Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?
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What about places that just want to run it as a backup or alternative for normal desktop computing? Or use it as a failover from the datacenter?
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At my last job we had some sales guys who used it, but they really used it 100% of the time so they didn't end up with some documents on one laptop, some on the VDI, some on another. I used VDI, but primarily as a jump host to pop from our data center, or if I was traveling with just my iPad, That's another thing, is you REALLY want client designed for iPads with custom gesture support etc. Citrix actually has a bluetooth mouse option even. They wanted to be able to use different devices to access their data and we were using some applications that did not have native mobile, or web apps.
Now the office would loose power, cooling, water etc, and the most effective thing for DR was we all had laptops and would just wander off and find internet somewhere else.
At my new job all of our applications are web based and or have mobile apps. We use a SSO broker system to access those applications (do a 2FA once, and then I can access anything in a single click. I can get into CRM, 365, to payroll or 401K as well as internal web applications. We have VDI but its really only something I use to get behind the firewall and access my labs, and as a company I would argue as an industry we are "moving past" VDI. VDI is not the ultimate form of elegant end user computing management, its a stop towards MAM,MDM, Identify Brokering, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@John-Nicholson said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@scottalanmiller I though spice was weak over the WAN. It was rich but was bandwidth hungry.
never used it, in theory it was designed to be light or they would have just used VNC. But I've not tested it and its adoption is low.
It's definitely faster than. Also has native audio support, compresses better, etc. I use it on all of my stuff.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@travisdh1 said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
And I've not used SPICE, anyone know how well it performs?
Isn't that what vulr uses for their console access?
I don't think so, I'm not aware of a web SPICE agent. but they might be. It's totally possible, but nearly everyone uses VNC for that. Would be interesting to see a reference to that being what they use, though.
spice-html5
Spice provides a pure HTML5 client option. To use this, you will need to have the spice-html5 and python-websockify packages installed. Then, start a Spice server as you normally would (see either the Xspice or QEMU sections, above).Install the Apache configuration file
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/spice-html5*/apache.conf.sample /etc/httpd/conf.d/spice.conf
sudo systemctl restart httpd
Start websockify, providing a new port, and the host and port where the Spice server is running.
websockify 5959 localhost:5900
Open a web browser, and navigate to http://<system-with-apache>/spice/
Enter the address of the system running websockify, and the port (e.g. 5959) you specified when you invoked websockify, and click 'Start'. You should now see your Spice session.From https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Spice#spice-html5
Proxmox includes an HTML5 spice viewer.
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KVM-VDI is also capable to use SPICE HTML5 (derived form eyeOS SPICE HTML5 client, which supports protocol compression and is much faster, than native HTML5 client).
Though standalone SPICE client is better for thin clients - you can have a USB device redirection and also even faster graphics. This has some limitations, - standalone SPICE client is usable only inside hypervisor network, so it can't be used from any network location. This is when HTML5 client comes in handy.
This diagram shows basic KVM-VDI structure:
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@Seitan -- Does KVM VDI work with Windows as well as Linux for the VDI VMs?
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Yes it does. Since virtualization is based on qemu-kvm there is no limitation on what type of VM OS you will use.
SSO is tested and works with Windows up from Vista (Vista/7/8/10 etc. - I will not make support for XP and lower, since it's really outdated OSes) and all Linux distributions with GDM3 desktop manager. -
PC-BSD with Lumina!
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@scottalanmiller Basically, if you can get Lumina to be run from GDM3 manager, you are good to go. If not, you will be provided with PC-BSD VDI anyway, but you will be skipped with SSO though, - so you will have to enter your password to OS login screen.
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@Seitan said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@scottalanmiller Basically, if you can get Lumina to be run from GDM3 manager, you are good to go. If not, you will be provided with PC-BSD VDI anyway, but you will be skipped with SSO though, - so you will have to enter your password to OS login screen.
Cool, that's not bad at all.
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Some more update on KVM-VDI. A quick demo on basic functions:
Youtube Video -
@Seitan Thanks for posting that! I got a system at home I could tinker with for that.
Does KVM-VDI have an easy-ish way to pass through NVIDIA cards to Windows VMs?
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@dafyre No, it is mainly used for connecting thin clients over SPICE, or web browsers via HTML5 SPICE.
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@Seitan Thanks for the heads up! I am assuming that KVM-VDI can be used to run regular VMs that are not going to be used for VDI as well?
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@dafyre said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@Seitan Thanks for the heads up! I am assuming that KVM-VDI can be used to run regular VMs that are not going to be used for VDI as well?
Do you mean just getting to see the console?
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@scottalanmiller said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@dafyre said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@Seitan Thanks for the heads up! I am assuming that KVM-VDI can be used to run regular VMs that are not going to be used for VDI as well?
Do you mean just getting to see the console?
Or use KVM-VDI instead of a regular KVM server.
Edit: I like the looks of the KVM-VDI interface more-so than the Webvirtmanager that I'm using now.
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@dafyre said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@dafyre said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@Seitan Thanks for the heads up! I am assuming that KVM-VDI can be used to run regular VMs that are not going to be used for VDI as well?
Do you mean just getting to see the console?
Or use KVM-VDI instead of a regular KVM server.
Edit: I like the looks of the KVM-VDI interface more-so than the Webvirtmanager that I'm using now.
Did you set that up with the tunnel like they recommend or did you use NGINX?
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@stacksofplates said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@dafyre said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@dafyre said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@Seitan Thanks for the heads up! I am assuming that KVM-VDI can be used to run regular VMs that are not going to be used for VDI as well?
Do you mean just getting to see the console?
Or use KVM-VDI instead of a regular KVM server.
Edit: I like the looks of the KVM-VDI interface more-so than the Webvirtmanager that I'm using now.
Did you set that up with the tunnel like they recommend or did you use NGINX?
I've got it hidden behind ZT so technically, a Tunnel.
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@dafyre yes, you can create regular machines - they are called "simple machines". But still KVM-VDI is more vdi oriented.
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@Seitan said in Has Anyone Played with KVM-VDI?:
@dafyre yes, you can create regular machines - they are called "simple machines". But still KVM-VDI is more vdi oriented.
Since the KVM market lacks a good, solid, standard GUI management option like XenServer has in XenOrchestra, that might be a spot that KVM-VDI makes more sense than you might think at first glance.
