Serial Port Redirection in Horizon View...

[peterbrown05]

Hi there,

Do any of you out there have requirements for Serial Port Redirection in Horizon View?

If so, could you share with me some of the specific serial devices that you would like to use along with the controlling software and any pertinent configuration information needed (eg specific baud rates or other such things)?

Also, over what sort of network links would you need to operate it, and what guest/client OS requirements would you have?

cheers

peterB

[MHAV]

Hi Peter,

we do have requirements for Serial Port Redirection in Horizon View. We are talking about 120 Remote Locations. Each of them is connected through a 2 M ADSL link to the central datacenter. The connected devices using serial ports are a Printer, SignPad, CardReader, Display. The Client OS is Windows 7.

Cheers

Mike

[peterbrown05]

Thanks Mike this is useful. Are you already running Horizon View in this scenario, or is having Serial device support blocking this?

btw; I posted this blog post yesterday too: VMware Development Labs Sneak Peek: Serial Redirection in Horizon with View | VMware End-User Comput...

cheers

peterB

[crgnjul]

We are a bank and our tellers use Epson TM-U675 printers.  They print receipts and official checks via FIS's Bankway application (web based).  These printers are the only reason our tellers are not running on zero clients connection to our View 6 environment.

Our branches have between 5 and 10 Mbps MPLS connections and desktops as well as our View environment are Windows 7.

[gmtx]

Does Teradici even support serial ports on their zero-client chipsets (or maybe Peter knows something we don't )?

Geoff

[crgnjul]

The Samsung NC241 zero client that we use does have a serial port on it.  I just assume it's supported.

[gmtx]

Interesting - first time I've seen any serial ports on devices with the Teradici chip set. Samsung calls it a "Docking Port" - wonder what that means?

Geoff

[peterbrown05]

note; right now the solution we have in the labs is windows clients only (not zero clients).

[gmtx]

Still nice to see VMware continuing to close the gap on physical vs. virtual desktops.

Now all you need to do is buy Teradici (seriously) and add MMR and RTAV to the Teradici chip sets so we can have zeros that do it all!

I know I'm dreaming, but for those of us in regulated industries zeros are an auditor's dream, and it would be wonderful to have parity with thin/windows clients.

Geoff

[nzorn]

Geoff,

That would be pretty awesome if VMware bought Teradici.  Bad thing is Teradici is going to start charging for opening a ticket with them, no more free support.

[gmtx]

Yeah, I saw that and called to see what the new support options would cost. The cheapest support plan is a five-incident support pack that runs for a year and costs $2,500.

I find the current situation with VMware not controlling or offering support for what is clearly core, critical technology (PCoIP) in View just plain odd, and I really hope that changes soon.

Sorry Peter - don't mean to hijack the thread, especially given the positive nature of your announcement.

Geoff

[farrell1701]

We'd love to see serial port redirection in View, as our security requirements do not allow for using a thin client or repurposed desktop. Our current solution operates up to 6 receipt printers (operating at 9600 baud), one per PCoIP workstation. Workstations are Windows 7 Pro, pretty much your typical power user desktop build.

Since each workstation has to have its own printer, we wound up using USB-to-serial adapter cables that have the Prolific chipset. That cut way back on our physical deployment needs as we were able to just plug the existing cabling right into the end of the USB cable. The only trouble we had was that Windows threw in a driver that was so-so -- the one available from Prolific's website worked much better. The cables aren't cheap, but they work well -- we've only had one out of fifty die in 3 years.

Our initial deployment with around 10-15 workations at each satellite office (about half virtual) on a point-to-point T1 was pretty bad - as you might expect the response time for printing was atrocious (along with everything else). Since then, our offices have been bumped up to 5 Mbps MPLS, with better performance across the board. Still not instantaneous like a direct-connect, but reasonable from a service standpoint. (Besides which, the programs that print TO the printer work MUCH quicker when run within our datacenter, so overall it's much faster.)

Slight problem with this method that Windows 7 likes to randomly decide that the adapter cable needs a new COM port number while orphaning the old one so it can't be re-used until deleted. Occasionally we have the same problem with another kind of receipt printer, though that printer has a built-in USB-to-COM port adapter. We've developed an internal procedure that we follow where we remote in, set the non-present device flag, open up devices, and clear out the old entry -- 5 minutes and minimal inconvenience to the user.

