Teradici ups virtual desktop performance with caching and GPUs

Teradici has updated the PCoIP Hardware Accelerator with caching and better GPU support to improve the performance of virtual desktop installations based on VMware's Horizon View platform.

The PCoIP protocol is used to run desktops in the data center. To do that the protocol compresses, encrypts and encodes the desktop and transmits the necessary pixels across an IP network to a compatible client. Depending on the applications and the number of users involved, that can put a lot of stress on the underlying servers, and that's where Teradici's PCoIP Hardware Accelerator comes in.

By off-loading image encoding to a hardware encoding card, it reduces peaks in CPU utilization, ensuring more consistent desktop performance for users, according to Teradici.

The next software update, the version 2.3 driver, will add support for caching, and the company has also fine tuned the processing of pixels to better take advantage of GPUs in VMware environments, according to Olivier Favre, director of product management at Teradici. For users, the latter means higher frame rates generated by the GPU on the server can still be presented to the user, he said.

The addition of caching lets Teradici decrease bandwidth utilization. It can be cut by up to 50 percent in cases where users run graphics-intensive tasks, such as CAD/CAM or video content, when a lot pixels change on the display, according Teradici's measurements.

Thanks to performance improvements, interest is now growing for virtualizing entry-level workstations as well as machines used for higher-end work, Favre said.

The PCoIP Hardware Accelerator runs on a PCI card. Drivers are installed on VMware's ESXi hypervisor and on the virtual machines whose performance users want to accelerate. Off-loading the process of image controlling can then be accomplished via the View administration tool.

The 2.3 driver release will be available on August 20 as a free download.

Windows XP migration: Reassess your desktop IT strategy

The cost of PCs has remained pretty stable over the past year, but people are expected to pay a big premium for hybrid devices. Is it time to rethink desktop IT?

PC market share data shows businesses are buying fewer laptops and desktops. PC shipments in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) declined 16.8% in the second quarter of 2013, compared with the same quarter last year, according to Gartner.

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Apart from the immovable deadline of 8 April 2014, when Windows XP support ends, businesses have little incentive to buy new hardware.

In June, Computer Weekly asked analyst Context to compare how prices of PCs had shifted in the past 12 months.

The perception was that the prices of standard specification machines had skyrocketed since the introduction of Windows 8 in 2012, due to devices incorporating touchscreens and SSD drives, which are part of the Windows OS system requirements.

A standard specification was selected: Context looked at a laptop device running a 2.5GHz processor – chosen because it was the most common standard specification for mainstream laptops at the time – and equipped with an integrated graphics card (see table below).

In the enterprise space, Windows 8 appears to be cheaper than equivalent consumer grade PCs, said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior PC analyst at Context.

"It is cheaper in business. This could be because PC manufacturers are trying to push Windows 8 into businesses," she said.

In the notebook market, the Context analysis showed that Windows 8 notebooks are, on the whole, slightly cheaper than equivalent Windows 7 notebooks.

The situation is different in retail, however, when looking at the distributor selling price: "The take-up in retail is slow due to the poor take-up of Windows 8."

There is a lot less functionality on traditional notebooks, because they do not have touchscreens, but hybrid devices are fairly expensive.

Prices in retail are set to drop over the next month due to retailers discounting for the "back to school" season, said Pygott, but for now buyers can expect to pay around £800 for an Intel Core i5 hybrid device. For instance, a convertible device such as the Lenovo Yoga costs £780 on average, she added.

These figures illustrate the purchase price. PCs run Windows and Windows requires patching, anti-malware software and the hundreds of desktop applications that make up the corporate software image in a typical enterprise, so this must be taken into account when calculating the total cost of ownership.

But is there an alternative, especially given that many businesses will need to refresh desktop IT to migrate away from Windows XP?

Now here is the crunch for corporate IT: the consumer does not care about the OS when they are buying a device. Why not consider a non-Windows enterprise desktop?

Pygott said cheap Android devices, such as the Google Nexus tablet, are doing quite well. For a full-size desktop or notebook device, Google offers Chromebook and its desktop cousin, the Chromebox, which provide a browser-centric user interface based around a Linux variant called Chrome OS.

The consumer does not care about the OS when they are buying a device. Why not consider a non-Windows enterprise desktop
The Chromebook (and Chromebox too) is an internet browsing and email PC. It represents a new genre of non-Windows, pared down device. Pygott expects it will eventually replace the netbook.

