Improving the virtualization of rich applications by combining VNC and streaming protocols at the hypervisor layer

Abstract

SummaryVirtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions seek to provide a satisfactory user experience at the client side when accessing remote desktop applications, even from mobile devices with limited capabilities. This paper presents a new approach, improving on previous work by the authors, in which a combination of Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and streaming protocols allowed efficient remote web access to virtualized applications within a cloud architecture. The new approach simplifies virtual machine templates, from which virtual machine instances are deployed, by centralizing software modules, greatly simplifying their management. Our new contribution consists of an integrated solution with specific WebM video encoding modules in charge of application visual output processing, an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) streaming server, and a VNC server. The solution can be installed in the hypervisor of the host machines instead of replicating the servers and modules throughout the guest (virtual) machines that run the virtualized applications. Consequently, their implementations are unique and independent of the operating system of the virtual machines. In short, it is not necessary to provide different implementations for different operating systems, which reduces the complexity of virtual machine templates and greatly simplies platform management. To demonstrate our solution, we have modified the Quick Emulator (QEMU)‐Kernel‐based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor source code accordingly. We also present qualitative and quantitative analyses that demonstrate that the new approach is advantageous in terms of software management and quality of experience, compared with our previous work and other well‐known thin clients, contributing to the enhancement of VDI systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.