Last week I received a shiny Wyse P20 for a proof of concept using VMware View 4. Having been testing with Windows Embedded Standard Edition thin clients and standard desktop machines, I was keen to see how these Zero Clients compared.
Upon receiving the terminal, I downloaded the Teradici PCoIP Management Console. This software is actually a VMware workstation VM which a quick import in to vCenter sorted out.
After booting the VM, you’re presented with a fairly standard configuration screen to set the password, hostname, IP and so on.
Logging on with a web browser, the management console is fairly clean and simple.
The management is split in to three main components, devices, groups and profiles. The idea being that you assign a profile to a group – add devices to that group and the policy should cascade to the end client.
The end clients register with the management console by using a DNS-SRV record. Using Windows DNS, this can be set by creating a new record, selecting ‘Other New Records’ and then Service Location (SRV).
The SRV record required the service name to be _pcoip-tool and the host to be populated with the hostname of the PCoIP Management Console.
Clicking Update DNS SRV records verifies that the DNS-SRV record is propagating.
The video below has a quick run through of adding a client, attaching a profile and a couple of other features.
The simplicity of this configuration is impressive – from never having touched a PCoIP thin client, I had it being centrally managed, with cascaded policies and automated firmware deployment within 30 minutes.
Next up is the actual performance review of the Wyse P20 utilising View 4.0 with PCoIP….
[...] the post from Andrew Sharrock about the Wyse P20 and the management of it, I came across the Teradici PCoIP Management Console [...]
Hi Andrew – when you get into performance testing, make sure you try disabling ssl
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1491552
So far, big buck bunny 720p over 1gb is flawless
(The ‘slow’ bit is the software pcoip encryption happening in the guest vm – I’m hoping the AES instruction set on the xeon 5600′s will help here in the future…)
Can’t remember if I was using SSL on the P20 or not – I was having some issues with some 720p vids and 1080p was very stuttery. Was running on a single display @ 1920×1280 so not sure if this caused issues. Shall try when I’m back in work!
Ah yes – 1080p is pushing things… I was testing on a 1280×1024 screen, but ssl makes a huge difference.