Mark Ridley, CTO of Reed.co.uk, has rolled out Chromebox devices to the job site's 100-strong sales team. They are using a desktop Chrome OS machine to access Salesforce.com and Google Apps. Ridley said these devices are considerably cheaper than Windows PCs.

At Grass Roots Group, CIO Danny Attias has deployed Google Enterprise across the company. He said third-party apps from the Google Play store are being used as core business applications. This suggests that companies are willing to use non-Windows business software, paving the way to devices such as the Chromebook becoming part of the corporate desktop environment.

In fact, a Forrester report titled It’s Time To Reconsider Chromebooks urges IT departments to take a closer look at the Chromebook as an alternative to a PC running Windows.

Certainly, Chromebooks offer a cheap alternative to Windows. HP's Pavillion Chromebook costs around £250, but when Computer Weekly spoke to HP, the device was only available in retail. But this will change as more corporates see the benefit of such devices to provide low-cost computing with a low maintenance requirement.

A browser-based user interface means no applications need to be installed on the desktop. There is no need for IT administrators to patch machines. In theory, security can be handled at the internet gateway, so the IT environment becomes easier to manage.

According to the report’s author, Forrester analyst J P Gownder, chromebooks require very little configuration: "Pilot users say any given device can be configured for a new user in under 15 minutes.” Perhaps this is why 20% of the IT decision-makers in large enterprises questioned by Forrester said they would consider deploying the Chromebook.

But organisations have a massive Windows legacy. Dale Vile, research director at Freeform Dynamics, recommends IT managers use the Windows XP migration as an opportunity to reassess their desktop IT strategy.

“Some users in the workforce may be classed as super-users who are dependent on MS Office, but these may be a small minority. Others, like sales and marketing, may have a dependency on PowerPoint. It is fairly easy to work around this and provide alternatives,” he said.

Google Drive blurs the line between Windows and the web with new desktop shortcuts

Google's unrelenting march into Microsoft's turf continues.

A mere two weeks after the release of the Chrome App Launcher for Windows—Google's backdoor into the offline world, basically—the company has announced that when Windows users install the desktop version of Google Drive, it will automatically dump shortcuts for Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Drive on your desktop, along with one for your Drive-based online storage.

Double-clicking on one of those icons opens up the associated web app. After signing in to your Google account you're free to powerhouse through your productivity tasks, and all your work will automatically save to the cloud, the Google Drive team explained in a Google+ post. These simple desktop links could prove handy indeed for non-techies or people who chose to live their lives in Google's free, cloud-connected ecosystem, especially if you configure the Drive family of apps to work offline.

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While default shortcut dumps are evil incarnate and should be cast back into the depths from which they spawned, Google's move is actually pretty savvy. Not only do the shortcuts reinforce the fact that Drive is a full productivity suite rather than a simple cloud storage box, but like the Chrome app launcher, they also keep Google's service in your face. Plus, the shortcuts further muddle the increasingly blurry line between the desktop and the open web.

“For quite some time, we’ve had a dichotomy between web apps and native apps, and one of the things that sets them apart is the ability [for native apps] to be launched from the desktop and have a degree of persistence and independence from the browser,” Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, told PCWorld when the Chrome App Launcher was released. "…People want to interact with their web apps as easily as they do with their desktop apps."

The Chrome App Launcher helps to break down those walls, and now, so will these Drive-related shortcuts.

And Google? Well, Google makes its money by tossing ads at your eyeballs when you're on the web. Check out PCWorld's Chrome App Launcher analysis for the full scoop on what Google stands to gain by dumping web apps on your desktop, and look for the Google Drive installation tweak to roll out sometime in the next week.

Citrix extends remote desktop delivery from Windows Azure for mobile working

Desktop virtualisation provider Citrix has enabled the delivery of remote desktop sessions from Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform.

The virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) provider has collaborated with Microsoft to acquire licensing support for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on Windows Azure with its XenDesktop 7 product.

Citrix released XenDesktop 7 in May at its Synergy event as part of Project Avalon, its multi-phased initiative to deliver Windows as a cloud service. The VDI product brings virtual desktops and apps under the same umbrella.

Cloud-hosted session desktops enable mobile working by delivering any type of app, to any type of device, over any type of network.

Delivering mobile apps and Windows server-based remote desktops from Windows Azure will help enterprises support live session roaming, multiple device types and formats, and rich user interface media experiences, according to Citrix.

