Red Hat Open Sources SPICE Desktop Virtualization 79
laxl writes "Linux vendor Red Hat has open sourced the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment (SPICE) virtual desktop protocol it acquired last year with Qumranet, which used SPICE for its own commercial desktop-virtualization product, called SolidIce. SPICE can be used to deploy virtual desktops from a server out to remote computers, such as desktop PCs and thin-client devices. It is similar to other rendering protocols used for remote desktop management such as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol or Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture. SPICE supports rendering virtual instances of Windows XP and Windows 7, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. According to Red Hat, SPICE has advantages over other protocols in that it can dynamically customize desktop instances to fit specific operating environments. According to the article, most of the SPICE code is available under the GNU GPLv2, though parts are also licensed under LGPL- and BSD-styled licenses."
Very cool I think. (Score:3, Informative)
I currently use NXClient w/Neatx for that kind of remote access/management. It works well with both Linux and Windows backends.
I guess the difference is accessing various os's with a single protocol rather than using NX & RDP (like the NXclient does) + also possibly getting around some of the builtin limitations (available only on certain flavors of Windows, limited # accesses by default etc) of RDP.
Sounds interesting if the performance is decent.
Re:So what the FUCK does it do? (Score:2, Informative)
If so, how does it differ from RDP or NX?
It seems to be better [spice-space.org]
Graphic commands - processes and transmits 2D graphic commands
Video streaming - heuristically identifies video streams and transmits M-JPEG video streams
Image compression - offers verios compression algorithm that were built specifically for Spice, including QUIC (based on SFALIC), LZ, GLZ (history-based global dictionary), and auto (heuristic compression choice per image)
Hardware cursor - processes and transmits cursor-specific commands
Image, palette and cursor caching - manages client caches to reduce bandwidth requirements
Live migration - supports clients while migrating Spice servers to new hosts, thus avoiding interruptions
Windows drivers - Windows drivers for QXL display device and VDI-port
Multiple monitors
Client for Linux and Window - can be easily ported to additional platform platforms.
Two way audio - supports audio playback and captures; audio data stream is optionally compressed using CELT
Encryption - using OpenSSL
Two mouse modes - provides client (more user-friendly) and server (increased accuracy and fully synchronized) modes
Lip-sync - synchronizes video streams with audio clocks
Spice agent - running on the guest and performs tasks for the client
Re:more than 1 screen? (Score:2, Informative)
Sunray's cap at 16
Re:So what the FUCK does it do? (Score:3, Informative)
It's more Citrix than RDP or NX. You have a Linux server with multiple qemu/kvm instances, each of which are accessed from a client (Linux/Windows).
The advantage is that you can have multiple clients on a single server, push CPU/GPU-intensive display operations to the client and have access to client-side hardware from within the virtualized server instance.
Normally I'd add a RTFA-sneer, but I read through the site and am only moderately sure I got the above correct. Should be very useful for large-scale Linux desktop deployments however: server-side maintenance with client-side display speed & hardware support. In theory.
The VDI Protocol Wars (Score:3, Informative)
This is not a bad thing. For years, the only alternatives for virtual desktops were either proprietary (ICA comes to mind) or OS-dependent (Sun ALP, MSFT RDP, X, NX), leaving VNC as the only OS-independent option. VNC was (and still is) great, but let's face it, it was never intended to be used for real massive VDI-type deployments, even over the WAN. SPICE is supposed to have a good LAN performance, but still doesn't quite cut it for long latencies over the WAN. May be with this move, SPICE can be improved to also address those use cases.
For now, the most advanced thing I've seen is Teradici's PCoIP protocol that works really well in any environment, and they licensed it to VMware to be used in the new View 4 product line as a pure software implementation (as a disclaimer, I work for VMware, but PCoIP blew my mind way before we did anything with them).
In any case, 2010 is shaping to be the year of the virtual desktop, and competition is a good thing!