New protocol increases usefulness,
performance of VMware View
REVIEW: PCoIP improves the ability of View 4 to deliver full desktop,
app functionality to a variety of endpoint systems
By Cameron Sturdevant
VMware View enables enter- prises to deliver centrally managed virtual Windows XP and Vista desktops, and
now uses a specialized transport protocol to squeeze out lag time and significantly increase the number of monitors
supported by the virtual desktop.
View 4—which has the flexibility
to meet the common workload scenarios likely to be encountered in a
medium to large enterprise—uses
a VMware protocol called PCoIP to
improve performance over low-band-width networks. The VMware View 4
platform worked well in e WEEK Labs’
tests—delivering full desktop and
application functionality to a variety
of endpoint systems, including thin
clients, Linux-based systems and older
Windows-based PCs. In the process,
VMware View centralizes OS and
application management tasks, such
as distributing patches and updates,
while significantly reducing help desk
calls by preventing end-user tampering with desktop systems.
However, even though VMware
View 4 provides a good virtual desk-
top infrastructure—aptly doling out
desktops to users in a flash—my
tests show that desktop virtualiza-
tion still doesn’t fall into the “must
do now” category. The main rea-
son—and the same one I gave in my
January 2009 review of competitor
Citrix XenDesktop 2.1—is the sheer
number of moving parts that must
of these virtual desktop systems. My
modest-but-modern lab environment
includes two Dell R710 servers and
two Dell EqualLogic PS6000 storage
arrays. I also used two HP ProLiant
servers—a DL360 G6 and a DL380
G6—as part of my test environment.
Virtual desktops eat memory and stor-
age for breakfast. Even with thin pro-
visioning turned on (which is a more
expensive SKU), storage capacity in
my 10TB arrays would have been a big
concern if I converted my test systems
into production machines.
The increased cost of data center
hardware needed to run the VMware
View 4 infrastructure can be offset
by cost savings from the centralized
patching and updating capabilities
be assembled to create on-demand
desktops. This is especially true
when compared with the relatively
staid world of virtual servers.
There’s also the matter of cost.
A VMware View 4 license costs
anywhere from $50 to $250 per
concurrent user. This does include
the VMware licenses necessary to
support the vSphere 4 hosts and
vCenter management components.
The more expensive end of the
scale includes application packag-
ing (ThinApp), dynamic desktop cre-
ation (Composer) and experimental
Offline Desktop components.
Obviously, the licensing costs don’t
include the cost of the hardware that
is needed to create and maintain all
Here you see the main Web-based administration interface for VMware View 4. The un-
cluttered management console made it easy to create and track virtual desktop resource
pools during my tests.
