Optimizing the Virtual Desktop Experience

My name is Fahd Pirzada and I am a part of the Solutions Marketing team at Dell. I have been working on the desktop virtualization technologies for the past few years so I am excited to have the opportunity to talk about the availability of a new product feature from Microsoft, called RemoteFX, that improves the end user experience for our desktop virtualization customers. This feature is available as a part of the beta release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 that became publicly available today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Before I talk about the specifics of the Dell infrastructure, let me give you some context about this feature.

On March 18, during its desktop virtualization hour event, Microsoft announced an upcoming feature of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, called Microsoft RemoteFX that is a key enhancement to the end user experience for desktop virtualization; that same day, Citrix also announced an agreement with Microsoft around future support of RemoteFX in XenDesktop. RemoteFX is an extension of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to provide a high-end graphics experience for virtual desktops. The remote users are able to access 3D applications, full-motion videos and multimedia animations in a Windows 3D Aero virtual desktop environment. So RemoteFX brings out the full potential of Windows 7 in a virtual desktop environment and provides a quantum leap for end user experience from the Windows XP days.

Dell Flexible Computing solutions provide end to end infrastructure powered by Microsoft and Citrix XenDesktop that harness the power of desktop virtualization. The great thing about the Microsoft/Citrix alliance is that at the time when XenDesktop will support RemoteFX, our customers will be able to leverage the tried and tested infrastructure recommended for Flexible Computing solutions for Citrix XenDesktop and still reap the benefits of a high end user experience with Microsoft RemoteFX. To achieve the full potential of RemoteFX, Dell is driving optimization across our end to end solution. The most obvious optimization is to support graphics card on Dell PowerEdge server platforms.

There are two options to for GPU support on Dell PowerEdge servers.

For rack servers, the PowerEdge R710 and R610 have been certified with the NVIDIA Quadroplex S4 external IO chassis to host up to four GPUs.
For blade servers, the PowerEdge M610x brings a new set of capabilities to Dell's blade portfolio by supporting up to two, 250-watt x16 Gen2 PCIe expansion cards. This 2-socket blade allows users to leverage technologies such as Graphics cards/GPGPU.

Dell has been working with Microsoft engineers on-site in Redmond to explore ways to optimize the HW infrastructure for RemoteFX. Here are some preliminary details about the test scenarios that we have configured for shared virtual machine servers and Dedicated Remote Workstation user scenarios:

Besides shared SAN and Multiple LAN NICS required to set up for Windows 2008 R2 SP1 clustering, a high availability configuration of Microsoft Server 2008 R2, SP1 for RemoteFX would include the following components:

2 x Dell Poweredge R710
1 x NVIDIA Quadroplex S4 (4 x GPU’s and 16GB video memory)
External cables to connect each R710 to the external 1U NVIDIA Quadroplex S4 GPU

With 2 x GPU’s and 8GB of video memory assigned to each node this would scale to 24 VDI VM’s per node. With a 2 node cluster and in an Active/Active configuration each node would support 12 VDI VM’s. In case the first node fails, Live Migration is supported and functions with RemoteFX.

In a 1:1 (dedicated HW per user) configuration, where each user is running their virtual machine on dedicated hardware, we got the best results with a Dell Workstation in the following configuration:

Dell Precision T7500 (Workstation)
Intel® Xeon® X5540, 2.53Ghz
24GB, 1066MHz
2 PCIe x16 (default)
Integrated LSI 1068e SAS/SATA 3.0Gb/s controller
2 - 160GB 3.0Gb/s
1100W
PCIe 10/100/1000 NETWORK CARD
NVIDIA: FX 4800

Of course any complete desktop virtualization solution would be incomplete without the desktop. We validated the following client devices with RemoteFX

Dell FX160 Thin client device (windows 7 SP1/RDP 7.1 client) - up to 1920 x 1200 resolution
Dell OptiPlex 745/755/960/980 range (Windows 7 SP1/RDP 7.1 client) - up to 1920 x 1200 resolution

In summary, more and more customers are coming to Dell interested in desktop virtualization as a way to better manage the desktop deployment lifecycle. The Microsoft RemoteFX user experience enhancements provide the kind of high-end graphics experience users have come to expect from their personal computers, including 3D applications. Whether shared server or dedicated workstation based, Dell’s RemoteFX enabled solutions offer an industry leading solution that includes best-of-breed ingredients from Microsoft and Citrix. See how RemoteFX optimized Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell Precision workstations bring outstanding user experiences to Dell OptiPlex & thin client desktops.

Find out more at http://dell.com/virtualclient

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