Can View + Wyse P20 = great 3D software developer experience?

[saymOU]

I would like to implement VMware View for 200+ users, but about half of them are 3D software developers that require high end graphics cards to render, view, or simulate 3D models.  I've read that the combination of View + a Wyse P20 zero client using PCoIP is the solution to providing these high end graphics users with the same or almost equivalent experience.  Is this true? Currently, these users are running Windows XP x64, but they will soon be using Windows 7 x64.  Has anyone setup a View environment like this?  Are there any limitations?

[tacticsbaby]

Out of the box I don't think this will work. You still need to have a way to provide a GPU to your VMs. As far as I know there are not any GPUs that are supported at this time in ESXi. Someone please correct me if I am wrong. I know that you can place PCoIP video accelerators into your hosts. These cards are out now. By the way, I know of a company that is doing this now. They are Terarecon. They do medical imaging and they make extensive use of virtualization. They have custom graphics hardware and software to do it. So I know what you are talking about can be done.

[sm4rtins]

P20 isn't enough to have 3D, and as our friend tacticsbaby have said, you'll need host cards in server to have 3D experience.You can find more about that in teradici site.

[SDO1]

NO .. this WONT work for intensive graphics operations ..

For this to work you need to use blade pc's / workstations in your datacenter with the Teradici PCI card installed which parses the graphics .. but with that setup you can make a floating pool of XXX high end machines you can broker through View.

Ive set up a few of these poc's .. so if you need more info let me know.

[saymOU]

Thank you all for your input.

SDO, are you referring to the Teradici APEX2800 Server offload card when you say the Teradici PCI card needs to be installed in a blade server/ workstation?  I am very interested in what you have used to set this up.

[SDO1]

No its the Teradici Host Cards : http://www.teradici.com/pcoip/pcoip-products/product-search-results.php?vendor_id=0&category_id=0&fo...

I have tried both the EVGA model where you couple it with a Graphics Card of your own choice ( we went with some of the bigger nVidia with 96+ cudas) for Engineers or you can use the ATI combo card, it depends on what card your application supports really .. but the dual card option gives you more versatility

You install them in blade workstations you host in your datacenter (or you could optionally install them in your users existing desktops - and just use the View broker as a "out of office option")

[Bitfarmer]

I know this isn't all relavent to your question but it will give you an idea how CAD apps can perform.

We just upgraded to View 4.6 and set up a connection broker for external access.  The first thing I did was set up an "engineering" environment to test how our CAD applications would work.  Loaded them up with Solidworks, Pro-E, Autocad and a bunch of other vendor specific CAD apps for our Lasers.  I really didn't expect great, or even good, performance but so far we are very happy with the results.  The Eng. I had test the setup said when he tried out a 3D assembly in Solidworks it was almost as fast as sitting at his desk when he tested from home.  Yes it was a little choppy but it wasn't slow.  We have a 50/25 meg fiber line now and that's probably what makes all the difference.  I didn't do this to replace desktops like you want to do, just for fast remote access for my engineers when they are offsite or home.  One guy said it's faster running locally than his computer, because he has a 5 year old workstation and badly needs an upgrade.  My VM's are XP Pro 32bit.  I gave them around 35 MB of Video RAM.  My hosts are a couple 3-4 year old Dell 2900's that I repurposed for View when we virtualized our SQL environment.

[saymOU]

I'm actually interested in a remote access solution as well.  Bitfarmer, did you simply create a pool of VMs that had all of those applications installed, and allowed remote users to connect via web client or View Client?  Was PCoIP enabled?

[Bitfarmer]

Yes that's exactly what I did.  Had it online for a month or so now and my users really like it.  Using PCoIP.  Even multiple monitors in some cases.  Since most of the apps use floating license servers it works very well.  And those that require USB dongles for licensing I use silex ethernet attached USB hubs which have a client that lets them quickly connect to the hub that has the dongle they need to run their app over the network.

[RENEVANO]

Bitfarmer,

I have a question a customer of our company wants to use VMware VIEW and they have 20 users that are working with SolidWorks 3D. and 200 other user that are working with other applications. 

How many users are working in your environment with SolidWorks 3D ?

And with configuration does your environment has

  -Wat kind of thin clients are uses

  -Wat are the server specifiactions

  -Configuration of the VM's (OS, memory etc

And are your users happy with te preformance of SolidWorks 3D in VMware VIEW 4.6

[Bitfarmer]

- I'm using the full view client, not terminals.  Plan to, in some manner, when I can expand view internally.  I've played with Devon IT's VDI blaster product to re-purpose old PC's and it works pretty well.

- Servers are old Dell PE2900's with two dual core 3GHz Xeon's in them.  We set up our view environment using the hand me down hardware from our old SQL production environment.  New SQL is all Virtualized.

- Storage is on EQ SAN's.

- VM's are 32bit XP with 2GB ram.  Reason being some of our machine specific CAD/Programming apps don't play nice with 64 bit.

My users are extremely happy with the performace but you have to understand we don't use this for daily production.  In the case of my engineering pool it's for remote access and backup if there's an issue with their physical workstation.  We were just happy when we opened up a complex fixture model and it was still usable, yes a little choppy, but usable.  When we tested the first machine one of my engineers with an old workstation said it was actually faster than his physical desktop.  I still think it would be a little slow for most of my users and wouldn't want to run daily production on it.  Maybe a 64 bit Win 7 desktop with more RAM would perform better but I haven't tested that.

Now I've been told by VMware support that View 5 in combination with  ESXi 5 is suppose to have software based 3D acceleration.  I haven't  gone digging for details yet but if it's true it speaks well for VMware  and the future of the product.

Our main use for view is remote access from our warehouse's over slow DSL links.  Having the ability to set up additional pool's for the rest of my employee's to get remote access is just an additional perk.  The president of the company and other managers just love that they can take any device, laptop, android/ipad tablet,  to a customer meeting and have quick full access to any info they need real time.  And the solution was built off something we already owned that didn't have to spend more money on.