Running XenDesktop 7 in the cloud gives enterprises the ability to manage costs, extend capacity on demand, reduce lead time for procuring and configuring hardware, and reduce hardware sizing risk as loads fluctuate, it said.

“Customers are increasingly adopting cloud hosted session desktops to enable mobile work styles and simplify their operations. Using the cloud as a deployment platform will further accelerate these major trends,” said Bob Schultz, group vice-president and general manager, desktops and apps, at Citrix.

XenDesktop 7 will allow users to have a high-definition experience across a broad set of user-defined devices, he added.

Citrix’s remote desktop delivery on Windows Azure comes at a time when the market for cloud-hosted session desktops is rising as users demand flexible, cost-effective IT services that can enable a mobile workforce.

Research firm 451 Group has estimated that the overall desktop virtualisation market could be worth $5.6bn (£3.75bn) by 2015. It also predicted a 35% growth for cloud-hosted desktop revenue through 2015.

The remote desktop delivery is also available to service providers.

“Combining Microsoft Windows Azure with our Citrix desktop virtualisation infrastructure allows us to deliver enterprise-class hosted solutions in a cost-effective package that was previously unavailable to small businesses,” said Tom Poole, president of Cloud Nation, a US-based cloud solutions aggregator.

Delivering hosted session desktops from Windows Azure gives Citrix customers the benefit of delivering desktops from a cloud familiar to system administrators and optimise the sessions for Windows workloads.

How to boot to desktop mode in Windows 8.1

One of my chief complaints with Windows 8 is that Microsoft forced you to boot to the new Start screen rather than giving you the option of booting to the desktop--which is where I prefer to hang my computing hat.

 

You could work around this using any number of utilities (most of which were designed primarily to restore the missing Start button, essential if you are working in Desktop), but with the release of Windows 8.1, Microsoft has added the capability.

 

In other words, now you can boot directly to the desktop. It's not immediately obvious how--Microsoft still doesn't outfit Windows with any "guides to new features" or the like, a silly oversight--but at least it's easy once you know the steps.

 

1. After booting Windows 8.1 (here's how to get the preview if you don't already have it), click the Desktop tile to enter Desktop mode.

 

2. Right-click any open area in the taskbar, then click Properties.

 

3. Click the Navigation tab, then check the box next to Go to the desktop instead of Start when I sign in.

 

4. Click OK, then reboot. Windows should plunk you right into Desktop.

 

And that's all there is to it. If you want to go back to Start-screen booting, just repeat the process and uncheck the box in step 3. (Also, if you don't have a Navigation tab, leave a comment letting me know. This appears to be an issue for some users. I'm investigating why.)

 

What are your thoughts on this? Where do you prefer to land when you boot Windows 8?
 

How to add USB 3.0 to your desktop PC

If you've purchased an external hard drive recently, there's a good chance it came with a USB 3.0 interface.

That'll work with your old desktop, as most USB 3.0 devices are backward-compatible with USB 2.0 ports. The problem is you're not enjoying the significant speed benefits afforded by the newer technology.

So what's the solution? Buy a new machine? Nah: just upgrade your current one. Turns out it's pretty easy to add USB 3.0 ports to a desktop, provided you can meet two simple requirements.

First, your system will need an available PCI or PCI Express expansion slot. Second, you'll need $20-30 you can devote to the upgrade.

Yep, you guessed it, you're going to be buying and installing a USB 3.0 PCI card, which will add four of the blazingly fast ports to your PC. (Alas, they'll be at the back of your PC, but that's better than nothing.)

If you've never ventured inside your desktop before, this is one of the easier upgrades you can perform. Basically you just drop the card into an available slot, connect a power cord, then install some drivers. Easy-peasy.

However, you'll want to make sure to pick a USB 3.0 card that matches the kind of slot you have, and check its power requirements: some cards need you to connect a Molex plug (commonly found in older desktops), while others rely on SATA plugs. You may need to poke around inside your case to see your available slot and power options. Then buy a card that matches.

Newegg is a good place to start your search, though do check the often-middling user ratings for the various cards. Some users seem to encounter compatibility issues, others run into driver problems. Your mileage may vary, but as with any upgrade, you'll want to make sure you have a reliable full-system backup before you begin the process.

If you've already done this upgrade, hit the comments and let you fellow readers know how it went. If not, this is a great way to breathe some new life into an older PC, and for a pretty small investment of time and money.

And while we're on the subject, be sure to check out my recent how-to on upgrading a USB 2.0 hard drive to USB 3.0.