Thin clients: Features to look out for
Thin clients: Features to look out for
Many organizations today are considering VDI thin
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
clients when deploying desktop virtualization. Yet there are lots of different VDI client options to choose from and each vendor’s offering has a different approach. In this e-guide, from SearchVirtualDesktop.com, obtain expert tips on which features to look for when choosing the best thin clients. Also, learn how to boost virtual desktop performance with the new features in Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and 5.6. VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients By Alastair Cooke If you're deploying desktop virtualization, you may be considering VDI thin client options. Choosing a thin client is one of the most important choices you'll make when starting a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) project. There are lots of different VDI thin client options from different vendors, and each offers its own approach. You need to decide what kind of management options you want, how you'll deploy the clients and what other features you need. Plus, you can't forget about zero clients. To find the best thin clients for your deployment, consider these factors: Central management First, decide how you want to manage your clients. If you don't want to individually or locally manage them, try VDI thin client options that let you set a policy and make the thin clients automatically comply. There are thin clients that make it easy to set up automatic management: You just place a few files on a server and use network boot to tell the thin clients how to find them. If you want every thin client at one location to behave the same, this type of centralized management is great.
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
Other thin client options allow you to group clients together and assign a common configuration to the group. This management easily allows you to
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
have clients with differing or unique configurations but still group them together. I'm a big fan of thin clients with the same configuration, which makes it easier to apply one profile automatically to all of them. But I also like to be able to support exceptions. For instance, you may have one or two terminals at a site with dual screens, while the other two dozen have only a single screen. If you want room for customization like this, make sure your centralized management tool allows for that without too much extra configuration. Ease of deployment Sometimes, the best thin clients are those that you can deploy with the least amount of work. That's especially true if you have non-IT staff in charge of thin client deployment. If you're running virtual desktops at remote branches that don't have trained IT staff, look at VDI thin client options that branch staff can deploy easily on their own. If a terminal breaks or a new staff member needs a desktop, for example, you want branch staff to be able to just take a spare thin client out of the cupboard, plug it in and go. Think of it this way: Deploying thin clients with non-IT staff should be easy enough that my mother-in-law can do it. Plus, this speed of deployment and use of non-IT staff can bring huge savings for the business. Display protocol support The cheapest VDI thin client options have very limited protocol support, so if you need better support, that quickly rules them out. Some vendors, however, use the same hardware platform and apply different firmware to get different feature sets, including protocols. This capability is extremely useful in an enterprise environment that may need to support more than one protocol. However, these more flexible thin clients usually cost more and have more complicated management tools.
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
Don't forget about zero clients The best thin clients for your VDI project may be none at all. Modern thin
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
clients are really just small, non-expandable PCs, but there are also zero clients. Zero clients have a limited feature set, run firmware rather than an operating system and usually target a single VDI product and display protocol. They are also often highly optimized for their role as terminals and usually have very limited local functionality. That means no local Web browser or Voice over IP (VoIP) and no VPN or wireless. I love zero clients because they're all the same and are interchangeable, so any user can use any terminal. You could have a high-resolution zero client on every desk in the office, and every desk location would be able to access any user's desktop, meaning no waiting for IT when you're moving around. Additional VDI thin client features This is where we hit a slippery slope with VDI thin client options. You deploy thin clients so you don't have to manage a local OS and so all your data is in the data center, right? But too much added functionality can make a client more inefficient. For instance, USB or serial device redirection seem pretty harmless, but what about redirecting a local Web browser or a VoIP softphone? As soon as you add local functionality to thin clients, you end up with an OS that needs constant patching and antivirus updates. A good management product can help you build and distribute new images with updates, but you need to do this every couple of weeks and see whether your tool can use one base build for all terminals. (Having to do a second image build for the dual screen terminals will get old pretty fast.) If you add a lot of local functions to your thin clients, ask yourself if that's VDI done right. Maybe you just need a well-managed local desktop instead of thin clients. As you consider VDI thin client options, spend some time working out what you need and emphasize ease of management. Thin clients tend to last a long time, so operational costs far exceed purchase costs. Choosing the best
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
thin clients for your needs will make a big difference to your desktop virtualization project.
