Update: I want to clarify that I of course know that network connections all over the world are different in speed, latency and packet loss. My video only shows that my ad-hoc connection from Europe to the West Coast just works well and the video/website mentioned in this article could give the readers/watchers/listeners are wrong impression of PCoIP.

This week I was really surprised about an blog article I saw linked on Twitter. In the article/videos the author shows a virtual desktop connected over PCoIP from San Francisco to Ottawa. For more details on the scenario please check the article and also listen to the speaker in video. He said: “Definitely much much worse than ICA was…”. Well the “real world” scenario as he describes it looks really strange to me. Ok, he’s connecting from a hotel internet connection (which is mostly crap, but in SF?) via VPN to his data centre but only on one continent with a distance of approximately 5100km (Maybe the cable is going a longer way…). I know PCoIP and is has definitely a much better performance on the WAN and I checked it. This is my real world example: My connection is from my home office’s DSL line through the VPN to the data centre in California.

A ping from my local workstation to the View Manager Server looks like that: (Doh! 382ms)

64 bytes from xx.xxx.xx.xx: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=382.313 ms
64 bytes from xx.xxx.xx.xx: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=382.777 ms
64 bytes from xx.xxx.xx.xx: icmp_seq=4 ttl=242 time=382.545 ms
64 bytes from xx.xxx.xx.xx: icmp_seq=5 ttl=242 time=382.215 ms

And the result looks like that:

I think this is great for an overseas connection and watching a video, hah? Sometimes it hangs for a short time but 382ms!

Teradici, the leader in delivering true PC experience over IP networks announced the availability of the Teradici PCoIP Management Console, a software that enables administrators to manage an entire enterprise deployment of PCoIP devices from a central point. The new console allows configuration and monitoring of PCoIP based zero client devices and host devices.

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I found a great read over at Brian Madden’s blog today. The article is about an email between Gabe Knuth and Warren Ponder at VMware + Randy Groves, CTO of Teradici. Gabe asked some questions about the process how PCoIP software works with the hardware version in regards to the GDI primitives, rendering and so on. The answer was quite technical and really interesting.

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Teradici published a new web site which gives you an overview of all Teradici PCoIP zero clients and their compatibility to VMware View 4 with software PCoIP.

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Have a customer that is implementing View4 with PCoIP and dual screens.

They are very happy with the solution except for one thing, performance of Oracle Forms was bad, there was some extra latency when typing and moving between different input fields and they suspected PCoIP and asked if there where some settings to tweak.

After some investigation it turned out to be a problem with the Java version and Oracle Forms in the virtual machine and had nothing to do with the display protocol.

The solution was to start Oracle Forms with this extra parameter:

-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true

That will tell the JVM not to use direct draw for the 2d rendering required by the Forms client.

VMGuru.nl published a new article on sizing a VMware View infrastructure. He talks about CPU, memory, storage and also network recommendations.

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A few folks have run into issues with View 4 where PCoIP doesn’t work exactly as they expect. This manifests itself in a couple of different ways:

- Inability to resize the screen at all
- Resizing that only works down instead of up.
- Resizing that responds very slowly or that crashes after several resize attempts.
- Inability to switch between full-screen and windowed.

There are also known issues with the .NET framework, where applications based on this code will not render correctly if it was installed before the View Agent.

The following is a set of steps which will ensure that a pool that you create will have all of the correct PCoIP functionality:

1. Install View4 on a supported platform. (vSphere U1 or VC/ESX 2.5/3.5 U3-U4)
2. Create your VM (Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7)
3. Make sure the VMtools was installed first, then the View Agent and then .NET framework.
   (If any of this was done in the wrong order, or if you don’t know for sure, uninstall all 3, and install from scratch in that order)
4. In View Manager, set this desktop up as an “individual desktop” and entitle it.
5. Make sure you have the PCoIP settings for monitor and max resolution set the way you want them in the pool.
6. Log in once and make sure the basics work.
7. If PCoIP/Screen resizing isn’t already working (VI3.5), logout of the desktop, and use the “reset” option from inside of View Manager.
   (If you rebooted by clicking shutdown>restart in the VM, re-read the previous line.)
8. Log in again and make sure screen resizing works.
9. Shutdown the VM
10. Take a Snapshot
11. Remove the individual VM assignment from View Manager
    (If you don’t do the previous step, it won’t show up as an available parent in the pool creation process.)
12. Create your pool normally and it should work as expected.

PCoIP is very dependent upon the appropriate amount of video memory being allocated to the VM.  Since this is a virtual hardware setting (that needs to be in place before the VM starts up), it is applied as a change in the VMX file.   If the VM has already been started, it’s essential that this VM be restarted so that the VMX file is re-read and the changes are used.   Simply using “Shutdown>Restart” inside the VM will not force the VMX to be re-read, as this doesn’t cold boot the machine (from the VC perspective) to refresh the virtual hardware.

Using the Shutdown/Reset from either VC or View Manager (which issues the command via VC) is the best way to make sure this file gets read properly.

Once the appropriate video memory settings are in place for your parent VM, you can create a pool based on this VM and machines in that pool will properly inherit these VMX settings on first boot.

(Kudos to my colleague Todd Dayton who wrote all this down!)

// Joel

Today Teradici officially announced the interoperability of PCoIP hardware zero clients with VMware View 4. They released the new firmware version 3.0 which can connect the TERA1100 PCoIP processor based thin clients to VMware’s enterprise class desktop virtualization solution to support any type of user.

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View 4 with PCoIP does support 4 screens with a maximum resolution of 1920×1200 per monitor. Mostly I see customers with the requirement for two screens and very often they are asking for the Pivot function where you can flip the screen from T-scale to L-shape like shown in the photo.

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Yesterday Expand Networks announced immediate support for all VMware View 4 remote display protocols across Expand’s Accelerator range of WAN optimization solutions to securely enable, accelerate and control VMware View over the WAN. Expand’s benefit for Teradici PCoIP is the securely transport of PCoIP with standard or advanced tunneling options, eliminating the potential need of reconfiguring firewalls.

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