Recently, while flying on United Airlines I noticed the WiFi sign on the seat in front. I never used WiFi on planes before, so I thought it would be expensive. Imagine my surprise when it was cheap. It was probably cheap to compensate the absence of TV displays.

I immediately thought of our CDI Virtual Desktop (VDI) lab in Teterboro, NJ (USA). Would the Virtual Desktop even be usable? How will video run? I connected immediately, started recording my screen and opened my Virtual Desktop. It worked! Everything except video worked well.

My idea came because of Michael Webster, who has already tried doing this and wrote about it. I also wanted to do it in the Gunnar Berger style of protocol comparison. So, for your viewing pleasure — Virtual Desktops (VDI) on an Airplane.

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Description:

This video is a demonstration of the Virtual Desktop (VDI) technology, located at CDI in Teterboro, NJ (USA) being accessed from an airplane 34,000 feet (10 km) high. Virtual Desktops allow you to use your Windows desktop from anywhere — even on satellite based WiFi. You will see PCoIP and HTML5 tests, Microsoft Word, HD video, YouTube video and vSphere client utilization.

Demonstration: Yury Magalif.
Lab Build: Chris Ruotolo.
Connecting From: Random clouds above Missouri, USA

Equipment and Software used:

VMware View
VMware vSphere
Cisco C-series servers.
EMC XtremIO all flash storage array.
10Zig Apex 2800 PCoIP acceleration card with a Teradici chip.

Inspired by:

Michael Webster’s blog article:
http://longwhiteclouds.com/2014/06/06/the-vmware-view-from-the-horizon-at-38000-feet-and-8000-miles-away/

Gunnar Berger’s low-latency VDI comparison video: