Can VMWare handle 30fps for four-monitor Excel scrolling?

[snthaoeu]

We've been told recently by VMWare that we cannot expect to see anything close to native desktop performance for Windows 7 VMs across more than two monitors. I was stunned to hear this, so I've been thinking of easy ways for the community at large to test this.

Here it is! For those fortunate enough to be running at least two monitors, try this:

1. Start up Excel (2010 or above), and manually expand the window across 2+ monitors.

2. Fill every visible cell and at least a few hundred more rows down with the formula "=RAND()". Remove the double quotes when pasting into Excel. This fills the sheet with a bunch of floating point numbers which I've found is by far the hardest kind of spreadsheet for PCoIP to scroll.

3. Try scrolling down and seeing if the scrolling is smooth.

For four 1920x1200 monitors, we can only ever achieve low single-digit frames per second and the screens are totally out-of-sync: one monitor will move down a row, then some other monitor, etc. The only real difference after installing an APEX 2800 offload card is that the screens are a bit more in sync.

Even with just three monitors the frame rate is grossly slow, in the 6-10 fps range. Only over two monitors do I achieve kinda/sorta smooth performance at around 18 fps.

This is the case regardless of whether we are using our V1200QP zero clients or a full-blown high-end desktop running the View client. All machines are cabled with gigabit Ethernet.

Anybody running at least three monitors get better results then we do?

[erickbm]

What are the specs of the vm that you are connecting to? e.g. x64 2vCPU 4Gb RAM.

If you watch pcoip server task in task manager, do you see it pegging at 100% during the scroll? I would expect so. Are you running any type of graphics card in your hosts?

With that many pixels being drawn over the wire that quickly, I wouldn't think that the performance would be as good as local on 4 monitors. We do have users using excel with 2 monitors with the occasional jitter. We use GRID K1 cards in SVGA.

[douglasarcidino]

‌like I was saying your other thread, the apex cards are trash unless youre running into serious CPU contention issues on your host. How much video RAM have you given your VMs? Are you on hardware that supports a GPU card like the K1? Can you post a sanitized vmx file for us? Remember that the ApeX cards are a PCoIP offload card and not actually a graphics card.

[Bleeder]

Are you running View 6.2 yet, with guests on hardware version 11 and aero disabled?

There is more info on Sean Massey's site.  I know you're not running 4K screens, but maybe it would help in your situation.

http://thevirtualhorizon.com/2015/09/01/whats-new-in-vmware-horizon-6-23d-graphics

4K Resolution Support

4K content is extremely high resolution content, and more 4K content will appear as the displays start to come down in price.  These displays, which have a resolution of 3840×2160, are useful in situations where high resolution imaging is needed.

Horizon 6.2 will support in-guest resolutions up to 3840×2160.  In order to achieve this, Horizon Agent 6.2 is needed in the guest, and the client must be connecting with Horizon Client 3.5.

The guest operating system must be running Windows.  A Windows 7 virtual desktop can support up to three 4K monitors when running on a VM with HW version 11 and with Aero disabled.  Windows 7 machines with Aero enabled, or Windows 8 desktops running on HW version 10 can support a single 4K monitor.

Please note that this is for in-guest display resolutions.  Clients that have a 4K display with High DPI scaling are not supported at this time.

[snthaoeu]

Are you running View 6.2 yet, with guests on hardware version 11 and aero disabled?

There is more info on Sean Massey's site.  I know you're not running 4K screens, but maybe it would help in your situation.

http://thevirtualhorizon.com/2015/09/01/whats-new-in-vmware-horizon-6-23d-graphics

Ah yes, we are indeed looking into updating to View 6.2, for exactly the reasons you list: 4K monitor support on GRID (and now AMD!) ESXi servers. But unless there is some other bug fix in 6.2 we don't know about, I can't see how increased GRID functionality would improve the PCoIP issues we have with Office apps.

Well, we're going to upgrade anyway so I guess we'll find out soon enough. Still, I suspect we've either got something set up incorrectly or VMWare just can't handle smooth 4-monitor Excel scrolling (with keyboard).

[snthaoeu]

like I was saying your other thread, the apex cards are trash unless youre running into serious CPU contention issues on your host.

I think the fact the APEX card actually does something to improve Excel scrolling means that we're not doing something right without the APEX card installed. So I totally agree with you.

The worst part of the APEX card is the 24 fps limit. We definitely see less smooth 1080p HD video playback on the APEX vs without.

How much video RAM have you given your VMs?

128MB. We don't get to select any higher, right?

Are you on hardware that supports a GPU card like the K1?