That said, budget concerns meant I couldn't get my hands on a RS-232/RJ-45 adapter. That would have been my preferred choice -- provided it would work with our software.

[jmacdaddy]

I have a few bank clients that are still using teller receipt printers with serial adapters.  These include Epson TM-U325 and Addmaster IJ 2040 printers.  We also see a few Craden DP-9 passbook printers.  Our solution has been either serial-to-USB (FTDI chipsets)  or serial-to-ethernet (Digi) adapters.   It is cool that VMWare is addressing this, but you are kinda late to the game.  We typically have made replacing old receipt printers with USB printers a prereq for bank branch VDI projects.  The scanner redirection offering will be a much bigger win for banks looking to deploy VDI, as many banks are looking to move away from standalone dedicated PCs with scanners for branch item scanning and instead having teller capture, where every teller station has a scanner for item capture.  The problem with your new scanner redirection product, like your serial port redirection offering, is that it is dependent upon have a Windows endpoint.  Banks, which are heavily regulated and audited, are looking to get away from Windows based thin clients because of the time and effort required to patch them.  Zero clients are the future (as in tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest, not two years from now), so making sure these features are supported on zero clients is a must.

[nully]

At present, I didn't have any equipment for serial port redirection but I remember to read about these kind of equipments in one of the articles. If I get the complete information about that then I share the information.

thin clients

[jmisleh]

So... I heard at a conference that Serial Port Redirection would be available in View 6.0.2.  Is this now not the case?  Is this partner facing yet?

[peterbrown05]

Serial Redirection is not yet officially available. You can read my blog post here; VMware Development Labs Sneak Peek: Serial Redirection in Horizon with View | VMware End-User Comput... for a sneak peak but it's not yet available in the product.

what devices/apps are you looking to support with serial redirection?

cheers

peterb

[jmisleh]

We have a large client that uses Teller Validation Printers (epson) with FIS for printing deposit slips, etc.  They're currently migrating from Citrix to View.  The printers are actually serial printers, but we use a specific USB to Serial Converter and can successfully pass the printer into the View Desktop.  Problem is that the application talks directly to the COM port to print and does not use the windows print spooler, so we get none of the benefits of ThinPrint.  Using USB redirection, around every 30 minutes, there's a huge amount of traffic that comes across on port 32111.  If a number of tellers at a branch that only has a 1.5mb link log in at the same time, and this "interval" matches up during the day, the network halts, sometimes even disconnecting the view client.  On top of all of that, since we have none of the hooks from ThinPrint into the print spooler, we have to send the entire print job across the wire.  I can't find any information on other partners encountering this, but surely this is not the only bank in the world that's using epson printers with FIS Teller Insight, right?  It was suggested that the serial redirection may have less overhead involved, which could solve our issue.

Jason

[jmacdaddy]

No, you are not the only one.  I have multiple clients that are using Epson TM-U3xx printers with FIS TellerInsight.  I recommend that you pull the serial adapters from the Epson printers and replace them with Epson's native USB adapters.  Then, on your teller image template, install the USB print driver that is located in C:\Program Files(x86)\Metavante\TellerInsight\vXY.Z\WinUSB.  You should then have a very seamless experience passing your receipt printers to your virtual desktops with View's USB Redirection.  Serial-to-USB or even Serial redirection (in the old RDP days... View 2.0 baby!)... it has always been a pain.  My clients always ended up spending more in labor fixing the sporadic issues than the cost to just swap adapters and be done with it.

[peterbrown05]

thanks - that's interesting information...

The "huge amount of data" that periodically lands on port 32111. Is this "expected"? ie is this as a result of many operators doing large print jobs concurrently or is this data that you are having difficulties accounting for? (ie do you need any help with that?)

as for whether serial port redirection can help your specific use case; then my expectation would be that yes it can. This is specifically why we are looking to implement serial port redirection. USB redirection of serial does work, but it can be problematic in latent/lossy networks due to the way that usb works. redirecting the serial traffic should be more resilient to such issues.

[jmisleh]

Hey Peter... It's unaccounted for.  I see that data over 32111 even if a user isn't even at their workstation, it's not strictly when printing, and the interval is spot on, every 30 minutes.