the same issues. We have a VP200 by Leadtek Research and it has exactly the same issues (even the plastic casing of the zero client is the same, they are just "branded" by the OEM).

To be precise, the zero client defaults to the maximum supported resolution of the attached monitor, not to the one specified in the "pool" which only sets the "maximum" resolution. In fact, if you connect an analog VGA monitor with a DVI to VGA adapter to the zero client, it will fail to work if it's less than 1280x1024 resolution, as apparently it defaults to this resolution when it cannot detect the attached monitor resolution (monitor will turn off or display unsupported resolution after connection to the VM starts).

Regarding USB, we tested Nokia PC Suite to see what happened when we connected a Nokia phone. Well, once we connect the phone and selected PC Suite mode, it would just sit there and do nothing. Furthermore, after disconnecting the phone and connecting a USB storage device, it would fail to recognize it. A reboot of the zero client fixes this. Out of curiousity, I tried a webcam to see what happened - well simply nothing as expected. This happens on Windows XP and Windows 7, 32 bit versions of course as 64bit is not supported by the VIEW Agent. I still have to try a USB scanner to see if I am able to scan a document successfullly as reported above.

Cheers!

Reply
0 Kudos
frass
Contributor
Contributor

Using 18 P20's here.

So far ok.

Can't get youtube and videos to play properly sound and video is always out of sync.

Tried 2gb ram, 2cpu, 128mb video ram. SVGA Driver instead of 3D Video Driver.

I can only assume its windows 7 related so im hoping 4.5 is going to be alot better. Each client is connected over 100mbit.

Other than that they work ok as a glorified word processor.

Reply
0 Kudos
DaIceMan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Looks like it's Windows 7 related as using XP all is well here while using Windows 7 the sync issue is present with our zeroclient. It seems a buffering issue as the higher the resolution of the played video, the more lipsync you loose.

Reply
0 Kudos
RobBuxton
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Similar issue with Nokia PC Suite here.

I can connect in "Mass Storage " mode from my E71, but I've not been able to connect to either the Nokia PC Suite or the Nokia OVI Suite.

In both cases the E71 itself connects through and is seen by the Wyse P20, but it doesn't seem to get any further than that.

Other than that the P20's seem quite good. A marked improvement in sound quality over the Wyse V10Ls and I'm running dual monitors quite happily.

Reply
0 Kudos