Thanks for all the input about HP RGS. It seems doubtful that it will be the silver bullet solution for us since we would be interested in doing real time design work, but we are trying to set up a test system just to verify. That said, it sounds like it has a very promising future.
A quick summary based on responses from the list and a phone conference with HP:
HP RGS:
- specifically designed for 2D and 3D CAD applications for collaboration between a large company and it's suppliers
- works on pixel compression not sending drawing commands back and forth
- only sends changed pixels so how fast it is depends a lot on how many pixels are changing at any given time which is very dependent on the use case
- can read from the software frame buffer in VMware but for CAD applications you will typically need hardware acceleration. HP is hoping that graphics vendors will soon come up with virtual graphics acceleration but right now you need a separate machine for each remote user if you need to use hardware acceleration.
- speed over the WAN depends on latency, bandwidth, screen resolution and how many pixels are changing.
- real-time CAD speed for design work generally requires latencies of 100ms or less but depending on the use case, higher latency may be acceptable. (Unfortunately latency between the west coast of the US and Europe is typically ~150ms)
- with the next major release (Oct?) the sender will be supported on all XP and XP 64 machines so non HP hardware can be used. Linux support will be HP hardware only.
- a floating global license is available.
As a side note, since several people brought it up, we already have file server replication in place. Since our overseas users deal with large assemblies, the major complaint is the time it takes for workspace operations not check in and check out. This is not helped by file replication.
We also are already using WAN compression technologybetween the two offices.
Thanks to everyone for the excellent information,
Abby Dawkins
MCAD Support
KLA-Tencor Corp
(408)875-5892
Responses from the list - names removed to protect privacy:
Looking forward to your summary of RGS performance.
Do consider WAN compression for performance increases as well. One company providing this is <u>riverbed technologies</u>. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Abby,
I could not get from your email if ProE is locally installed in user machines in Germany.
Anyway, we have sites in France and USA. Our main Intralink 3.4 data and fileserver is in Australia. France suffers from a bad WAN link. We have installed a fileserver in France that does replication mornings and evenings. ProE and Intralink client is installed on local user machines.
When using the local fileserver, French users get checkins (to main server in AU) done in half the time. However, this half time is also high (not acceptable) but we can’t do any better! So we are living with it…
Our network goes to France from Munich. In your case may be your connect is more direct.
Give fileserver a go…
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Abby,
I tried RGS several years ago with one of our remote locations that had a slow WAN connection. Travelling users needed to be able to access their office workstations and the graphics performance was pitiful with remote desktop. RGS provided a much better connection for the OpenGL graphics in ProE, but it did nothing of note for the rest of the applications. Since then, HP has restricted RGS to only HP hardware, so I don’t know if it performs better now.
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Abby,
The real improvement for working with Intralink overseas is to set for each site a unique folder where he writes to.
And I shell explain:
Most of the sites I have seen that using replication falls in the same mistake. The entire site writes the data into "Master site" vaulting. And that is the root cause for poor performance.
The resolution for it is very simple – create for each site a local vault and define it as the master, for the specific site, for check in.
Remember - the beauty of Intralink 3.4 it’s the simplicity of the system. So think and act accordingly.
Good luck with 9.1, I have just migrated, 3 month ago, our site to it and it not as simple as I thought … remember the simplicity of Intralink? So forget all about it
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Abby,
We are in the same situation, but our main sites are in Pittsburgh, PA, and Hong Kong. The system is almost unusable.
We are planning to upgrade from Pro/INTRALINK 3.4 to PDMLink 9.x in 1/2010, but until then there is great resistance. We also have had a "try again" request from our Engineering department.
If we can figure out anything on this I will pass it on to you. Please publish your results to the list or send to me directly.
Thank you.
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Greetings Abby,
I used to work for HP and used their RGS to support users and servers in Houston, TX. It works very well, but as with anything else remote access is dependent on your WAN. I was supporting users in Colorado, Idaho, Israel and Richmond,TX with good response. HP has very good connections between their sites. RGS has a .dll for opengl that must be placed in the <proe loadpoint=">\<machine type=">\obj folder to handle the graphics better. It is better than VNC and a lot better than NetMeeting.
I do not know anything about the frame rate. maybe it is something new with later versions but I would think 20 to 30 would be good. It may take some testing to get set right.
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Abby,
We use VPN for remote access. Works great with a decent internet
connection. Not sure if it'd work for you folks. You might want to check
out Olaf Corten's "www.proesite.com" for help in specifying hardware to
run CAD software like Pro/E. Another site is SPEC look for their
utilities which can benchmark your existing hardware. HTH.
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Hi Abby.
We had considered using HP RGS too for a Euro application. We were thinking
of having the Master workstation here in the States and the Slave computer
in Europe. During our initial investigation a comment was made that a set
up like that would probably go against the licensing protocol because HP
only offered a N.A. license. We also considered the hardware cost where you
basically need the Master workstation setting somewhere taking up space and
another computer for the Slave. All of this, added to the software cost,
pretty much scrapped the idea.
Since we are using PDMLink 9.0 our interest was not primarily performance
but protecting I.P. by limiting the local computer's hardware with no local
disk to write to.
Have you considered 'Riverbed' technology? Could that do anything to
improve Intralink 3.4 WAN performance?
