VMware Horizon Community
virtuallypsycho
Contributor
Contributor

Horizon 8 2111 Rotated Secondary Monitor Issue

After migrating from Horizon View 8.2 to Horizon View 8.4 we are seeing an issue where customers have a secondary monitor attached (to Teradici Zero Client) and rotated 90 degrees, when opening or moving windows on the secondary monitor it is very laggy and will fail to render all the pixels (see artifacts left over in the window and on the screen). When moving the window/application (like Word document) back to the primary monitor (portrait) the artifacts will follow by will disappear when the screen refreshes. We used to install the SVGA driver with the Horizon Agent, however, due to the vendor change we are now using the SVGA from VMware Tools. We have tried extracting the driver from older tools (not sure if there is a way to extract the driver from an old Agent installer) going all the way back to VMware Tools 11.0.5 and also tried using the VMware Tools SVGA driver from the latest VMware Tools 12.0.0 with no change in behavior. We have also tried rolling back our Zero Clients to the last firmware (21.03) in which the secondary monitor being rotated 90 degrees was working...nothing is resolving the issue. We will be opening a ticket with VMware, but wanted to see if others are having the same issue. We did see a post about applications performance issues with the VMware Tools SVGA driver, but as mentioned above we tried to manually update the Display adapter using various SVGA driver versions to no avail.

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MrCheesecake
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes!  I also have some Teradici clients with the same behavior.  Our firmware is very outdated so I'm bummed to hear that your newer versions are still having issues.  Although it's not ideal, our workaround was to downgrade the Horizon agents to 8.2 (b2103) and using the video drivers with that and NOT installing the SVGA driver that was delivered with the latest vsphere 7 updates.

In my case, we only have a single monitor attached to these systems so it didn't matter if it was primary or secondary but definitely related to the vertical/90-degree rotation.

MrCheesecake
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hey VirtuallyPsycho! 

I was wondering if you have made any progress with VMware support.  Hoping they are working on a fix in the next release and/or can create a KB with a better workaround.

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virtuallypsycho
Contributor
Contributor

Not really. They recommended trying the Indirect Display Driver, however, all I received was a black screen when attempting to connect. It didn't seem to like the 1920x1080 display resolution.

I have recently tried the following with no success:

SVGA Drivers (extracted from VMware Tools various versions):

Horizon View 8.4
SVGA 8.17.3.5 (7/6/2021) 

VMware Tools 12.0
SVGA 9.17.1.2 (11/2/2021)

VMware Tools 11.0.5
8.16.07.0005 (10/18/2019)

VMware Tools 11.0.1
8.16.7.0 (7/11/2019)

SVGA Driver 8.16.1.24 (from Horizon Agent 7.10.1 which was the last Horizon 7 version we were using)

We have another network that is running Horizon View 8.2 using the SVGA driver from the Horizon Agent (8.2) that is not showing the issue at all.

We have also tested just using the Horizon Client, running from physical desktops, using Horizon View 8.4 (no SVGA) and using VMware Tools 11.3.5 & 12.0 installing the SVGA driver from VMware Tools and do not see the issue. It is only appearing when when we use Teradici Zero Clients. So unless the fact that using physical desktops + Horizon Client somehow "muddies" the test since it has additional resources, it is starting to look like the problem may be with how Teradici firmware is working with the Horizon Agent?? We are going to dig through the Teradici logs and also DL the recent 22.0.1.3 firmware (even though it doesn't list this issue) and see if that works.

Another test we are going to try today is installing the SVGA driver from VMware Tools 12.0 and install the Horizon Agent 8.3 (no SVGA) and see if we get the same behavior. We believe that this should point us to whether the driver/s are causing issues (validating the Horizon Client testing results) or if the issue only occurs when connecting from Teradici Zero Clients....hopefully.

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pbarrett1
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Paul here from Teradici. I will confirm that yes we are seeing a spike in cases like this. We have not made any changes to the firmware that will impact this issue. Have you heard anything back from VMware on the case you have open with them?

I am in the process of trying to reproduce this issue in my lab. I have confirmed with our engineering team that during our initial testing a rotated display was not in the test plan. We will test and report back.

Regards,

Paul

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virtuallypsycho
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Paul. Just an FYI I have opened a Teradici Support Case (00063236) as well. I uploaded the Zero Client enhanced video log and a couple of screen shots.

As for anything back from VMware, not since I updated my ticket this morning with the recent testing results.

Another "fun" thing is that when I do a print screen to try to capture the artifacts/image/display, when I paste that into a Word document the image capture appears "clean."

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virtuallypsycho
Contributor
Contributor

We tried the following configuration and the issue did not appear:

VMware Tools 12.0
Installed the 9.17.1.2 SVGA driver as part of the VMware Tools install
Horizon Agent 8.3 // Horizon Agent 8.2
Did not install the VMVideo option
Confirmed the Display Adapter was still using the VMware Tools SVGA driver
Teradici Firmware 21.01.3 // 21.01.2 // 21.03
The above configuration works without issue. Substituting out the Horizon 8.3 (or 8.2) Agent w/ Horizon 8.4 Agent (same install script) and using the same Teradici firmware will result in the latency and artifact issue on the rotated display. When using the Horizon Client (from physical machines) to connect to the virtual desktop, and using a rotated portrait display, we do not see the issue. 

