Best Graphics Performance

[owen1978]

Don't want complicate this to much so will keep it simple;

 

If I have a decent spec server & I want to run

Remote Desktop Services/Terminal server virtulized.

 

Which hypervisor out of Hyper-V or KVM would give me better

performance for simple flash based programs from an end user point of view

on a thin client?

[SYNACK]

I think you tripped over the complication right there, you are asking for a VDI (virtual desktop Inftastructure) comparison instead of a TS (terminal server) one. With VDI each user has their own virtual OS running and you can use stuff like remoteFX and Citrix to accelerate content. TS is all users just running a user session on a single operating system.

 

In the end performace will depend a lot on what hardware you have, server GPUs, CPUs. The client OS you expect it to run etc.

 

You may need to refine what you want down to your requirements to find a technology that fits the requirements rather than choosing a technology and then trying to apply that to a problem.

[owen1978]

The enduser is using thinclient with rdp to connect to a host session on RDS.

RDS is virtulised on either Hyper-V or KVM - which session would give the end

user the better graphical experience when using a a simple flashed based program.

 

Does this make things any clearer?

[CyberNerd]

KVM/SPICE offloads graphics performance to the client, whereas Hyper-V doesn't. From what I've seen KVM works as well as native graphics, HD video etc.

 

As SYNACK said, KVM or Hyper-V isn't going to help if your just going to be running RDP because it won't be taking advantage of the SPICE protocol - just using plain old rdp.

You'll need to run virtual desktops rather than terminal services.

[SYNACK]

If you have a server with RemoteFX capible GPUs in it and your thinclients are new enough to accept RDP5 - 6 connections then probable the Hyper-V one if the client OS is Windows 7 or above.

 

Hyper-V core if you are using Windows 7.

KVM if you are using the horribly outdated and barrely virtualisable Windows XP.

 

If you have no RemoteFX GPUs and old thinclients it may not even matter as there will be very little difference.

 

Have you looked at Citrix, with older thinclients and even XP this may give you the best video performance.

[owen1978]

KVM/SPICE offloads graphics performance to the client, whereas Hyper-V doesn't. From what I've seen KVM works as well as native graphics, HD video etc.

 

As SYNACK said, KVM or Hyper-V isn't going to help if your just going to be running RDP because it won't be taking advantage of the SPICE protocol - just using plain old rdp.

You'll need to run virtual desktops rather than terminal services.

 

lol Thats the point i'm trying to make i will be 100% using RDS. So are you saying that it won't make any difference whichever platform I use to virtualize RDS?

Edited May 10, 2012 by owen1978

[SYNACK]

I think we need to start from the beginning:

What are your thinclients?

What OS are you wanting to offer to the clients (XP,7,2008)?

What are your main concerns?

What server do you have/are looking at for this?

Is there a reason you are set on only RDP?

What are you trying to achive (lical thin client use, online TX use)?

[owen1978]

I think we need to start from the beginning:

What are your thinclients?

What OS are you wanting to offer to the clients (XP,7,2008)?

What are your main concerns?

What server do you have/are looking at for this?

Is there a reason you are set on only RDP?

What are you trying to achive (lical thin client use, online TX use)?

 

I have a small primary school with about 100 devices & 450 users.

Axel Thin clients, maybe 10zig?

They will be connecting to a RDS 2008 Session

Just that RDS wont be able to handle say 70 concurrent users using flash based apps

Something like this but with more memory say 64GB

RDP most cost effective for a primary school

Local thin client use & eventually allow home access

Edited May 10, 2012 by owen1978

[Arthur]

KVM/SPICE offloads graphics performance to the client, whereas Hyper-V doesn't.

Isn't that what DirectX is for?

 

RemoteFX ties into both Direct3D and DirectX Video Acceleration (DxVA) APIs to accelerate Silverlight and Flash respectively.

 

Flash (as of 10.1) ties into DxVA APIs for the acceleration of video decoding and (full-screen) rendering operations. (Source)

[CyberNerd]

lol Thats the point i'm trying to make i will be 100% using RDS. So are you saying that it won't make any difference whichever platform I use to virtualize RDS?

 

no, whatever is easiest.

