Windows Server® 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services includes a new set of user experience technologies in Service Pack 1(SP1) called Microsoft®  RemoteFX™. RemoteFX delivers a full-fidelity user experience for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) by providing a 3D virtual adapter, intelligent CODECs, and the ability to redirect USB devices in virtual machines. As part of the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 platform, RemoteFX is integrated with the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), which enables shared encryption, authentication, management, and device support.

This paper provides an architectural overview of RemoteFX in the context of VDI—using a new role called the Remote Desktop Virtual Host (RD Virtualization Host) designed specifically for VDI using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in a Hyper-V server role.

Download Microsoft RemoteFX for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure: Architectural Overview here

Windows Server® 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services (Remote Desktop Services) includes a new set of user experience technologies in Service Pack 1 (SP1) called Microsoft® RemoteFX™. RemoteFX adds new capabilities to the Remote Desktop Services platform by delivering a full-fidelity Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure (VDI) and high-density, scalable, client-agnostic session virtualization capabilities, shifting delivery intelligence to host-based systems running RemoteFX. Through a new graphics payload purpose-built for RemoteFX and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), the session virtualization platform is tightly integrated with the RDP protocol, which enables shared encryption, authentication, management, and local device support.

This paper provides an architectural overview of RemoteFX in the context of session virtualization—using a new Windows Server role called the Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) designed specifically for modern session virtualization environments using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Download Microsoft Remote FX for Session Virtualization: Architectual Overview “Whitepaper” here

Ruben Spruijt (CTP) have updated his awesome whitepaper “VDI Smackdown to version 1.2

If you’re searching for an independent overview of the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) vendors and solutions or are curious about the different features and functions of each vendors, then this awesome paper is for you! In the current market there’s an increasing demand for unbiased information about Desktop Virtualization solutions. This white paper is focused on solutions that are anticipated to have an important role in VDI deployments. A complete overview of available features has been created to better understand each solution’s capability. The solutions included in the feature matrix are: Citrix XenDesktop 5, Microsoft VDI with RemoteFX, Quest vWorkspace 7.2 and VMware View 4.6; Compared to the previous VDI Smackdown, more than 100 new and updated features are included in this whitepaper.

The overall goal of the white paper is share information about:

• Application and Desktop Delivery Solutions overview
• Explain the different Desktop Virtualization concepts
• Explain the pros and cons of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Clarify the essential VDI strategic questions
• Describe the different Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) vendors and solutions
• Compare the features of Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft VDI/RemoteFX, Quest vWorkspace and VMware View

Making applications available to the end-user, regardless of the technology being used, is the ultimate strategic objective of an Advanced IT infrastructure. The Virtual Desktop (vDesktop) is an essential component in the range of application and desktop delivery solutions and in essence, provides the following functions:

• Flexibility: Detach the vDesktop from the endpoint; Several vDesktops next to one another
• Access: vDesktop works independently of location, endpoint and network; Uniform workstation
• Security: Server Hosted – VDI; data in the computing center
• Freedom: Every user has their own desktop with administrator access when needed;
• Management: Hardware-independent ‘image’
• Legacy: It is simple to offer legacy applications on a state-of-the-art platform
• Sustainability: Power Management, handling the necessary resources in an efficient manner

The growing reality of the transition to a dynamic datacenter is causing many IT organizations to reevaluate traditional IT operations, support, and management methods. Virtualizing the desktop is a reasonable piece to support growing numbers of unmanaged desktops, external users, and other use-case scenarios. It’s important to have a vision and strategy around application and desktop delivery. Designing, building, managing and maintaining the vDesktop infrastructure using the right technologies, corresponding vendors and products is an important last step.

We see a lot of organizations primarily focusing on products and vendors and lacking a clear and profound vision and strategy. This approach isn’t good or bad, it just depends on what the goal of the organization is. When the organization needs a point solution, the various vendors and corresponding products can help to solve this issue and fill-in the demands.  When the organization is investigating possibilities, advantages, use cases and functionality of the vNext “optimized desktop”, a profound vision and strategy should be in place.

