Citrix Hypervisor 8.1

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix Hypervisor 8.1 (aka XenServer)

I am very excited about this release because now Citrix is supporting the new AMD latest Rome CPU and support multiple NVIDIA vGPU and guest UEFI secure boot. The Citrix Hypervisor platform has been updated to use Xen hypervisor version 4.13. Lots of new features 🙂

What is new in Citrix Hypervisor 8.1

Citrix Hypervisor 8.1 provides the following new features and enhancements

Guest UEFI boot and Secure Boot
Multiple vGPU
Citrix Hypervisor – Performance improvements
Changes to guest operating system support
Changes to processor support
Citrix Hypervisor Conversion Manager console capabilities are now included in XenCenter
Update to Xen hypervisor
PVS accelerator optimised for Citrix Hypervisor 8.1

Citrix Hypervisor 8.1 is a Current Release (CR). The Current Release model allows customers to consume new features at the earliest possible juncture. A Current Release contrasts with the Long Term Service Release (XenServer 7.1 LTSR), which guarantees stability in terms of the feature set.

Citrix Hypervisor 8.1 is available in the following editions:

Premium Edition (previously Enterprise Edition)
Standard Edition
Express Edition (previously Free Edition)

VMware Horizon 7.11

VMware have released a new version of VMware Horizon 7.11, and this release is for now general available from 13th December 2019. 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 (on-prem) I highly recommend you upgrade to NVIDIA vGPU 10, when this is released it will be supporting VMware Horizon 7.11. I have in this article also included the new features of Horizon Cloud service for IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure.

One of the great things I saw in this release is that VMware Horizon the new HW encoder supports five or more monitors. Lets dig into what is new.

What is new in VMware Horizon 7.11

VMware Horizon 7.11 provides the following new features and enhancements

VMware Horizon Connection Server On-Premises
VMware Horizon Agent for Linux
VMware Horizon Agent for Windows
VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 9.10 (former VUEM)
VMware Unified Access Gateway 3.8
VMware Horizon Clients 5.3 for Android, Chrome, Linux, iOS, Mac, Windows, UWP, HTML Access

VMware Horizon Cloud services:

VMware Horizon Cloud Service 2.2 (Azure, AWS, On-prem)
VMware Horizon Cloud Service on IBM Cloud 19.3

Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktop 7 1909

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop 7 1909.

Release is now available for download, September 19, 2019.

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 1909
Virtual Delivery Agents 1909 for ServerOS and ClientOS
Virtual Delivery Agent 1909 for Linux
Citrix Licensing 11.16
Citrix Federated Authentication Service 1909
Storefront 1909
Provisioning 1909
Profile Management 1909
Workspace Environment Management 1909
Session Recording 1909
Workspace App 1909 for Linux
Workspace App 1909 for Chrome
Workspace App 1909 for Android
Workspace App 1909 for HTML5
Workspace App 1909 for ChromeOS

VMware Horizon 7.10

VMware have released a new version of VMware Horizon 7.10, and this release is for now general available from 17th September 2019.

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.

VMware Horizon 7.10 is now supporting the new NVIDIA RTX GPU’s (RTX6000, RTX8000) HINT – If you are using Nvidia vGPU (on-prem) I highly recommend you upgrade to vGPU 9.1 and Horizon 7.10 and vSphere 6.7CU3.

I have in this article also included the new features of Horizon Cloud service for IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure.

Vmware Horizon 7.10 have a big update to Blast Extreme, it have a new Adaptive Codec, which replaces JPEG/PNG codec, I am excited to learn more about this and how this can benefits customers and hopefully RDanalyzer.com guys also gets this into their client so we can better understand what’s happening inside the protocol from a user perspective.

Vmware also have a new Codec switching which automatically switches codec based on screen content: I can see a big value for end users with this new feature and this will make experience even better with VMware Horizon.

VMware Horizon 7.10 is a Extended Service Branch (ESB) release, VMware Horizon 7.10 supports now VMware Skyline Log Assist for better logging and analysis.

