Samsung nc190 & view 4 pcoip

[TSher]

Hi all, I have some questions regarding a pcoip thin client and view 4. I have esxi v4, vsphere v4, vcenter standard and view 4. All patches are applied except the latest view 4.01 update. I work for a large college and I require pcoip connection setup in a particular way for it to be effective. I have it currently setup with rdp how I need it but rdp lacks the performance for a large scale rollout. Providing I can solve the issues I am about to describe then I will be deploying 300 vm's.

1) when the nc190 connects to the xp vm it sits at the Microsoft xp login screen (this is how I need it) but after 15 minutes it disconnects from the vm and sits at the view 4 pcoip connection screen. I require it to stay connected like that until it is turned off or someone logs in to xp.

2) after a user logs in to the vm xp and has finished with it, If they click on start menu - shut down, this naturally shuts down the pcoip session but it also shuts down the vm xp. With rdp this doesn't happen and the vm is immediately available, however with pcoip this means that vm is unavailable until it is turned on again.

3) with the nc190 is there away to have the view client automatically connect with a generic username and password and connect with the relevant desktop? I can with the 930xt which is embedded standard xp, although the upkeep on this thin client is far greater than the 190 as this doesn't use embedded. Also with embedded there is discrepancies and some times memory issues. Sometimes we find that out the 30 we have for testing 20 will be fine but 10 will have small issues within embedded even though it's the same image.

Hopefully I haven't gone on too much and somebody will be able to offer help

thanks

[admin]

You are basically asking for a Kiosk mode. This is a feature coming in a future View release to make this easer. The NC190 does not currently have a way to connect and login as a generic user. Once we have the Kiosk feature that should resolve that.

With the power off situation. You can solve that with a GPO that prevents poweroff or a power control pool policy in View Manger that prevents the VM from being powered off. Set the pool policy for when the VM is not in use to Always On.

Until there is a generic user field for the NC190 or the Kiosk mode. You can get this done using the View Client on a Windows machine using the login as current user feature or on a View Windows / Linux client by scripting it and using a generic login. This can get tricky becasue the user needs to be able to access more than one desktop at a time and you do not want 50 different scripts. There use to be a way to do this, but a lot has changed since the last time I used this so I would need to go dig it up. I think you still can do it though.

At one point, I created a powershell script that reads a CVS and logs in generic users based on the hostname of the VM. That is probably overkill for your project.

WP

[hmartin]

Another great response from WP; I always learn something new. One thing you didn't mention was how long you want these devices to stay connected to the VM. Remember that View Manager has a default session timeout of 1440 minutes (24 hours); you may want/need to change this.

I don't necessarily agree with your statement that "rdp lacks the performance for a large scale rollout." PCoIP is far better at some things than RDP (such as multimedia and flash - especially flash!), but if this is not required for these devices, then RDP might be better.

We have View 4 based kiosks now delivered to users via Wyse V10L thin clients with the Wyse TCX software. They connect via RDP and by using features within the WTOS (aka ThinOS) of the V10L, the simple act of pressing the power button on the V10L gets the user to the Windows XP OS, auto logged on, and the kiosk application started automatically. It works really well, but partly because we don't have multimedia requirements. In this case, I'd much rather have an easily managed and deployed ThinOS device than have to resort to a device with the overhead of an embedded operating system. Hope that helps.

[TSher]

Hi, Thank you both for your replies. It is good news if VMWare are planning on a Kiosk mode and thank you for the tip on the shut down. I am currently using RDP and XP Embedded on the 930XT's and I use a windwos script to allow the auto run of the view client and to also tell it to auto run on disconnection. I use GPO's to auto fill in the username and password. I am after a more complete solution which I was hoping the 190 and View 4 was going to offer.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am using RDP on 30 T/C's for the past 9 months and it is running extremely well, but in my particular environment RDP lacks the multimedia performance I require. I quite agree that RDP is an excellent solution in the right environment. But due to the huge multimedia demand where I work it is not a viable option on a large scale rollout.

Sorry if I wasn't clear in the original post about the length of time I require the thin client to be connected to the VM, but basically I require the T/C to be connected to the VM (at the XP login screen) until the T/C are turned off. But like I originally said the PCoIP client disconnects after 15 minutes. Then all that happens is it sits at the View 4 connection screen, I realise I could use the same setup as I have done with RDP in an XP embedded way, but it doesn't make sense why it is doing it. I haven't had chance to put in a call to VMWare yet as although I have been using View 4 since it's release I have only just started testing PCoIP. Is there a way to stop this from happening? Once a user logs on then the person can stay connected for a couple of days with no issues (I haven't tested it past 2 days as I do not require anything longer).

I have a similar issue with RDP and XP Embedded on the 930 XT's. But because of the windows script I use it is not a big problem as when RDP disconnects after 3 minutes (at the VM XP logon screen, any clues on how to stop this? I have tried and VMWare will not support it as it is an RDP issue, I even flagged it up with Microsoft who are looking in to it, 4 months on) the script auto launches the view client. Again, once a user actually logs on to the VM XP then they can stay connected for as long as they need.

My biggest problem, as described above is why does RDP or PCoIP disconnect after 3 mins and 15 mins respectively. Not a huge issue with RDP but still annoying and can confuse people, especially as it is every 3 mins. The same with PCoip, but every 15 mins. I am hoping you can offer advice here and it just requires a change some were, but I cannot find this and I have been looking for a few months. I will look in to the WYSE T/C's and see how well they could fit in to my environment.

Once again, thank you both for the input in to my issues I have been having. Every little bit of help given helps along the way.

[admin]

It sounds like there is an idle timer set. There are GPOs that will trigger this. But view manger has one as well. Will have to look for where it is.

The kiosk feature will for sure make all of this much more simple and easy I think. But as you are doing there are ways to do it today.

WP