Full time VDI - What drawbacks am I not considering?

Operating Systems & Open Source
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tl;dr
What are the practical drawbacks to accessing your primary machine exclusively through VDI that may not be immediately obvious? Does anybody have a setup like this now that they could comment on?

Background
I started spending more and more time away from home lately, which lead me to looking at different ways to keep up with my scheduled monday night gaming sessions while Ooo. My initial test of streaming my desktop to my smartphone with a USB monitor and wireless peripherals was a bit of a flop (poor s9+ couldnā€™t keep up). Later tests with an x86 laptop were successful enough that I started thinking through what it would look like to move my primary PC into my network closet, set up something like ESXi or Proxmox, and access it through VDI full time.

75% of my weekly computer use could easily be handled by a more energy efficient machine than Iā€™m using now (9980xe, 3080ti). Weekly gaming and daily 3d modeling seems like it could be handled through a remote session easily enough.

Perceived Benefits
It would be cool.

With virtualization, backups would be simple to manage and might actually happen.

There is potential energy savings to having the virtualized PC shut down during lighter tasks (i.e. 75% of the time). EDIT 10/25 - Actual power savings are at best negligible and more likely a net increase in power use.

It would be a great learning experience getting it all set up and working out any bugs.

Get this large and (relatively) loud system out of my office.

Potential Problems
USB Devices - No physical access to the machine means that things like USB to serial programmers would be more cumbersome if developed on the virtualized PC. USB over ethernet is a thing and there are two separate cables going to my office for things like my spacemouse that I use for CAD work.

Single ā€˜Virtualā€™ Monitor - Currently I use two (2) 2560x1600 monitors. This could be replaced by one ultrawide, or just use one screen for a virtualized PC and one for the local machine. This might take some getting used to but seems manageable.

More Complexity ā†’ PITA when it breaks - This is adding a lot of complexity to using a computer. I can probably minimize the PITA factor by just doing as much as I can get away with on the local machine.

Just based on the above, it seems viable, and maybe even practical? What am I missing?

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This has been my big issue trying to do what youā€™re talking aboutā€¦ daily driver productivity tasks and even gaming are pretty do-able these days in a virtual environment but I have a lot of things like USB JTAG dongles, etc that just donā€™t work even with an entire USB controller passed through to the VM. Running on Hyper-V was the closest I came to having everything actually working but there were still some weird little bugs.

Virtualization in my experience also kills any hope of having VR working, which while a non-issue for most is one of the deal-breakers for me.

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You might consider dual-booting your main/big PC with both Windows + your VDI hypervisor such that you would have a baremetal Windows install for gaming/doing things locally without the overhead, and then a virtual environment for when youā€™re away? Dunno, would also require a reboot ahead of time so maybe not. Just a shower thought.

Let us know if you set something up, always interesting to see how different people approach things.

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How im set up now is my primary PC and my work PC are on a kvm. When I leave I switch the main PC ā€œoffā€ on the kvm so the only active monitor is the dummy 1080p hdmi plug plugged directly into it, keeps everything related to vdi happy. As long as I donā€™t worry about leaving my computer on all the time itā€™s been a great solution so far.

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If you can get Steam remote play working over the internet, it does a decent job of changing between monitors, even if the client device is single screan. Stream Wordpad, alt+tab out, leave wordpad open and forget about it.

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tl;dr
The power costs are so low across the board as to not be worth considering.

I did some power measurements today to get a more real-world reference for any potential power savings. The results:

MAGNUS (9980xe & 3080ti)
104w idle w/ 2 1600p screens
92w idle w/ dummy 1080p screen
125w streaming 1080p60 video
150w CAD + streaming 1080p60 video
185w gaming + streaming 1080p60 video
650w furmark + cpuburner

11th gen i5x13 laptop (modern work laptop for reference)
12w idle w/ laptop monitor
15w idle w/ 2 1600p monitor
40w streaming video (corporate website, unknown resolution)

Using the laptop as a ā€˜low powerā€™ reference (I donā€™t plan on using something anemic) I stand to save about 80w of power during ā€˜general useā€™ but, considering the additional load Parsec would place on both systems, would lose a similar amount of energy when streaming my virtual desktop. I would absolutely have to have MAGNUS powered off while not in use to have a chance at seeing a net energy reduction.

