Introduction

Over the last couple of years, there has been an impressive flux with many businesses and institutions adopting and relying on large-scale remote working and remote learning environments to maintain workforce and learning continuity. During this time, it’s generally been recognised that this type of remote working/learning has been quite successful, with many businesses and institutions continuing remoting working/learning practices or introducing hybrid models with a combination of remote and office work for their staff. 

One of the reasons why remote working/learning has been successful is the availability of supporting technologies that have delivered a high standard of human communication and engagement across large numbers of workers or students/faculty in remote environments. Video conferencing applications, which includes video conferencing, screen sharing, IMs and more, are such technologies that have contributed to viable remote working/learning environment success.  

But to use these applications to their fullest potential, a robust IT infrastructure is also a must. Many large enterprise companies, as well as SMB and other institutions have centralised their IT environment into virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), either as an on-premises solution or as a managed-service by cloud service providers (CSP). Centralizing resources, applications and data into a single infrastructure allows for better IT management and security of vital resources and data which can help improve workforce productivity, data security and IT efficiencies.

Investigation overview

This blog details a recent technical investigation where popular video conferencing applications are deployed on AMD-based Azure instances to determine the performance of each application, the number of deployable users in a multi-session environment, and the user experience each person would receive. The AMD-based instances includes both CPU-only based instances and CPU+GPU based instances to understand the impact of GPU-enabled resources to the density and experience of the users.

So next let’s look at the various parameters for the investigation.  

The Lab: 

For the investigation, we had three areas of consideration: 

1) Azure session host	2) Application	3) End-point devices

 

 

Introduction

Over the last couple of years, there has been an impressive flux with many businesses and institutions adopting and relying on large-scale remote working and remote learning environments to maintain workforce and learning continuity. During this time, it’s generally been recognised that this type of remote working/learning has been quite successful, with many businesses and institutions continuing remoting working/learning practices or introducing hybrid models with a combination of remote and office work for their staff. 

One of the reasons why remote working/learning has been successful is the availability of supporting technologies that have delivered a high standard of human communication and engagement across large numbers of workers or students/faculty in remote environments. Video conferencing applications, which includes video conferencing, screen sharing, IMs and more, are such technologies that have contributed to viable remote working/learning environment success.  

But to use these applications to their fullest potential, a robust IT infrastructure is also a must. Many large enterprise companies, as well as SMB and other institutions have centralised their IT environment into virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), either as an on-premises solution or as a managed-service by cloud service providers (CSP). Centralizing resources, applications and data into a single infrastructure allows for better IT management and security of vital resources and data which can help improve workforce productivity, data security and IT efficiencies.

Investigation overview

This blog details a recent technical investigation where popular video conferencing applications are deployed on AMD-based Azure instances to determine the performance of each application, the number of deployable users in a multi-session environment, and the user experience each person would receive. The AMD-based instances includes both CPU-only based instances and CPU+GPU based instances to understand the impact of GPU-enabled resources to the density and experience of the users.

So next let’s look at the various parameters for the investigation.  

The Lab: 

For the investigation, we had three areas of consideration: 

1) Azure session host	2) Application	3) End-point devices

 

 

 

Introduction

Over the last couple of years, there has been an impressive flux with many businesses and institutions adopting and relying on large-scale remote working and remote learning environments to maintain workforce and learning continuity. During this time, it’s generally been recognised that this type of remote working/learning has been quite successful, with many businesses and institutions continuing remoting working/learning practices or introducing hybrid models with a combination of remote and office work for their staff. 

One of the reasons why remote working/learning has been successful is the availability of supporting technologies that have delivered a high standard of human communication and engagement across large numbers of workers or students/faculty in remote environments. Video conferencing applications, which includes video conferencing, screen sharing, IMs and more, are such technologies that have contributed to viable remote working/learning environment success.  

But to use these applications to their fullest potential, a robust IT infrastructure is also a must. Many large enterprise companies, as well as SMB and other institutions have centralised their IT environment into virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), either as an on-premises solution or as a managed-service by cloud service providers (CSP). Centralizing resources, applications and data into a single infrastructure allows for better IT management and security of vital resources and data which can help improve workforce productivity, data security and IT efficiencies.

Investigation overview

This blog details a recent technical investigation where popular video conferencing applications are deployed on AMD-based Azure instances to determine the performance of each application, the number of deployable users in a multi-session environment, and the user experience each person would receive. The AMD-based instances includes both CPU-only based instances and CPU+GPU based instances to understand the impact of GPU-enabled resources to the density and experience of the users.

So next let’s look at the various parameters for the investigation.  

The Lab: 

For the investigation, we had three areas of consideration: 

1) Azure session host	2) Application	3) End-point devices

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop 7 2112.

Important features are big improvement with HDX graphics (HDX 3D Pro), Screen sharing and much more.

Release 7 2112 is now available for download, 14th December, 2021.

Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktop 7 2112 is a CR release. Read more about CR here

Citrix Virtual Apps (former name: XenApp) Citrix Virtual Desktop (former name: XenDesktop)

Citrix raises the bar of for user experience and new product release of following technologies:

• Director 2112
• Citrix Licensing 11.17.2
• Virtual Delivery Agents 2112 for ServerOS and ClientOS
• Virtual Delivery Agent 2112 for Linux
• Citrix Federated Authentication Service 2112
• Citrix Provisioning 2112
• Profile Management 2112
• Workspace Environment Management 2112
• Session Recording 2112
• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop Service (December 2021)
• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop Standard for Azure (December 2021)
• Citrix Cloud Health Check
• Workspace App 2112 for Windows
• Workspace App 2112 for Linux
• Workspace App 2112 for Chrome
• Workspace App 2112 for Android
• Workspace App 2112 for MacOS
• Workspace App 2112 for HTML5
• Workspace App 2112 for ChromeOS

VMware have released a new version of VMware Horizon 8 (2111), and this release is general available from December 2021. This is a major release, so I hope you like this article I put together. VMware have made some huge improvements in this release, which customers/partners are going to benefit from. HINT If you are using Nvidia vGPU driver there is currently no supported driver from NVIDIA to VMware Horizon 8 2111. I have in this article also included the new features of Horizon Cloud service for 2111 IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure. Lets dig into what is new.

What is new in VMware Horizon 8 (2111)

VMware Horizon 8 2111 provides the following new features and enhancements

• VMware Horizon Connection Server
• VMware Horizon Agent for Linux
• VMware Horizon Agent for Windows
• VMware Horizon GPO Bundle
• VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 2111
• VMware Unified Access Gateway 2111
• VMware Horizon Clients 2111 for Android, Linux, iOS, Mac, Windows, HTML Access
• VMware Horizon Cloud services 2111