Category: Reviews

One of the biggest advantages that our customers see when they choose to use VDI as their desktop virtualization technology of choice is simplicity. In their current environment they have mastered the art of creating, deploying and managing a Windows desktop operating system and choosing VDI allows them to reuse all of that knowledge. Blindly deploying entirely the same Windows desktop image that was used for the physical desktops is a little naive though. Running Windows in a VDI environment requires a decent amount of optimizing. This optimizing is nothing new. We have been optimizing SBC environments for over ten years now and many of things that we learned there (the hard way) apply equally to VDI environments.   We have created a piece of software that contains our entire ‘optimizing knowledge’ called the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer and we have decided to make it available to the desktop virtualization community, completely free of charge!   Although optimized for Quest vWorkspace environments, the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer will work just as well in Citrix XenDesktop or VMware View environments. If you can wait to get your hands on it, you can download the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer here http://bit.ly/VDIopt but please read the rest of this...

VMware View 5.0 exposes Teradici’s PCoIP session statistics through the WMI interface. Before View 5.0 the only mechanism to identify bandwidth usage and allocation was trough the log files. The log files are still a good source and there are few good applications that will consolidate log files and demonstrate the broad PCoIP utilization and network conditions in your organization. Please refer to App for PCoIP Real-Time Monitoring across your Organisation.   The PCoIP Session statistics are available virtual desktops running VMware View agent 5.0 and can be retrieved from the host VM utilizing PerfMon. The PCoIP statistics are grouped within the following name spaces: PCoIP Session General Statistics PCoIP Session Network Statistics PCoIP Session Audio Statistics PCoIP Session Imaging Statistics PCoIP Session USB Statistics After a PCoIP session is closed, all the statistics are reset to zero. If the WMI property SessionDurationSeconds is a non-zero value and if it stays the same, it means PCoIP server has been forcefully ended or crashed. If SessionDurationSeconds changes from  non-zero to zero value, it means PCoIP session has been closed. The PCoIP Session Statistics are updated every second. WMI Namespace: root\CIMV2 For automation of management task such as querying for management data, execution...

When you examine the landscape of desktop virtualization solutions that are being implemented at organizations, two such solutions immediately stand out: Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View. I have written a lot on XenDesktop and I most certainly love the product, but I also have a secret love affair with VMware View. In this article, I will show you how you can tweak VMware View and its PCoIP remoting protocol for optimal performance and the best possible user experience. Let’s get started: 1. Back to basics: Tweak the User Interface Visual Effects If possible, use the Windows Thin PC version of the OS Set Visual Effect to Best Performance Disable Desktop Wallpaper Disable Screen Saver or set it to None Revert back to the classic Start menu Disable Themes (if possible) Disable additional fading System icon and text changes Disable any unnecessary Windows services — Help and Support, Windows Audio (if you don’t need sound), Wireless, Remote Registry (be careful, though: some applications need this service, so make sure you properly test), Error Reporting — and any other service that is not needed 2. QoS PCoIP If left without any QoS, PCoIP can consume up to 20MB per session, causing significant...

As you may know, View Agent offers an administration solution based on group policy for PCoIP session, View Client configurations and other configurations that they are related to VMware View Connection server and virtual desktops session. These configuration templates are available as ADM file on View server’s local path and available for download from VMware site. Especially, PCoIP session settings can help you to reduce your bandwidth usage, even block virtual machine’s USB devices such as mass storage devices and optimize your sound quality. About PCoIP session configurations, I had to configure settings locally on a test virtual machine, export them form registry and apply on my templates. I found an utility that it can change you session settings, store them as profile and also monitor your session health via WMI counters. You can download it from this link and find more information about that.

I’m working on our USB sound problem in Call Center with virtual machines and PCoIP and found this article that explains DPC and processes latency in Windows 7 and also 8. Of curse we found a solution that using 3.5 mm jack headset and Teradici audio driver. Sound quality is very good on this solution and Teradici driver can deliver HD sound via PCoIP to users. I tested many solution about this problem such as PCoIP tuning, virtual machine optimization and also VMware documents about Best Practices for Performance Tuning of Latency-Sensitive Workloads in vSphere VMs but nothing changed in my tests. I hope this problem will resolve on newer version of vSphere or VMware View. INTRODUCTION The list of brands for Windows computers, as well as the possible combination of hardware used in PCs is practically unlimited – this can lead to compatibility issues or undesired interaction of components. Also, many PC computers and their components are designed to deliver good performance for office applications or gaming. The demands placed on a computer used for music production are usually quite different than those for office or gaming computers. As a result, it is often necessary to tune off-the-shelf or self-built computer...