Problem
With XenDesktop USB Passthrough, when a webcamera (ordinary/HD) is used, a huge load is put on the network as raw image data is transferred between thinclient and the VM.
for example idle traffic on a VDI machine can be viewed in the following screenshot.(Agent registration, edgesight monitoring etc..)
When a web camera is turned on, network utilization spikes up from 100kbps to 90 Mbps.
This is for one VDI machine, just imagine this on 100/1000 VM’s.
Solution
Logitech HD Webcam B990 which provides onboard H.264 encoding.
Reference
http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20101005005595/en/Avistar/Avistar-C3/Desktop-Video-Conferencing
I’m seeing similar numbers in my XenDesktop 4 environment. Interestingly enough, after a few minutes, or when I maximize my videocamera screens, my HP 7720 thin client (700MB video memory) that is acting as the client to my XenDesktop bluescreens. I suspect this is due to insufficient bandwidth which causes the USB commands to become inconsistent. But I have no proof of this. Have you seen any bluescreens on your client device? What are you using as a client device?
Hi Bill,
I havent seen the BlueScreen on a thinclient due to webcam. The ones i worked on are
Wyse (C90LEW, X90, Xenith), HP T5740, 10Zig Xpe, and VXL Eseries; of these Wyse Xenith is choosen because of easy administration and boot time.
Hi Siva,
Do you know of any XenDesktop Alternative Open Source that support USB Passthrough? I want to implement a VDI environment of 10-15 users with webcams for Skype.
Thank you,
Carlos,
I am not aware any open source alternative for XenDesktop. But XenDesktop Express is free for 10 users.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127575
-Siva