View 5.3: worst PCOIP video performance

[peval]

Hi, we evaluate View 5.3 and we found some problems with user experience. View 5.2 for us seems better but we can't find explanation:

1-View Agent Direct Connection (VADC) disturb Flash video. This is really strange but when we connect directly to a VM with VADC, the Flash video is choppy. More strange, if the mouse cursor is over the video, it's OK but when outside the video, it's bad. It's easy to test: connect to View VM directly with VADC (not passing from VCS server), open Youtube video and test. This trouble doesn't happen when connect from VCS server. We opened a ticket to Vmware but we get no help. Instead they said to look a administrator guide (come on Vmware, we are not kids first using Vmware View, just try to reproduce the problem instead of losing our time).

2-The general video performance is worst under PCOIP session. We try everything: with or without 3D pool acceleration, with or without Feature Pack, with or without MMR enabled, increase VM video RAM, etc. Does PCOIP default settings change with View 5.3? We tested using 1080p movie trailer , 1920x1200 to stress. It's always better in View 5.2. We don't record FPS but just to look it's obvious.

All tests were done in a fresh installation in a evaluation environment. Same network and exact same configuration of our View 5.2 production environment. Sames PCOIP default configuration. For testing, we use new Dell R620 server, 96Gb RAM, ESXi 5.5, vcenter 5.5.0a appliance, only 5 VM in the non persistent pool, 1,5Gb ram per VM, s local storage (15K rpm drive raid 1).

There is really great new features with 5.3 but for the moment we feel it's not ready to put in production. Does someone have some explanation or cues to us? Thanks!

[Linjo]

On #1, Does the flash video looks ok if you go through the connection broker?

On #2. In 5.3 we now supporting MMR for Windows 7, maybe that is the difference. What OS are you using on both sides?

[TonyHuynh201110]

Hi,

Can you share more details on your environmental setup? Guest OS and Client OS?  MMR will not work with flash video, so it is only host side rendering of PCoIP.

1) For VADC, you mention that it disturbs flash video.  Does the choppy video occur on all flash videos (low resolution and 1080p)? Or just the higher resolution videos?

2) For video performance, software based GPU isn't going to help with video playback.  The PCoIP default settings have not changed.  What was the video format that you tested with?

Thanks

[peval]

Hi,

On the client side, we tested with Windows 7 SP1 and Windows XP SP3, both with VMware View client 5.4. On the VM side, it's Windows 7 SP1, Internet Explorer 10.0.9.We got the same results no matter client is used.

1-If we connect through VCS server, flash video playback is fine. It's only when VADC is use the flash playback is choppy. Furthermore, if the mouse cursor is over the video, the playback is OK. All flash videos are affected, no matter the resolution or the website. We tested with Youtube, Vimeo and others. Updating Adobe Flash doesn't help (11.8). After others tests, it's seems that only Internet Explorer is affected. With Firefox and Chrome the flash playback is OK. But it's worst when Chrome is use with HTML5 instead of flash but it's an another story. I have found that the during playback, the process "pcoip_server_win32.exe" behave differently when the mouse is over or not. The process go from around  5-10% to 15-20% when the mouse cursor is put over the video. So when the mouse is not over the video, the video quality decrease. Look the video attached to this thread, it obvious something happen related to the mouse.

2-The general video playback performance is harder to investigate. But at the moment I'm writing this, I am realizing that the test VM Under View 5.3 have only 1 vCPU. Maybe is the explanation. I can't test now since I'm over a slow WAN connection but I will test tomorrow. I hope is the answer. Here in french country, we name this mistake "code 18": the problem is 18 inchs from the screen...

Thanks!

[peval]

The problem with PCOIP performance is solve. The test VM has only one vCPU. We did't realize our error before... With two vCPU, with stressful movie trailer (1080p) the results are great. Better than View 5.2.

Now the strange bug with laggy flash video under VADC is not solve. I have posted below what happened. Does someone got the same results? It's easy to test.

[mpryor]

> Now the strange bug with laggy flash video under VADC is not solve.

This is likely related to the Flash Optimization feature (as originally hinted by the fact that hovering the mouse over the video makes the issue go away). Can you perform the flash video test in a browser that isn't IE? If it is IE specific can you also try disabling the "VMware Adobe Flash Optimizer" add-on?

Mike

[mbroeken · Accepted solution]

We are experiencing the same with direct connection plugin (Desktone). With mouse over the video is perfect. mouse out of the flash window and performance is bad.

disabling the "VMware Flash Optimizer" does help.

[peval]

Hi! You've got it. It's exactly the problem. The VADC Flash video problem appears only in Internet Explorer browser, not Firefox or Chrome. When the "Vmware Flash Optimizer" plugin is disabled in IE, the problem disapear and all works perfectly. So, we discover that when we pass through VCS server, the pool Flash parameters is apply correctly: these settings are disabled in our pool so there is no "Flash optimization". But when we use VADC, it seems that the Flash optimization" is enabled and it's why the video is better when the mouse cursor is put over.

Now we know were this difference come from and is not really a bug. The only thing View could be better, it should apply the pool parameters, ie Flash Optimization, whenever we use VCS connection or VADC.

Thanks!

[markbenson]

Hi "peval",

This is an interesting post. It's really good that you've detailed your findings and I'm glad you are now seeing better video performance with 5.3 than 5.2.

As you've seen, a workaround is needed for the flash optimization part if you don't use VCS brokered connections. We can't apply pool parameters for flash optimization in the case of VCS not being used because we usually won't have a pool from which to obtain flash optimization settings. What will be possible in a future version is to allow the application of specific flash optimization settings to be managed via AD GPOs or direct reg settings. These can then apply in all cases regardless of the brokering technology used.

Mark

[SysteembeheerNS]

An extra tip:

Turn on the advanced option in IE: "software rendering instead of gpu"

Softwarerendering in- of uitschakelen in Internet Explorer 9

Also in Chrome the GPU is used for rendering.

about:tabs

then search for GPU en disable al the items.