[owen1978]

Did some research and these are my findings

 

Using Hyper-V & RemoteFX for RDSH

 

"It reduces the bandwidth required for displaying bitmap-intensive applications (such as Flash, Silverlight, and Windows Presentation Foundation applications) on a full desktop"

 

So the answer to my question is Hyper-V

[SYNACK]

Did some research and these are my findings

 

Using Hyper-V & RemoteFX for RDSH

 

"It reduces the bandwidth required for displaying bitmap-intensive applications (such as Flash, Silverlight, and Windows Presentation Foundation applications) on a full desktop"

 

So the answer to my question is Hyper-V

 

Which is what we said if you fit the criteria such as having a RemoteFX enabled card in the server, using Windows 7/2008 as the client OS and your thinclients supporting remoteFX (which not all do). That server does not have such a GPU and the CPU would be pushed a lot handling 70 sessions even with RemoteFX. Maybe a dual socket variation with 128GB of RAM, RemoteFX GPU and at least four SAS HDs in RAID10 or SSDs for performance.

 

If you are just using 2008 RDS then Hyper-V does not even come into it as there is no virtualisation, just one OS serving multiple user sessions. The above spec is for this, if you were actually using VDI then I'd sugest at least 2-3GB of RAM per host and a faster disk system to cope.

[owen1978]

Which is what we said if you fit the criteria such as having a RemoteFX enabled card in the server, using Windows 7/2008 as the client OS and your thinclients supporting remoteFX (which not all do). That server does not have such a GPU and the CPU would be pushed a lot handling 70 sessions even with RemoteFX. Maybe a dual socket variation with 128GB of RAM, RemoteFX GPU and at least four SAS HDs in RAID10 or SSDs for performance.

 

If you are just using 2008 RDS then Hyper-V does not even come into it as there is no virtualisation, just one OS serving multiple user sessions. The above spec is for this, if you were actually using VDI then I'd sugest at least 2-3GB of RAM per host and a faster disk system to cope.

 

Just to clear this up for other people who might stumble across this thread

 

Using RemoteFX + Remote Desktop Session Host you lose at almost all the RemoteFX benefits - apart from the one I mentioned above.

 

Remote FX is primarily aimed at VDI

 

More Info Here...

[DrCheese]

Not that RemoteFX helps much if you stick it on a VDI'd windows 7 install. It still utterly fails at anything beyond basic video.

Run any of the HTML5 IE test drive benchmarks in a GPU accelerated browser (IE9/chrome etc) and it's still awful, Barely better than standard RDS. The fish bowl test gets some of it's extra textures enabled but that's about it.

 

Google Earth stops moaning about the lack of DirectX/Direct 3D support, but again it's so awful it's not like it matters.

 

(Yes I have it installed on a decent core i5 computer with a top line ATi card and yes I've done all of the recommended optimisations)

Edited May 11, 2012 by DrCheese

[CyberNerd]

Not that RemoteFX helps much if you stick it on a VDI'd windows 7 install. It still utterly fails at anything beyond basic video.

 

It is microsoft so everyone here will buy it anyway when they do VDI.

SPICE/KVM really is worth looking at in comparison.

[DrCheese]

The thing is tho, I'm yet to see a single VDI/RDS solution that comes anywhere remotely close to doing what even a 6 year old PC can graphics wise. When more software is now offloading tasks to the GPU this is simply unacceptable.

 

No matter what solution or work arounds you install you'll still end up with a subpar or cutdown end user experience and that's what really matters.

Edited May 11, 2012 by DrCheese

[Axel]

The thing is tho, I'm yet to see a single VDI/RDS solution that comes anywhere remotely close to doing what even a 6 year old PC can graphics wise. When more software is now offloading tasks to the GPU this is simply unacceptable.

 

No matter what solution or work arounds you install you'll still end up with a subpar or cutdown end user experience and that's what really matters.

 

I wouldn't ague that a PC will probably always give better performance than a thin client, and it is unlikely anyone in the know about thin clients would (currently) argue otherwise. There are applications where PCs are the most appropriate product...

 

....but in many cases full screen HD is not required, and in these situations, the inarguable benefits of thin clients (no virus implications, 5watt consumption,

5 year warranties, no backing up, no MS updates, instant booting, no local accounts/passwords etc etc) outweigh any performance concerns

 

.... and the performance, even under vanilla RDP, is not so bad for general purpose multi-media see this : Multi-Media on RDP Thin client - YouTube