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pbarrett1
Contributor
Contributor

All,

I was able to reproduce this issue in my lab first attempt. The artifacts are quite sever. I am only noticing this issue in Horizon Agent 2111 and do not experience it with Horizon Agent 2106.

I have opened an SR with VMware and will keep this post updated.

Paul

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pbarrett1
Contributor
Contributor

@virtuallypsycho I have picked up your Teradici case. 

The part about pasting the screen capture into Paint or Word is to see what is coming from the frame buffer. If the pasted image is clean then we know we are getting clean info from the frame buffer which now points to an issue with the driver or PCoIP itself.

At this time I will not rule out anything further other than this is an issue that VMware will have to address as they are responsible for all the code. VMware are doing their own development work with PCoIP.

Paul

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KippB
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Paul, have you had any luck with your open SR at VMware?

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TechMassey
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

We ran into this as well after upgrading to 2111 for Log4J compliance back in December. It took a few weeks for the issue to become apparent as we have a multi-tenant environment with mixed Horizon Client versions. 


Any endpoint running Horizon Client 5.x or older was impacted with the 8.4 agent. If we created a special pool running 8.1 agents, the issue no longer occurred. There wasn't a specific response from VMware other than running Horizon Clients 5.x or older is not support in Horizon 8.4 and may cause performance issues. 


Make sure to check the Horizon Client version embedded on any thin or zero clients. That detail buried in the firmware of the devices was the key to isolating and resolving the issue. 



Please help out! If you find this post helpful and/or the correct answer. Mark it! It helps recgonize contributions to the VMTN community and well me too 🙂
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pbarrett1
Contributor
Contributor

@KippBnot much. I have provided screen shots, video and a complete log bundle and now they want me to share my two test VMs with them. I have one VM running Horizon Agent 2106 and the other running Horizon Agent 2111. I can only reproduce this issue on the 2111 Agent and I suspect it may be related to VMware dropping the SVGA driver from 2111. I am still trying to verify. Both VMs are running the SVGA driver 8.17.2.14.

My logs show the SVGA driver is only picking up one display and the Indirect Display Driver is not picking up any. Not sure what this new Indirect driver does I suspect it may be Blast related and if so probably not required for anyone running pure PCoIP - to be confirmed.

 

Paul

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pbarrett1
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@TechMasseythis won't be the issue in mostly everyone experiencing the artifacts on a rotated display in this post as most are running PCoIP zero clients and not using the VMware software client.

Paul

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pbarrett1
Contributor
Contributor

Hi all,

Not sure how to make this post show as the most recent however I want to let you know today both VMware and Teradici had a very successful call to discuss this issue and the issue is actively being investigated. As soon as we have more information or work around we will post here. Please be patient while we investigate.

Regards,

Paul

 

 

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pbarrett1
Contributor
Contributor

Hi All,

Over the past week VMware and Teradici have worked together to come up with a work around for the artifacts showing when display is rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Please follow the steps below, we have tested this in our lab and if has resolved the issue.

  1. Connect via RDP or use VSphere Web Console. Check in Device Manager if Display Adapters has VMWare SVGA. If it does, disable VMWare SVGA
  2. Create the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Teradici\PCoIP\pcoip_admin\pcoip.disable_svga_async_capture=dword:00000001
  3. Connect to a session and test 90deg clockwise rotated display

At the present time this is the only work around we have.

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virtuallypsycho
Contributor
Contributor

Our first attempt at using the work-around was successful. I was able to move windows, on the secondary rotated monitor, w/out latency or artifacts. This was tested using our Tera2 Zero Clients (running the latest firmware) connecting to Horizon 8.4 Agents w/ PCoIP. We are going to do more testing, to include verifying the IDD driver doesn't cause issues with Horizon Client + Blast. Will try to pull down logs to see/verify the events appear back to "normal."

icsmasy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMware seems to have confirmed that they found a fix and it will be out with the agent release 8.4.1

jhol5
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Was the issue ever actually resolved? We have tested the 8.5 Agent (2203) and are still experiencing this issue. We've tried the workaround Paul provided on our base image but it seemed to cause another issue (that we can tell) where an inactive monitor is created and causes zeros to blink and not auto resize the resolution on the display.

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virtuallypsycho
Contributor
Contributor

We haven't tested the 8.5 Agent yet, however, the work-around has been working fine for our customers using Zero Clients + PCoIP.  We didn't see any mention of a fix in the Horizon View 2203 (8.5) Release Notes, so we stayed with the work-around until we see something official.

The only issue we have seen, with the supplied work-around, is when we have customers attempt to use Horizon Client (8.0-8.5 so far) + PCoIP. We had reports of primary and secondary monitor issues (diagonal lines, "ghosted" images) when using that combination. Right now we are running a separate desktop pool/s to support those customers. 

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icsmasy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Anyone does happen to have any more updates on this apart from that workaround? (which for us randomly works). 

I'm still waiting for the 8.4.1 Agent to be released which VMware claims it will contain the fix, but didn't release it yet.

 

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