VMware View4 and PCoIP
Well, I thought it would be nice to discuss the attributes and features of VMware View4 new PCoIP protocol which will be released very shortly. In case you don’t PCoIP stands for PC over IP – and then intention is to deliver remote display protocol which rivals “legacy” thin-client protocols such as RDP/ICA with a new protocol that offers a “PC-like” experience over the wire. Historically, protocols like RDP/ICA have not performed will in graphics intensive applications like scanning, CAD, and streaming video.
If you want to see what PCoIP looks like to the end-user – prior to the GA some folks have put videos up on youtube.com. Of course, the quality of those videos vary – how ironic!
VMware’s main competitor in this will be Citrix XenDesktop’s HDX protocol. It’s been a long time in the gestation. VMware has been talking about PCoIP for some time, and its been an on-going project with Teradici which historically has specialized in hardware and software bases remote display delivery. VMware View4 delivers a software experience, but the co-development will allow smart terminal manufacturers to fit graphics cards that leverage hardware based graphics acceleration.
Since View3.1, VMware has endeavored to support other protocols such Sun’s Appliance Link Protocol (ALP), and HP’s Remote Graphics Software (RGS). Additionally, by supporting RDP – they pushed out the envelope beyond just supporting virtual machines, but access to Blade PC and Terminal Services. VMware wants to continue supporting these other protocols – but the hope is over time that folks will favour PCoIP.
First things first – some practical things. There is no “special” client or agent for PCoIP that has to be installed and configured – PCoIP is built-in to both the View Agent (installed to the VM) and the View Client (installed to the Windows PC – it’s an optional component). Incidentally, you mist install the FULL View Client (not just use the View web-pages) to get the PCoIP driver installed to the client device. Installing the agent installs special audio and graphics drivers (codecs) into the virtual desktop. You would expect that with all this capacity for graphically rich user experience that PCoIP would be undesirable on the WAN. However, according PCoIP can degrade the user experience to compensate for increase in latency or narrow-bandwidth.
It’s perhaps with that sentence that I should issue disclaimer. After this point much that I’m going write is based on me reading documentation. I wasn’t allowed on to the View4 beta programme. In fact a great many of peers (other vExperts) weren’t on the View4 Beta Programme. I’ve been told that many of the FTSE 100 companies – weren’t on the beta programme either. In fact its been one of the most elusive beta programmes that VMware has run in recent years. So its VERY difficult at this stage to really properly benchmark these claims for performance. The other thing I would say, is even if this FUD turns out to be groundless – there maybe other reasons to with this implementation of PCoIP that might make it a “LAN” based technology rather than a “WAN” or more properly speaking a “Internet Protocol”. I dare say there will be al ot of FUD around the PCoIP protocol, and in fairness VMware will only have themselves to blame – after making access to the beta programme so exclusive. With that said, beta code is notorious for being unsuitable for true bench tests – it still has debug symbols included in it – with GA code doesn’t. Anyway, according to VMware – even if you WAN link displays 150ms-250ms latency – PCoIP will still deliver satisfactory performance. As I write this – I’m sat in a hotel in Bergen, Norway – ping my equipment in Nottingham, UK. The latency is 55ms via the hotel Wifi link. Latency is often seen as the be all and end all when it comes to remote desktop displays – in my experience the frequency of dropped and retransmitted packets are as important. The maximum my latency has been (while I was typing this article) was 452ms and I lost 3% of the packets during that time.
Anyway, before I go further let have a look at the features of PCoIP – and explain how it manages to achieve it magic. PCoIP gets most of acceleration from special codecs which process the graphical data to the users screen – the clever bit is that PCoIP can identify different graphical components – and then render that portion the sceen with the correct codec. So if you think about the screen – that screen will built with many graphical components such as icons, video, text, photos and the kind of graphics that you might see in PowerPoint or Excel Charts. PCoIP has a codec for each type, and can idea the types of screen content and then render with the right codec.
Another critical feature is “progressive build”. But very simply PCoIP races to get the information to the user screen as quickly as possible – in a lossy format. Typically, a web-page will show text, first and basic image. Then quickly and in the background these images get progressive sharper and better quality. This is particular good for rapid web-browsing (where the user goes backwards and forwards rapidly) because the user isn’t waiting for images to be built slowly – in a line by line - pixel by pixel basis – like RDP does.
Anyway, putting aside these core components there are some other PCoIP features which you should be aware of:
- Multi-monitor Support (4 displays of the same resolution
- 32-bit colour
- 1920×1200 Resolution
- Clipboard functionality (Cut & Paste Text to/from local device to PCoIP Session)
- Control Bandwidth allocated to media formats like Flash (think youtube.com!). This is done by the View Agent installing a special control into the web-browser – so the system is aware it is running inside a virtual desktop. It then uses the VMware Adobe Flash Optimizer to control the bandwidth for different “Flash” experiences such as youtube.com or interactive flash demonstrations
- USB is supported
- Multimedia redirection is supported if the device supports (this is where video is played locally using local graphics/audio control – and redirected away from the ICA/RDP/PCoIP session
On the audio side – PCoIP does support high quality audio OUTPUT, but it currently lacks an audio INPUT. This means such devices as voice-recorders – popular say in hospitals where doctors/consultants like to “record” their notes would have be delivered some alternative method.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 6:55 am
[...] For now find out about new features in VMware View 4.0 in this nice post from Mike Laverick http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?p=1892 [...]
December 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 pm
[...] VMware View and PCoIP (Mike Laverick) [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Hi Mike, great post with lots of information that should hopefully be useful to your readership.
Just wanted to make one minor clarification: “VMware has been talking about PCoIP for some years”.
This is minor, but I felt that it’s important to note that we have been talking about PCoIP for only about a year between our first mention of it (September 2008 VMworld, see the keynote as well as my talk there), and when we shipped it (November 2009).
I mention this because as one of the engineers who worked quite hard on the View 4 release, it’s a point of pride that (at least in my opinion) we delivered on our promises and plans within a reasonable timeframe.
Ramesh Dharan
Senior Staff Engineer
VMware, Inc.
January 5th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Thanks for the correction – your quite right of course – my mistake. Perhaps it just felt longer than it actually was!