VMware Horizon Community
ctcbod
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

PCoIP Roadmap\Lifecycle

Hi all,

What's the general view on the longevity of PCoIP as a display protocol? 

I'm about to (reluctantly) refresh my trusty Wyse P20's and am looking at tera2 devices, but I hear whispers that, with the introduction of Blast, there may not be not much life left in PCoIP.  The vendor I was talking to quoted 2021 as a potential date for end of support.  Now, coming from a vendor, i'm suspicious of this but I don't want to go out and buy a load of PCoIP tera2 devices if VMware are going to push Blast and we run into issues with a load of unsupported devices.   I will start looking for devices that support both protocols if possible, but I was just trying to get a general opinion about PCoIP vs Blast - and whether other people are going to be ditching PCoIP clients in favor of Blast devices.

Cheers in advance..........  

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13 Replies
AishR
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

PCOIP is still preferred protocol, Kindly refer the link http://connect.teradici.com/blog/topic/blast-extreme-vs-pcoip for more information

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ctcbod
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi AishR

Thanks for your reply - this is not a technical question as such and I've seen the Teradici blog, but what I'm really getting at here is trying to ascertain how long will PCoIP be the preferred protocol?  Going forward, if VMware are pushing their own display protocol, why would they support Teradici's?   As stated in the original post, I'm about to invest in some new clients (preferably zero clients).  What I don't what to end up with is a heap of obsolete plastic in 3-4 years time.  

I'll be looking at clients that would hopefully support both protocols, but I was really curious to see what others thought about the longevity and future of PCoIP as a display protocol.      

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TonyHuynh201110
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

At this time, VMware still plans on supporting PCoIP because our customers still have zero clients in use.  However, we will not be adding any new features in PCoIP for Horizon.  All new features are going to be developed with Blast Extreme.

Thanks Tony

VMware Horizon Product Manager

DaviddeLeeuw1
Contributor
Contributor

This is pretty bad.

People buy teradici pcoip for the long run. We have 100 teradici stations, no budget for upgrades soon. They work great.

But when I tried to update our horizon server from version 7.4 to 7.6, the stations (on teradici zero II firmware 4.8) refused to connect anymore.

So what do you mean by "we still support pcoip" ?

David de Leeuw

Ben Gurion University of the Negev

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BenFB
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

DaviddeLeeuw1

Teradici firmware 4.8.x is not certified and tested with Horizon 7.6.0. Firmware 4.8.0/4.8.1/4.8.2 is only certified with Horizon 7.0.

The latest 6.1.0 firmware is certified with Horizon 7.5.0. Teradici has been slow to keep up with Horizon releases.

PCoIP Zero Client Firmware 6.1.0 Release Notes

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agalliasistju
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We have started, and plan to continue, transitioning from PCoIP to BLAST.  In some cases already Blast is working better for us than PCoIP.  Though it's mostly healthcare related, we found that the Philips SpeechMike device we use for doctors to transcribe works better with Blast when the VM is Windows 10.  Our physical clients are Wyse 5070.

We've been using the Wyse 5010, 5060, and now 5070 models, they support both PCoIP and Blast.

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amr12
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Our virtual users are 100% Zero Client's however I have all of the pools set as BLAST for the default as this makes external use so much better in the desktop client.  We also push our users to use the browser based desktop as much as possible.

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hunterok
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We use PCoIP inside our LAN and Blast Extreme using external access as the last one require much lower bandwidth and works great even when latency is high. So PCoIP is a great protocol as well as Zero Clients which support it but it has it's own pros and cons.

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BenFB
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

We are doing the same thing as hunterok​ and amr12​. All of our pools are configured to default to Blast and the user is not able to select the protocol. This forces Blast for external access/internal Horizon Clients and still allows all of our zero clients to connect with PCoIP. We are transitioning to Blast internally as we replace the zero clients.

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LarryBlanco2
Expert
Expert

Although it may not be supported it does work.. You will need to enable TLS 1.0 / 1.1 on Horizon 7.6

Enable TLSv1.0 on vCenter Connections from Connection Server

I know it because I came across the same issue.   I have just a few P25 clients left and the latest available firmware that was free to download.   Since they went to a pay model I went elsewhere for my thin/zero clients.

Larry B.

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bjohn
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What did you go with?

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DaviddeLeeuw1
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for all your most insidefull replies.

Sorry for the delay in answering (I am at a course right now)

A few notes:

Years ago we had Wyse and other THIN stations, (V10L etc). We had operating troubles as these thin stations were not "dumb terminals". For example, the Hebrew quirks were not fully supported. Also the setup and management needed quite some attention.

Once  we switched to Teradici PCOIP ZERO stations this solved all our problems, management and service quality wise.

Our technician only checks mouses, keyboards and screens.

The Teradici pay model (above 100 stations you pay 30 $ per year per station) is in our budget model a real pain.

As we have exactly 100 stations, I refrained from upgrading the O.S. over 4.X.

When the classes got stuck on applying Horizon Connection manager 7.6, I downgraded the connection manager to 7.4. The Remote Desktop Servers run Agent 7.6 and all is fine.

If for some reason I need to upgrade Horizon, I will allow TLS 1.0.

On future expansion we need to think how to proceed. I would love to continue with PCOIP Zero stations, but not decided.

This is apparently mainly to blame on Teradici !

Best wishes from the sunny Dead Sea...

David de Leeuw

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LarryBlanco2
Expert
Expert

10zig zero & thin clients.  

They have been around for forever and a day.   My guys seems to like their mgmt. interface and ease of deployment and use.

LB

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