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PC over IP is a protocol which allows enterprise PCs and workstations to be centrally managed from a data center. It has been dubbed “VMWare’s attack dog” in the desktop virtualization protocol wars. The technology was discussed during the recent VDI WebForum.
During the July 13th session, this conversation regarding PC over IP took place:
Dena C.: Are you playing with the PCoIP? Is anybody putting enough in production to determine where you are seeing the performance gains versus the RDP protocol and things like that? Is it significant performance, or unique areas that you seeing the performance? We are just trying to get some input from those who have put down PCoIP, what they have seen versus the prior protocols.
Jac F.: PCoIP is relatively new for VMWare. You have to be on View 4, which is their latest product. What we use is; we have done some testing, because we are in the middle of a roll out right now, so we really did not want to do with something that was brand-spanking-new unless there was something very compelling, so what we actually do is, we have WAN acceleration devices. We use Cisco WAAS at the sites where the users are, and what we do is, we use that accelerate RDP. In our test, the RDP accelerated with the WAN devices, is very comparable to just native PC-Over-IP without any hardware acceleration, and we decided to do it that way since it was brand-new, and we did not want to take the chance of putting 4800 desktops out with a new protocol.
Dena C.: Wasn't there somebody on the call that was doing PCoIP for their AutoCAD or something?
Rob A.: Well, we are actually using three different solutions. We use HP Blades, which is not really virtual desktop, but it is the same kind of concept, and we use the HP RGS protocol, which is designed for high-end CATIA and CAD, so that it leverages the physical card on the servers themselves. So we are actually also TOCing the PC-Over-IP, and we have it on about 100 devices here in kind of a limited production group concept. We are trying to decide whether to move forward with PCoIP or RDP.
Mary F.: Did you have a particular version of VMWare for that to be fully functional?
Dena: Yes, it has to be View 4.
Mary F.: View 4, OK. I know that we are playing around with it here too, and I think that was what we thought too.
Moderator: This is a new acronym, PC-Over-IP. Now, is that a function of VDI, or can you do it without VDI? What is PC-Over-IP?
Rob A.: It is a protocol, just like RDP. It is a new protocol that is based on some agreement that VMWare has with a different vendor.
David G.: We are just doing a pilot right now. In our experience, there were two reasons that are driving us towards the PCoIP. The one, when I talked about performance, if you are just using regular desktop applications, you know, office applications, etc., there is not a big difference. Where we saw the difference was applications that do, again like AutoCAD where it is generating a dynamic cursor that is sending thousands of updates a second, it seems like.
Dena C. The other place I think we were seeing our original RDP with VMWare before and all that, if you do any remote video over a WAN, that was also very slow, so we wanted to see if PCoIP is going to help out in video streaming.
David G.: Yes it is supposed to but we haven’t played with that much yet. The other thing that is different for us is that PC-Over-IP is at a lower level. So for example, if you want to provide remote assistance to, we use VNC to provide remote assistance to our users. You actually cannot VNC into an RDP session, but you can VNC into a PC-Over-IP session, so that was another driver for us.
The complete VDI WebForum transcript can be viewed on our web site.