VMware also made this great video of what’s new

Now, lets dig into what’s new in this major release.

What is new in VMware Horizon 7.10

VMware Horizon 7.10 provides the following new features and enhancements

VMware Horizon Connection Server On-Premises
VMware Horizon Agent for Linux
VMware Horizon Agent for Windows
VMware Horizon GPO Bundle
VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 9.9 (former VUEM)
VMware Unified Access Gateway 3.7
VMware AppVolume 2.18
VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.6
VMware Horizon Clients 5.2 for Android, Chrome, Linux, iOS, Mac, Windows, UWP, HTML Access

VMware Horizon Cloud services:

VMware Horizon Cloud Service 2.1 (Azure, AWS, On-prem)
VMware Horizon Cloud Service on IBM Cloud 19.3

NVIDIA vGPU Software v 9.1

Hi All

Its time to plan updating your NVIDIA TESLA M6, M10, M60, P4, P6, P40, P100, V100, T4, RTX6000, RTX8000 with NVIDIA vGPU software 9.1.

NVIDIA have released new drivers for vGPU 9.1. This new-feature branch is supported until June 2020.

I have in this article also included which Public Cloud instance is available with NVIDIA GPUs and which license is BYO or provided by the public cloud provider such as Alibaba, Azure, AWS, GCP, Alibaba.

For a list of validated server platforms, refer to NVIDIA vGPU Certified Servers.

Important:

Citrix XenServer 7.0, 7.1 is not supported with NVIDIA Tesla T4
NVIDIA vGPU 9.0 is supported with VMware Horizon 7.9 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0, 6.2
NVIDIA vGPU 9.0 is only supported with Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops 7.15, 7.18, 7 1903, 7 1906 in HDX 3D Pro mode
If you are a customer using XenServer 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 its no longer supported with NVIDIA vGPU 9.1 and should plan upgrading to XenServer 7.6 or Citrix Hypervisor 8.0

This release includes the following software:

NVIDIA vGPU Manager version 430.46 for the Citrix Hypervisor, VMware vSphere, RHEL KVM, Nutanix AHV
NVIDIA Windows driver version 431.79
NVIDIA Linux driver version 430.46

New Features in Release 9.1

Starting with release 6.7 U3, the assignment of multiple vGPUs to a single VM is supported.
Support for NVIDIA vComputeServer vGPUs on the following GPUs:
- Quadro RTX 6000
- Quadro RTX 8000
Security updates
Miscellaneous bug fixes

Hardware and Software Support Introduced in Release 9.1

Support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops version 7 1906

Following bugfixes are solved in vGPU 9.1

Bug ID	Summary and Description
200526633	9.0 only: VM crashes after the volatile ECC error count is reset After the command nvidia-smi -p 0 is run from a guest VM to reset the volatile ECC error count, the VM crashes.
200525006	9.0 only: Incorrect ECC error counts are reported for vGPUs on some GPUs Incorrect ECC error counts are reported for vGPUs on some GPUs when the command nvidia-smi -q is run from a guest VM.
200524555	9.0 only: On Linux VMs, the license directory is not deleted when the guest driver is uninstalled On Linux guest VMs, the license directory /etc/nvidia/license is not deleted when the NVIDIA vGPU softwaregraphics driver is uninstalled.
200524348	9.0 only: nvidia-smi shows the incorrect ECC state for a vGPU nvidia-smi vgpu -q shows the incorrect ECC state of a vGPU when ECC is enabled on the physical GPU but disabled on the vGPU from the vGPU VM. This issue occurs because data for the physical GPU host is not being reset and is being reused even after reboot.
200522255	9.0 only: No vComputeServer option available in NVIDIA X Server Settings The vComputeServer option is missing from the Manage License section in the NVIDIA X Server Settings window.
200434909	9.0 only: Users’ view sessions may become corrupted after migration When a VM configured with vGPU under heavy load is migrated to another host, users’ view sessions may become corrupted after the migration.