Here are a some suggested settings for optimising a HDX policy.
This policy should enable you to delivery high client side frame rates with minimal compression on the image allowing you to deliver full 1080p video streaming at 30fps across a LAN.
These have been refined using apps such as
Premiere Pro, Nuke, Bohemia VBS along with apps such as VLC and Quicktime
This policy will work well for both XenDesktop and XenApp, so use these as a starting point and share your experiences here to help everyone get the best results they can.
Policy Settings
Desktop Composition Redirection
Off
Display Memory Limit
131072KB
HDX3DPro Quality Settings
-Min 80
-Max 100
Lossy Compression Level
-Low
Lossy Compression Threshold Value
-10240Kbps
Minimum Image Quality
Very High
Moving Image Compression
-Disabled
Queuing and Tossing
-Disabled
Target Frame rate
-60
Use GPU for Optimising Windows Media Multimedia Redirection over WAN
-Allowed
I make the HDX Policy as you write, but i must say i am absolutly angry about the Performance from the VDI. Flash or HTML5 HD Videos are a slideshow. I have give the VDI from the Nvidia Grid K2 Card, the K260 vGPU, but Performance is on Flash and HTML5 and also Media-Video Files not very performant. I have a better experience when i make a Flash- and Mediaredirection to my Igel UD5 Client. There will the Flashvideos much better. Can it be, that here can something be with the Policys? I make a 3d Benchmark with the Future Tool, i have with vGPU K260 and 8 cores, 4GB RAM a score from around 4700 Points. But i dont see that power in the VDI on Internet-Flash or HTML5 or Media-Video Files. Have you a Tip for me?
The suggested policy above is a starting point, and doesn’t disable redirection at all.
For Flash you can continue to use redirection for HTML 5 video’s it depends on the media type whether redirection is an option.
One thing you don’t mention is which browser you’re using. Have you tried either Chrome or Firefox as experience tells me that the browser selection can have a large impact on performance.
Sorry, yes i try many Browsers, and after one Day excessive testing in lab, i have found bottleneck. it is not the policy or so, it is the remote device. i mean i make test with Igel UD2, UD3 and UD5 Thinclients, and than also on a normal Lenovo mSerie PC. So i see, that when i look the unigine heavens benchmark on the Igel Devices, that they make slideshow. So first of all is the switch for losless is very important, because of network bandwith, so when you make losless you have a bandwith about 60-80MB/s. without losless all is ok, bandwith is about 10-15MB/s. But the most important thing, is the client device CPU. I see on Igel UD5-ES ( Windows) Device, that my DualCore is needing about 100% CPU when i look a HD Video or Benchmark on the VDI, so the CPU is too slow for the VDI and Citrix Receiver. When i look the VDI over my PC where i have a Quad Core Intel i5 CPU / 3Ghz i see that they need CPU about 25-30% when looking Heavens Benchmark, and on PC the VDI is very performant. So i will ask you, with what for ThinClients have make Nvidia and Citrix on the Synergy this tests??? What is the optimal RemoteDevice for HDX 3D PRO?
It is important to remember that not all of the policies within XenDesktop 7 are applicable to a standard implementation. Some of the above policies only take effect when the ‘Legacy Graphics Mode’ policy is set to enabled.
Legacy Mode can be useful to increase back end user density on server hardware, as it prevents the use of H.264, and so reduces the encoding overhead on available CPU resources. However, if density isn’t an issue (and to be honest, if you’re on this forum then GPU is more likely to become a contended resource before CPU or RAM) then Legacy Mode can be left disabled.
With Legacy Mode disabled, the above policies have no effect:
Moving Image Compression
Queuing and Tossing
Minimum Image Quality
I have great success with disabling Desktop Composition Redirection and setting Visual Quality to very high.
Thanks for this great article. I was a lot of help tuning Citrix policy!
I have activated the same setting as you suggested and this works fine. We are currently running Window 7 VDi on XD 7.1 with XenServer 6.5 with Nvidia driver the newest.
But there is a slow issue with images hang/frose leaving area not resfreshing. Wonder if you can help me with this tuning. Thanks!
We have 2 VDI groups in the same environment. One with the GPU and the other one is without. The VDI without VGPU is working perfectly with screen refreshing. So the network here should be a problem. So i thinking about the same way as you maybe the protocol for VDI WITH VGPU is causing this. Do have any tips how to check this out? Thanks!
