[c-nsp] Video in VDI environment best practices?

[Alex K.]

Hello everyone,

One of our customers decided to stream video in their network. Obviously
they ran into problems :)

They are using one of those modern protocols. One of it key features is
adaptive bit rate - i.e. it senses the available bandwidth between the
source and the end PC and adjusts quite well to different network
circumstances.

We've done some testing today. With regular PC at the end, the whole thing
performs quite well. Now, they are mainly VDI environment. I guess you can
easily see the problem. The VM environment, as with most enterprises,
located at the DC. Bandwidth, obviously, is not an issue. But when it comes
to the thin client, it is a whole different story. PCoIP struggles to keep
up with the video, but it's no match for the bandwidth mismatch. While DCs
links are at least 10G (for most part), the branch sites bandwidth ranges
from tens of Mbps to tens of Mbps. While at those sites the streaming
protocol was able to perform quite nicely, the b/w difference leads to poor
PCoIP performance. Mainly due to the highest rate, the streaming protocol
thinks, he's able to achieve at that station.

Which brings me to the question. Are they any best practices at the
industry for such a scenario?

AFIK, one can rate limit the "real" VM station with GPO. Has anyone tried
that? Any thoughts, experience and recommendations shared, will be gladly
appreciated.

Thank you.