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance By Frank Ohlhorst Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and XenDesktop 5.6 go to great lengths to improve the end-user and administrator experience. Enhancements to virtual desktop performance and usability top the list of new XenDesktop features. So, how can the highly hyped Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and XenDesktop 5.6 features improve virtual desktop performance for admins and network managers? The main enhancements to XenDesktop 5.6 include full integration with personalization technology from RingCube and increased integration with Microsoft System Center 2012. In Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, the talk of the town was HDX MediaStream, a technology that incorporates the following capabilities. Second-generation Flash redirection: In XenDesktop 5.5, you can redirect Adobe Flash content to user devices for local rendering in many more cases than before, resulting in even higher server scalability and a better user experience. Flash redirection also now supports WAN-connected users. Server-rendered video: For multimedia content that's rendered server-side, Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 eliminates the need to configure complex policies under different network conditions to get the best performance. HDX MediaStream automatically adjusts to the effective network bandwidth to use the level of compression that delivers the best video experience (image quality and frame rate) while displaying non-video regions, such as text, at full clarity. Windows Media redirection: Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 also introduces a new end-to-end flow control and frame dropping capability. This XenDesktop feature improves the user experience when the bandwidth available for
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
viewing a Windows Media video (WMV, MPEG, AVI, DivX, etc.) is less than what the video's bit rate requires. That's an issue many customers
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
experience as videos are recorded at higher resolution. Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 allows users to run multimedia redirection in more access scenarios, further reducing server CPU consumption. Priority is given to smooth audio playback and audio-video synchronization at the expense of the video, so the features drops video frames when the available bandwidth is too low. Multi-stream ICA: Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 provides the option to deliver ICA protocol traffic over multiple streams: four Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol streams and one User Datagram Protocol (UDP)/Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) stream for audio. This XenDesktop feature improves virtual desktop performance by giving full flexibility for Quality of Service routing over the network and providing superior audio quality when there is packet loss or congestion. Citrix Receiver for Windows: Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 improved mobile application access by making it easier for XenApp to optimize app interfaces for use on smartphones and tablets. Various enhancements in Citrix Receiver (formerly the Citrix online plug-in) offer additional benefits for softphone users and unified communications clients: •
UDP and RTP support
•
Improved multi-tasking with real-time applications
•
Smoother audio when network latency fluctuates
•
Improved echo cancellation when using speakers and a microphone
Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 also comes with enhanced HDX Broadcast technology, which reduces workloads and improves virtual desktop performance. These new XenDesktop features include: •
A 30% drop in bandwidth consumption and service-side CPU utilization when using low-bandwidth connections.
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
•
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) support in HDX Broadcast has been enhanced to support RDP 7.1 with Microsoft RemoteFX.
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
Citrix also improved virtual desktop performance with better HDX RichGraphics, which sports enhancements such as: Microsoft RemoteFX support: Microsoft RemoteFX, a feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, uses server-side graphics hardware acceleration to deliver the full Windows 7 Aero and multimedia experience over a LAN-like connection. Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 supports RemoteFX using enhancements to RDP support in HDX Broadcast and to Citrix Receiver for Windows. These changes in XenDesktop features is the first phase of a vision and collaboration Citrix and Microsoft announced in March 2010. Windows 7 Aero redirection: Aero redirection uses client-side graphics hardware acceleration to deliver Windows 7 Aero (including glass effects, Flip 3D and Aero Peek) over a LAN-like connection. Using the DirectX 9 graphics processing capabilities of the user's device (a Windows XP, Vista, or 7 PC, or higher-end thin client), Aero redirection delivers an outstanding user experience that truly feels "local," if not better. Three-dimensional Pro enhancements: In Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, HDX 3D Pro adds full multi-monitor support for Windows 7 desktops. This improvement to virtual desktop performance extends remote access to professional 3-D graphics applications and very large models to enable full desktop replacement. HDX 3D Pro also offers limited support for multimonitor access to Windows XP desktops. Other enhancements include support for graphics processing unitaccelerated deep compression with Nvidia's GPU technology, codenamed Fermi, and the addition of XenDesktop policies enabling administrator control of the end-user image quality configuration tool.
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
HDX Plug-n-Play: New capabilities for the HDX Plug-n-Play feature include support for WAN-connected scanners and Japanese and Korean keyboards.
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
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Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 also improves the usability of removable storage devices. Client Drive Mapping now supports read-only access on all Virtual Desktop Agents, and it also supports the Universal Naming Convention path on Virtual Desktop Agents in Windows 7 and Windows Vista environments. With these added XenDesktop features, Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and XenDesktop 5.6 deliver an improved end-user experience and virtual desktop performance, while reducing processing overhead and bandwidth consumption.
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Thin clients: Features to look out for
Contents VDI thin client options: How to choose the best thin clients Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, 5.6 features boost virtual desktop performance
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