The following blog was written by Fahd Pirazda and posted by Lee Burnette of DellTechCenter.com

Hi, I’m Fahd Pirzada and I work in Product & Technology Marketing for Dell Best Value Solutions. Today Microsoft® introduces a set of end-user experience enhancements for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) with RemoteFX™ in Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 SP1. RemoteFX provides customers new choices for supporting users with high performance graphics in a desktop virtualization environment. When paired with Dell’s leading data center and client platforms customers have a clear, proven path to success with RemoteFX, so your businesses can adapt to the changing dynamics of a virtual and media savvy workforce. Dell will enable IT administrators with flexible new options to leverage the CPUs and GPUs in Dell PowerEdge servers and to support remote users with RemoteFX capable client devices in ways that ensure an optimum user experience. The benefits of this Dell solution also include:

• Remote desktops with full Windows Aero, SilverLight and 3-D graphics/animation
• Streamlined desktop deployment, and simplified desktop management
• Flexibility to leverage the most appropriate processors, GPUs, or hardware decoders
• Improved ROI by virtualizing a single GPU to support multiple remote users with rich graphics
• Expanded range of client devices capable of supporting a richer experience for remote desktops 

I have seen a significant interest from our customers in delivering a richer end user experience in desktop virtualization environments. Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions can now enable new use cases in diverse industry segments with RemoteFX. Just to call out a few use cases, our customers in Banking and Financial sector can provide their general workforce remote and secure access to internal 3D graphics applications. Our customers in Healthcare can provide clinical staff access to graphics-rich medical applications from a diverse set of end points. Our customers in Higher Education can enable students to access labs remotely with better support for applications like Matlab and SPSS. Our customers in Manufacturing and IT can enable application developers more flexibility with remote access to graphics rich development environments.   

Since the announcement of RemoteFX on Mar 18, 2010, Dell and Microsoft have been working together to certify multiple Dell platforms and GPUs with RemoteFX in the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) certification process (Blog 1, Blog 2, Reference Architecture).  Dell’s end to end approach simplifies what would otherwise be a highly complex proposition for IT organizations with solutions that securely balance IT operational efficiency, end user productivity, and business agility.  Dell together with Microsoft and multiple technology partners are assessing, testing, and refining multiple combinations and configurations of RemoteFX with Dell PowerEdge R710, and M610x servers with various GPUs and related options such as the Dell C410x expansion chassis. This server, GPU, and client compatibility assessment effort includes the following: ¹

• Dell PowerEdge R710 connected to Dell PowerEdge C410x IO expansion chassis
• Dell PowerEdge M610x blade with NVIDIA M2070Q  

These platforms went through rigorous testing and validation cycles to ensure that our customers receive the best recommendations. We qualified our recommendations against the following criterion:

• User Experience: Frame rate and delayed frame (jitter) metrics were measured and used for the statistical analysis to determine user experience variations.
• Graphics scalability: Graphics latency and performance was characterized as the number of users on a single GPU scales to higher density.
• Resource Utilization: Server CPU utilization, memory consumption and PCIe bus efficiency was captured to ensure that we optimize the overall platform for a rich graphics experience.
• Failure conditions: The VMs with acceptable media quality were analyzed to determine the incidence of failure at peak loading conditions.

Dell Optiplex business clients including OptiPlex workstations and FX series Thin Clients support and complement the Dell desktop virtualization solutions.  RemoteFX is an important new technology breakthrough that will give customers more choice and increased ability to realize the promise and benefits of desktop virtualization. Inherent in Dell’s end to end approach to enterprise IT solutions is ongoing close collaborate to integrate Microsoft solutions and platforms with an ecosystem of Dell client devices, and client solutions spanning various form factors and end user use cases. 

Dell Services provides Windows Server 2008 R2 services offerings today including consultant led customer workshop sessions, architecture, datasheets and fast track designs, implementations and management for on-going success.  Together, Dell and Microsoft have invested thousands of hours in joint engineering, architectural design, and solution validation so we can confidently and in a timely manner deploy Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 into your environment.

Find out more at: http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/virtual-client.aspx

Footnotes:

1         Information provided in this document is for informational purposes only and is subject to change without notice. Dell and Microsoft testing is an on-going process  and together we have comprehensive plans to test, validate and integrate Windows Server 2008 R2 capabilities with a wide variety of Dell products and solutions. The information provided in this document is preliminary and in no way constitutes or implies a statement of compatibility between Dell products with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.