Help needed improving PCoIP performance....

[ctcbod]

I’m looking for some suggestions about how best to implement a view pilot to some users.  I have previously set up a view4.5 eval (persistent linked clone desktop pools) and all went well except for 1 drawback – Flash video performance.  I’ve tested on a mixture of thin clients (Wyse S10, C10LE and HP5545) and also used Devon IT’s VDI blaster using a both RDP and PCoIP.  VMs have been configured with dual CPUs and various amount of RAM but I’ve still not had any of these setups give good flash video performance (mainly youtube for testing).  The video is quite choppy as many others have reported and we can pretty much forget full screen video.  The best results were using PCoIP with the View Client installed on a workstation’s base operating system, but we won’t be using this method if we roll this out into the live environment so that’s not much help.   I know RDP is pretty much a non-starter here, so am really looking for ways to improve PCoIP performance.

I think that if my pilot does not offer a desktop experience that is at least as good as the user’s current standard desktops, the project will be a non-starter.  

One problem I have is that I don’t have much budget for expensive thin clients, which is why I’ve been trialling the use of VDI blaster as I plan to turn current workstations as ‘thick clients’, so I’m just trying to get a feel for what the best options are for me…

Maybe somebody knows of some inexpensive thin/zero clients that support and work well with PCoIP, or maybe someone can suggest some other ways of tweaking the desktop pool or VM settings to improve performance.

Thanks very much….

[mittim12]

You can try looking over this KB, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1030695, this blog for troubleshooting PCOIP, http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=751, and this whitepaper http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-PCoIP-Network-Sizing-Guide-IG-EN.pdf.  Hopefully this will assist in helping you determine where the issues are.

[Suiname]

are you using multimedia redirection?  I'm curious as to whether this has any effect on video playback.

[Suiname]

Also there is a Flash Quality setting under the pool settings, maybe turning that up to high will make playback better.

[PCoIPinsider]

Those thin clients probably provide adequate performance for office applications but likely become CPU-bound when decoding media rich applications such as HD video or Flash. If your environment demands a desktop experience comparable to a local PC, I’d recommend testing out one or more of the many zero client options compatible with VIEW4.5 :

http://www.teradici.com/pcoip/pcoip-products/vmware-view-clients.php

Good luck with the trial!

[ctcbod]

Thanks everyone - I've tried playing around with all the adobe flash quality settings within the pool and also turned on multimedia redirection, but to no real avail.  I've going to get my test environment back on-line today to see if I can tweak some setting to get VDI blaster performing a little better, if not I'll look at some of the PCoIP View clients - although i'm not sure I'll have budget.  I guess we're going to have to compromise somewhere here - Budget\performance??  Can I have my cake AND eat it? :smileyconfused: 
      

[regnak]

Hi,

You mention using RDP and Flash with Wyse Thin Clients. You're going to have horrible results UNLESS you use TCX:

http://www.wyse.com/products/software/tcx/index.asp

There is a specific Flash acceleration element. It will add to your overall cost but not as much as the PCoIP hardware clients. It should provide better results with everything except Flash full screen / HD.

Mike

[ctcbod]

Just to close this - my latest test setup has provided some really encouraging performance results using PCoIP.

I've ditched the concept of using RDP, optimised my desktop OS images and pretty much not messed about too much with the default View Admin persistent pool settings and we've had some good results.

Using a combination of re-purposed Optiplex PCs (VDI blaster and 2X CCOS) and a Wyse P20, Flash and HD video are perfectly acceptable - as you mentioned, the client just needs a bit more processing grunt when decoding hi-def media.  I'm about to roll out a user pilot and If successful and I proceed with a production roll out, I'll probably use the re-purposed PCs and hopefully by the time they die, PCoIP optimised zero clients will be a little cheaper!!

Thanks for all the pointers - very helpful.

[iamxCPx]

Hi there,

Do you mind sharing with what you did with your latest setup to make it acceptable?

I have a similar project like yours but we are currently testing it by using a view client on a Windows OS desktop through PCoIP.

Did the same settings as yours on the provisioning and the image side but so far I'm not impressed with the Flash (youtube video) performance. Still a little choppy. I have an open case with VM support try to troubleshoot this but so far no progress yet.

Our next step would be to test it using a thin client and wyse like yours and thought that might performed a lot better than View Client.

Well, based on your experience, I guess not.

I appreciate you sharing your experience with the thin client and wyse. It saves me time not to do it now.

At least not until your test is a success. :smileygrin:

Or maybe I should try out XenDesktop?

Based on many hours researching the internet apparently Citrix XenDesktop beats VMware view when it comes to video/flash performance.

[ctcbod]

Hi CP,

From what I've experienced and as PCoIPinsider stated earlier, the main root of PCoIP performance issues seem to stem from the lack of client processing power.  The older\cheaper wyse and HP thin clients that I used either only supported RDP or just did not have enough local resources to decode flash movies or hi-def video.    If you're using the view client from a windows PC, I would have imagined PCoIP performance would have been quite decent??  Also take a look at the 2^ndpost from mittim.

In my case the first thing I did was eliminate all configurations that gave poor performance i.e. scrap using RDP, bin the thin clients that did not work and start from an optimised XP master image (1 CPU, 1GB RAM, 35MB Video Memory for 1280x1024)   with all the apps required and fully updated.

For example:

Microsoft updates

Delete all hidden update folders except $hf_mig$

Disable indexing of the C: drive

Optimise the page file – set to the same amount of VM RAM and disable paging of the OS itself by changing the dword value to 00000001 in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Managemet\DisablePagingExecutive.

Turn off sounds

Remove MSN explorer, outlook express and messenger.

Disable diskperf –n

Disable autorun

Disable blinking icons from sys tray

Disk cleanup and defrag.

Configure power settings to be on at all times (power scheme = always on).

Disable Windows firewall (if you have a firewall solution following VM provision)

I used pretty much default settings when creating the linked clone persistent pool and the clients performed really well - we managed 720p youtube clips that were perfectly acceptable, even in full screen they were ‘watchable’.

I also spent a lot of time setting up testing XenDesktop as an alternative, and although Citrix ICA performs very well, I found way too many pitfalls (too many to list!) when setting this up on the ESX hypervisor.