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# citrix-vad
s
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n
IME, Webex has always been really late to both update their documentation and 'officially' support newer CVAD builds.
s
sigh
o
Yeah, their docs for implementing WebEx on Citrix were brutal. I had a support case opened where the assigned support engineer knew less than I did, I ended up figuring it out on my own and provided feedback to their documentation team
r
I wrote a blog on this for 2203, It may help you?
s
definately used this as a guide when doing the work
r
The whole plugin deal they had stunk. The verisons did not match the CVAD VDA part at all
Actually @Nick Panaccio may remember, he helped me confirm steps when I was deploying in a big energy company up north.
n
They still have that issue. You'll have Webex 43.2 installed, join a meeting, and then you'll have 43.4 installed. But only for that meeting. Next meeting is back to 43.2.
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Oh, I remember.
r
There is a PDF I have that they took down, that was way better
I can send it, might be dated but it was solid
n
The admin guide PDF or the Webex powerpoint presentation one?
Which I think you sent me, haha
r
Maybe you can find this online, But I swear I search and could not find the URL to this.
Webex_VDI.pdf
n
Yep, that's the PP one
r
To me it's the best one
I saved it off... luckly
s
zoom vdi, webex vdi, teams optimization....please make this easier
r
Zoom is the best in Citrix I would say
s
have you encountered any scenarios where you were doing offloading on a thin client or some cheap device that couldn't handle the offloaded CPU?
n
Teams being built into CWA is the clear frontrunner, IMO.
r
Yea I have, a lot
n
@Steve Noel: I did a ton of testing in that area when we were looking at thin clients at my last place.
let me break out my handy dandy spreadsheet
Screenshot from one of the tabs.
s
holy moly, look at all those tabs down there
n
Yeah, thanks for bringing back my PTSD
s
guessing the other non UD3 tabs were all pretty good?
n
See for yourself:
Thin Client Testing.xlsx
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We were trying to narrow down what hardware would work best for our use case. Unfortunately, at the time one requirement was to use the built-in webcam of a monitor. That was always garbage compared to an actual webcam.
s
blue jeans......eek
so most of the components in tehse tests weren't being offloaded, more so just to see teh native experience with the processing done on the server?
n
Oh, they were definitely being offloaded. BlueJeans is a good example of one where they have no optimization for thin clients, so that was all running on the thin clients directly.
s
oh ok, what did the Epic video use? i didn't know they had an offload component
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n
Epic was the biggest issue. They used a browser, so I tried using BCR to get it to work, but it was incredibly flaky. 85% of the time, optimization didn't work.
It was really bad.
This was over a year ago, so I don't know if Epic has changed anything. Or if they started supporting thin client workflows. They said absolutely not for thin client video visits back then.
s
are you under the impression that offloading is just a gimmick from this experience you had? 🙂
n
No way, Teams offloading worked flawlessly for us, and Webex was really solid, too. Only a few times it didn't optimize, but re-initiating the connection fixed it.
The issue - especially with Webex - is that you have to be within a certain number of builds on both the thin client side and the VDA side.
s
gotcha, so you see more issues with CR builds i'm guessing?
n
Go one version too far on the VDA, and all meetings are no longer optimized.
I have been 100% LTSR since like 2012?
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With Webex, you need to make sure that you have good control over the plugin installs in the VDA (no auto update, etc.). Same goes for the thin client.
And right now, for Webex, not only do you need the Webex VDI plugin for meetings, but also the Webex Meetings Virtual Desktop Plug-in for calls.
They told me last year that they would eventually combine these, yet here we are.
s
and that was just for the thins right?
n
That's for everything, not just thin
s
ah for some reason thought that second plugin was only for thins
n
So BYOD stuff will be a nightmare, because you have to instruct users to go to https://www.webex.com/downloads/teams-vdi.html and click on the correct link, unless you embed it in Storefront
At the end of the day, even unoptimized, the UD3 and that Lenovo thin client actually performed okay in terms of performance. But those are beefy thin clients that cost a pretty penny. And IGEL abandoned the hardware gig, so now you're looking at an OEM.
I would still never do anything unoptimized, though. The user experience suffers and you'll get calls.
s
really great info, thanks for sharing
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all of the fallback stuff work ok too? like if the endpoint didn't have the plugin
n
Fallback for the thin clients was simply being unoptimized. Audio and video would connect, but it's pegging your VDA's CPU.
s
yeah, cool
honestly haven't done too much optimizing for offloading, dont know why, just haven't. Did you have any common top sites that you use for BCR...youtube,e tc... ?
n
I know we had a few times in our BCR list, but YouTube was the main one. And it worked pretty well.
Except for the time that Citrix blew up the BCR extension for Edge for like a month.
s
lol
j
Do you use BCR with server fetching? It doesn't work even with YouTube, most likely because the proxy used on the VDA.
n
FYI..In the latest version of 2311 CWA release Citrix have broken the upgrade which removes any third party VC extensions like Webx, Teams and causes session launch failures https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX587626/workspace-app-upgrade-to-version-2311-causing-end-user-launch-failures
s
ah, wonder if that was my problem, didn't realize it was more than session launch failures. Thanks for post.
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