The following themes should be part of the vDesktop strategy:

• What are the use-cases? And does the use-case require virtualization?
• VD-why, what do I want to achieve?, lowering TCO?, business enabler, overall cost of ownership and cost reducer?
• What is the business-case?
• What’s the user experience using multimedia, NextGen, video/voice, 2D/3D applications? What do users expect from the vDesktop?
• What endpoints do we support and facilitate and what is the role of these devices in the end-user experience?
• Secure access and secure networking (http://bit.ly/fGgOHz), how do users, with a variety of endpoints (rich, thin, zero-clients and mobile devices) connect to the vDesktop?!
• What is the impact of secure access and secure networking solutions on mobile devices while connecting to the vDesktop? What is the user experience with these solutions?
• Do we need to manage the endpoints?
• How is the vDesktop managed? OS deployment, application distribution, patch management etc… Isclient management mandatory?
• Do we need image management?
• How are Windows applications delivered within the vDesktop? Unattended or manual installation,application virtualization or are the applications part of the (golden) image? What is the strategy?
• Are User Installed Applications inside the vDesktop needed?
• What is the performance and storage impact of application virtualization?
• What is VDI’s impact on storage and how does it effect the business-case?
• Do you need local or centralized storage?
• Do we focus on stateless (pooled, shared) and/or stateful (assigned, private) images? What is, for example, the impact on storage, manageability, security, legal and business-case?
• What is the impact of client management solutions in a stateless VDI scenario?
• How do we design, build and maintain the (golden) image(s)?
• Windows 7 or Windows XP as core vDesktop OS platform? x64 or x86?
• How does the solution scale? What do we need from a scalability point of view?
• How do we size the vDesktop and corresponding infrastructure and what are the best-practices for optimizing the vDesktop?  http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net/
• What is the performance and bandwidth impact on the network infrastructure; LAN, WAN, wLAN
• How do we design, build and maintain the user’s profile and their ‘workspace’?
• Licensing; operating system, client access licenses and (business) applications
• Do we need to backup (and restore) the vDesktops?
• Is Anti-Virus needed? Inside the VM or as service module on the hypervisor? What is the performanceimpact of antivirus?
• Is the IT organization mature enough to support and maintain the complete technology stack? What is the knowledge and skill-set of the IT-department?
• Is separation of operating system, application, and user preferences inside and outside the vDesktop part of the overall strategy?

Bottom Line: What’s your current Desktop strategy?!

Get a head start! Download our complete, in-depth, and independent whitepaper “Head-to-head analysis of Citrix XenDesktop 5, Microsoft VDI with RemoteFX, Quest vWorkspace 7.2 and VMware View 4.6.”

Benny Tritsch (MVP, CTP) and Shawn Bass (CTP) have made this great presentation on comparing Microsoft RDP/RemoteFX, Citrix HDX/HDX3D, Quest EOP, VmWare PCoIP/Teradici,  VDI Remoting Protocols.

You can watch this awesome presentation, which Benny Tritsch did on Microsoft TechEd in Berlin 2010. Benny goes through deep inside/out on how the VDI Remoting Protocols works and show the protocols side by side in a recorded video, so you could see the impressive results. The results are compared in Hardware/Software rendering and in 0ms LAN, 50 ms 2Mbit/200ms  2Mbit, which is a pretty good real life scenario. With Wan optimization products combined, would  the results for the user experience be much better, and i hope the guys will test this in a later phase.

Benny Tritsch  tells how the VDI Remoting Protocols are they different  from each other, and what does it mean for Windows 7 users? How good is the user experience when remoting standard graphics and multimedia output formats, such as GDI, DirectX, PDF, OpenGL, Windows Presentation Foundation, Flash, Silverlight, videos and animations?

Its happy to see that Citrix is leading with their HDX/HDX3D protocol compared to the others, but PCoIP / EOP are close. Its going to be intriguing to see, how HP RGS (Remote Graphic Service) will perform to this side-by-side showoff, i have seen HP RGS next to HDX3D and its a close run, but you dont get the benefits of the VDI, what you would get with XenDesktop. I cant wait to see how RemoteFX will perform combined in a XenDesktop environment, Citrix did a short demo at Microsoft TechEd in Berlin showing how the precode (KICK ASS)

See the High Def video of Brian Tritsch session here or check the official page for VIR401

Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2 have been released in a Release Candidate, and RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory are the new players on the market. Its going to be interested seeing, how Citrix is going to implement RemoteFX with their technologies (XenDesktop, XenApp). RemoteFX will only work on a Hyper-V platform or a RDS Go get the Release candidate for Windows Server 2008R2 SP1 here and Windows 7 SP1 here if you want to test the technology.

The final version of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008R2 will be released in Q1 2011 (Marts/April). Its going to be in intriguing to see, how RemoteFX performs at that time, and how the technology is integrated in XenDesktop 5.

Microsoft RemoteFX is a new feature that is included in Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1). It introduces a set of end-user experience enhancements for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) that enable a rich desktop environment within your corporate network.

What does RemoteFX do?

Who will be interested in this feature?

Are there any special considerations?

What functionality does RemoteFX provide?