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Looking for Horizon 7 alternative (VM VDI server)

niculw

Hello Forum

 

I’ve recently been looking into making a VM server and have thus been searching for the proper OS to suit my needs. Ideally i want it like VMware Horizon, with which a thin client/zero client can just connect over PCoIP (or blast extreme in this case), no VNC or RDP.

 

The only real candidate i have been able to find, is a mix of all the open source offerings, XCP-ng as hypervisor, Xen Orchestra as manager, and UDS Enterprise as VDI broker.

On my small test system, XCP-ng and XO works without issue, however UDS Enterprise will copy the VM and boot it, but cant connect to it. Either im doing something wrong, or the current version is borked.

 

Anyone have a suggestion to another route, or are an expert in UDS Enterprise and can help? It would be much appreciated!

 

My end goal is to have the server stashed somewhere, with 2 rpi4 as thin/zero clients at the desk. 

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You could do what linus did, and buy a thundbolt docking station and run it to the server over fiber. Then using microsoft multipoint server or whatever hypervisor you want, assign those IO devices to specific VMs.

 

RDP actually works quite well, are you having any specific issues with it?

 

Also if this is for a lab, you always have the option of VMUG to get a full license for Horizon.

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2 hours ago, Mikensan said:

 

 

RDP actually works quite well, are you having any specific issues with it?

^ This.

 

If graphics are really required, one of the niche use cases for VDI, there's also RemoteFX available. The main benefit to PCoIP is that it's picture perfect, and HDX and RemoteFX are not.

PC Specs - AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D MSI B550M Mortar - 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR4-3600 @ CL16 - ASRock RX7800XT 660p 1TBGB & Crucial P5 1TB Fractal Define Mini C CM V750v2 - Windows 11 Pro

 

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23 hours ago, Mikensan said:

You could do what linus did, and buy a thundbolt docking station and run it to the server over fiber. Then using microsoft multipoint server or whatever hypervisor you want, assign those IO devices to specific VMs.

That is definitely an option, but i would like not to be bound by my amount of expensive docking stations. 

23 hours ago, Mikensan said:

RDP actually works quite well, are you having any specific issues with it?

 

Also if this is for a lab, you always have the option of VMUG to get a full license for Horizon.

I want a close to lossless and low latency connection, though i havent tried it on my LAN only WAN a few years ago.

 

It is for a home lab, meant for me and my girlfriend’s engineering work.

Thanks for the hint, i didn’t know VMUG existed, this might be the route i‘m going, with something like “NoTouch OS” on the rpi4s. 

 

Thank you ?

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21 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

If graphics are really required, one of the niche use cases for VDI, there's also RemoteFX available. The main benefit to PCoIP is that it's picture perfect, and HDX and RemoteFX are not.

This is exactly why im looking into PCoIP or Blast Extreme ? for viewport performance of various 3d design tools, and to make it feel like a local computer.

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21 hours ago, niculw said:

This is exactly why im looking into PCoIP or Blast Extreme ? for viewport performance of various 3d design tools, and to make it feel like a local computer.

Local network RDP for applications like AutoCAD does work fine btw, had 5-10 concurrent connections to an RDS server for AutoCAD and Inventor without any problems. Much faster than the iMacs were at the same task. Horizon is the next step better though and VMUG is actually really cheap, had it for basically as long as it was a thing.

 

RemoteFX enabled RDS sessions are actually capable of playing 3D games, messed around with it for a while and was actually pretty impressed.

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