Why yes: one of our new ESXi servers has a K2 card, and the other one has a K1 card. Due to the pre-6.2 View resolution limitations (not allowing 3840x2160) we've been testing VMs without either GRID card enabled. However, we have tried enabling them and while it does allow things like WebGL to work, the framerates overall are pretty horrible. I think we need to solve our basic fps problems before turning the GRID cards back on.

Can you post a sanitized vmx file for us? Remember that the ApeX cards are a PCoIP offload card and not actually a graphics card.

Will do as soon as I get back into the office. And yes: I understand that the APEX cards are offload cards, not graphics. We shouldn't need them, but anyway even with them in we're not getting the fps we're expecting.

[Bleeder]

Even without View 6.2, you could still try the other things from that blog, like updating virtual hardware to v11 and disabling Aero, unless you've already tried that.

Also, there's still this unresolved bug: VMware KB: Redraw lag in text-based applications occur in PCoIP Sessions

Hardware v11 is not listed as being affected, which is why it may be worth a try.

[snthaoeu]

What are the specs of the vm that you are connecting to? e.g. x64 2vCPU 4Gb RAM.

x64 16vCPU (really, as in 16 PCPU or 57% of the 28 cores in our machines), 16GB of RAM. There's no excuse not to see native desktop performance from such a VM, right?

If you watch pcoip server task in task manager, do you see it pegging at 100% during the scroll? I would expect so. Are you running any type of graphics card in your hosts?

It only ever goes up to 1/vCPU in resources. So for a 4-vCPU configuration, it would max at 25%. For my current 16-vCPU setup, it maxes out between 6-7% (since 1/16 = 0.0625). I would love to see pcoip_win32_server.exe pegged at 100%! See my other thread about that.

With that many pixels being drawn over the wire that quickly, I wouldn't think that the performance would be as good as local on 4 monitors.

I would agree with this if the PCoIP encoding were "single-threaded" (whatever that might mean in VM land) and parallel encoding of each monitor was not on the cards. But if that's the case then VMWare should say so: they claim supporting umpteen number of monitors when the reality is that it would be in with degraded, non-native performance.

We do have users using excel with 2 monitors with the occasional jitter. We use GRID K1 cards in SVGA.

I guess that sums it up. Too bad: I thought PCoIP would scale to as many monitors as the server, network pipeline, and client could handle.

Thanks so much for your help, and again my apologies for not replying earlier.

[snthaoeu]

Argh, another post I somehow missed, apologies!

Even without View 6.2, you could still try the other things from that blog, like updating virtual hardware to v11 and disabling Aero, unless you've already tried that.

We are already on v11 and even on our physical desktops we don't run Aero. No performance setting makes an appreciable difference to our VM performance except turning off font smoothing (ClearType), which gains us back a couple frames per second. But that's hardly noticeable when a four-monitor Excel session is scrolling at 4 fps.

Also, there's still this unresolved bug: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2084429VMware KB: Redraw lag in text-based applications occur in PCoIP Sessions

Hardware v11 is not listed as being affected, which is why it may be worth a try.

Sadly, yes: we are already on v11. The part that kills me is that RDP can scroll Excel all day long native-like -- even if it can't play even a single 1080p video properly -- while PCoIP is basically unuseable. With Excel. I mean, come on: we're not doing CAD or playing games or anything.

Now that Horizon 7 has been announced with the Blast Extreme protocol basically at feature-parity with PCoIP, maybe it's a good thing we haven't invested too heavily in Teradici zero-clients ....

My conclusion is that no VMware ESXi solution (short of the just-announced Horizon 7) can scroll a four-monitor Excel workbook smoothly using a keyboard. It may in fact be the case that no VDI solution can do this at all, but I know Goldman Sach's NDS system (using Citrix) is used by traders that indeed have four monitors. They definitely use Excel spreadsheets all day long, too. Anybody from GS care to comment?

[douglasarcidino]

So, I am not running four monitors at any of my clients but I am running 3 1920x1080 monitors and we get fairly smooth performance(almost native) with 4 vCPU and 12 GB of RAM. 128MB of video memory and 256MB for 3D accel. I have also tweaked the View GPO to prioritize FPS and set it at 60fps with a 5Mb bandwidth floor.

[snthaoeu]

Interesting! Do you happen to have Excel installed on one of these setups and run the simple test I described?

Another test would be to call up one browser window per monitor and try to play a YouTube 1080p/30 video on each. Our setup becomes noticeably < 30fps with anything more than a single 1080p video playing, particularly on a tough "game trailer" videos where so much is happening on-screen.