spice4xen with terminal server

[Jean]

Hello,

I currently use xen to run an Ubuntu machine that serves as terminal
server. Various users access this machine using nx clients, each
running their own session on the machine and viewing their own
desktop.
The problem with nx is very poor video and audio performance, which is
why I've been eagerly waiting for spice to be available for xen.
Now if I use spice4xen, how can I replicate the scenario above
(multiple users each viewing their own session, on the same terminal
server)? Would I set spice= to a number higher than 1 in the xen cfg
file, to enable multiple spice clients on the same machine, or can it
not be done at this time?

I looked for a documentation but couldn't find anything besides the 1
page in the wiki.

Thank you for any pointers.

Jean

[Zhou Peng]

Hi Jean,

Is it right that
nx server seem must be installed in OS or
if in Xen, it must be installed in each guest VM to allow
user to access each VM's desktop from remote?

spice4xen run in host (Dom0) to allow to access guest VM from remote.
So spice must be used for virtual machine but not installed in accessed OS or VM.

spice is just a remote display protocol without session management, that each spice
server can be accessed by each spice client (One VM One client)

In xen cfg file, spice = 1 means enable spice, spice =0 disabled,
but not the number of spice.
You can specify if to enable spice for each vm through each vm's cfg file.

The model is like this:
VM1-spice server1 (SpiceHostIP, port1)
VM2-spice server2 (SpiceHostIP, port2)
...

spice client can access VM1 through (HostIP, port1) and VM2 through (SpiceHostIP, port2)
SpiceHostIP is host (dom0)'s valid IP.

Best,

[Jean]

Hello,

yes it is correct that NX server gets installed on the OS. It's pretty
much like when you install VNC on an OS (not the VNC console you get
through Xen), or remote desktop, except that NX compresses the
graphics and sound much better so you can almost see small videos.
"Almost" is the keyword there.
With NX you can have multiple users login into different sessions on
the same server.

I understand that this is not possible in the way how spice is
currently implemented. To service multiple users, I would need to run
multiple VMs, which is more of a hassle to keep all the software
packages up to date on all of them.

Anyway, I will continue watching this project and Spice in general, to
see if it becomes suitable for my purpose at some point.

Jean