Either way, leaving MAGNUS powered on for the days that Iā€™m not home would only cost about $0.38 a day, or $45 a year with my current schedule. Using a lower powered PC when I AM home would, theoretically, net me about $27/year savings. All of these numbers are low enough that, now that I know what they are, Iā€™m going to essentially ignore it.

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For games maybeā€¦

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I did some testing with sunshine + moonlight early on. Both work wonderfully but I ultimately decided against it due to the lack of authentication. Parsec has an optional 2fa that I am quite pleased about.

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With Sunshine you do have to authorise the connecting device, this being so I donā€™t feel to say ā€˜lack of authenticationā€™ is exactly accurate. Is it very secure, Iā€™d doubt this for sure (I donā€™t consider VNC secure either) but for the LAN it felt sufficient and Iā€™m far more confident in a VPNā€™s auth for external access.

If you find parsec meets your needs of course - thatā€™s great (I didnā€™t want a third party involved).


Moonlight's relative mouse handling (for desktop use) I found to coexist less than ideally with its gaming use case. The mouse in UI feels, wierd.

Opposing this, on remotefx/rdp I find that to coexist less than ideally for first/third person games (mouse here, being absolute rather than relative, good for RTS - and theoretically, work).

Together they enable what I want from it, and can run all of this from a thin&light laptop.

ā€¦

Definitely wasnā€™t cheaper though.

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I donā€™t remember doing any authentication while I was testing sunshine, but mabe that authentication carried over from when I was using the GeForce implementation. Or maybe I just did it and forgot :man_facepalming:

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Have you been looking at something PCoIP solutions from Teradici (HP)? Expensive but should meet your requirementsā€¦:wink:

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VMWare Blast! sorta killed off Terra :slight_smile:

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Expensive but . . .

Yeah, about that :joy:

If it worked better than a software solution on itā€™s own I would be all over old enterprise hardware, but it looks like modern HP Anywhere software is lacking in the ā€˜free for personal useā€™ department.

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Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to test it.
Works better?

A few years ago I tested the solution with the Teradici card in the host and the Windows clientā€¦ it worked pretty cool.

What is the situation with prices for Blast?

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It should theoretically be better. But without testing it will be hard for you to judge. :slight_smile:

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did you notice input lag (>100ms) with the teradici sw client during heavy use?

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I donā€™t remember such situations. It was a few years ago, maybe I didnā€™t have the proper load to notice. From what I remember, we had a 20-30ms environment.

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I tried the teradici sw client many years ago and upon heavy amounts of user input it would lag. I was told that this was only a problem with the sw client and that the hardware clients (the thin clients they sell) didnā€™t have this problem ā€”this was running from a 2220 host card.

The interesting thing is we also had some kind of weird pre-production teradici card that wouldā€™t lag the sw client nearly as much.

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18

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has its benefits, such as increased security, flexibility, and cost savings. However, there are also several drawbacks that you should consider before deciding to use VDI full time. Some of these drawbacks include:

1. Connectivity and Performance: VDI performance depends on a reliable and fast network connection. If your network connection is not stable or fast enough, you may experience slow load times, lag, and disruptions while using VDI. Additionally, if the VDI host server is overloaded or not optimized, it can negatively affect the overall performance.

2. Dependence on the Internet: Since VDI is entirely dependent on the internet, if there is an internet outage, you will lose access to your work, causing downtime and potential loss of productivity.

3. Dependency on the VDI Provider: VDI providers may offer varying levels of support and service level agreements. If there is an issue with the VDI host server or the provider, it could take time to resolve the issue, and you may be without access to your work.

4. Software Compatibility: Certain software applications may not be compatible with VDI, which may require additional software licenses or hardware to accommodate these applications.

5. Upfront Costs: Implementing VDI requires upfront investments in hardware, software, and infrastructure. These costs may be significant, especially if you require high-performance VDI hardware.

6. Training and User Adaptation: Moving to VDI can be a significant change for users who are used to a traditional desktop experience. This may require training to help users adapt to the new system and workflows.

7. Data Privacy: Depending on the VDI provider, your data may be stored in the cloud or on the providerā€™s servers. This may raise concerns about data privacy and security, especially if you are working with sensitive or confidential information.

In conclusion, VDI has its benefits, but itā€™s essential to consider the potential drawbacks before adopting it full-time. Itā€™s crucial to weigh the pros and cons of VDI carefully and assess if itā€™s the right fit for your business needs.

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