PCoIP Bandwidth Limits and Overall Network Performance

[ClayPowell]

Should be a simple one, I hope... looked briefly but couldn't find any solid info on this anywhere.

I have a remote office on a T1 using View Desktops and a VOIP phone system.  Just recently moved to View Desktops.

When first moving over to the desktops, we noticed some jitter and stuttering during telephone calls.  Using GPO I limited the amount of bandwidth the PCoIP sessions could use.  This seemed to fix all the issues with the phones.

Now, however, we have an application running on the desktops that runs extremely slow whereas it didn't use to.

I manually edited the registry settings on a desktop setting the limit back to 0 so it wouldn't throttle that session (VMware documentation states these settings take place instantly... or so they say) and it did not seem to help.. not sure if it truly takes effect instantly or not and if a reboot is really required though. 

I guess my main question is will limiting the PCoIP bandwidth settings on the virtual desktops also throttle their individual network connections to files servers, internet, etc. etc.?  I assume that it doesn't/shouldn't but that is one of the few things I have changed recently and I am just back tracking to see if perhaps that might be the issue and what others' thoughts may be.

Thanks!

Clay

[TonyHuynh201110]

Clay, which VoIP softphone do you use?   We don't recommend USB redirecting a USB headset (with audio) back to the VM due to technical challenges such as:

* media hairpinning

* high bandwidth

* no QoS support

* not supported by the UC vendor

We have UC / VoIP optimized solutions that integrate with View with Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Mitel.  These partner based solutions are completely scalable and provide rich VoIP quality by performing all the media processing on the client endpoint.

[mpryor]

ClayPowell wrote:

Now, however, we have an application running on the desktops that runs extremely slow whereas it didn't use to.

[...]

I guess my main question is will limiting the PCoIP bandwidth settings on the virtual desktops also throttle their individual network connections to files servers, internet, etc. etc.?  I assume that it doesn't/shouldn't [...].

Thanks!

Clay

You don't say which specific registry settings you're playing with but presumably you're using the PCoIP specific registry settings/GPOs and not something outside of the Teradici key? If so then yes, they will only impact the PCoIP connection.

Few standard questions: Have you checked that you're not limiting bandwidth at the vswitch layer, or physical switches/routers? How do the network stats look for the VMs? Any QoS configured in the network? Have you tried running the same app from the VM console to compare performance without PCoIP running? Is it definitely a network issue - what about CPU/memory/disk usage on the VM?

Mike

[ClayPowell]

Not using soft phones, using a full internal VOIP system with physical desk phones. 

I only adjusted bandwidth limits on PCoIP to help with the jitter and cutting in and out of the phones. 

I have looked at CPU/Memory and they seem to be fine... host server is running at only about 2 GHZ CPU usage and 18 GB RAM usage while individual VM usage is around 500 MHZ/2GB respectively.

The issue has appeared at the console as well, I took that step last night after posting just to see if that was the case. 

I can run the application from a machine on the same network as the virtual desktops and it is fine, only from the virtual desktops is it slow..... odd thing was I made the adjustments on Monday... Tuesday all things were good.... it was yesterday the issue came up and I have no idea why... nothing (to my knowledge) has changed. 

[ClayPowell]

Sorry for the vague detail... yes I was only adjusting the PCoIP bandwidth Teradici registry keys.  I think i answered/responded to most other items in the response to Tony...

QoS is setup but again I don't believe that to be an issue as a physical desktop on the same network in the same building as the virtual desktops and data servers/ESXi servers runs fine with the application.  There should be no bandwidth throttling of any kind, the config on the switches are relatively simple as we don't have a very big network.. 3 VLAN's.  one for us, one for phone, one for the company we share the floor/network with.  outside of phone taking priority there aren't any other restrictions on the setup.

[TonyHuynh201110]

Clay,

What type of application is it?  It is some type of rich multimedia application, such as Windows Media Player, flayer player, other?