NVIDIA GRID 4.2 released (367.92/369.95)

Hi All

Its time to update your NVIDIA GRID K1, K2, M10, M6, M60 environment.

NVIDIA have released new drivers for NVIDIA GRID 4.2 for March 2017.

Citrix XenDesktop 7.11 and XenApp 7.11

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix XenDesktop 7.11 and XenApp 7.11 and is now available for download.

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

Virtual Delivery Agents 7.11 for ServerOS and ClientOS
AppDNA 7.11
Storefront 3.7
Provisioning Services 7.11
Profile Management 5.5
License Server 11.14
Citrix Receiver 15.0 for Windows
HDX RealTime Optimization Pack 2.1.1 for Microsoft Skype® for Busines
Citrix SCOM Management Bundle for XenApp and XenDesktop (2016_08_24)
Linux Virtual Delivery Agent 1.4
Tech preview for HTML5 redirection

This release is an important release no matter if you are working daily with Office application such as Excel, Word or Browsers and even highend applications such as CAD. The features in 7.11 have important improved user experience from the VDA to the Receiver that improves dramtically the user experience. NVIDIA NVENC technology is now part of VDA and supports even multiple monitors. The admin can now monitor RTT within Director this feature have been something I have asked for very long time and now finally its in the product, customer will love this new feature so its fast to see where the issue is in a infrastructure with which users that have latency issues. Version 7.11 is the release that fully supports Microsoft Windows Server 2016 that is soon GA, this means you can install Delivery components on Windows Server 2016, VDA on Server 2016, use Azure N-series with support for Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Discrete Device Assignment (DDA) or you can use it onpremises with Hyper-V. Support for UWP is HUGE and I am very excited about this technology and this also used in Microsoft Hololens so cant wait to a Receiver for hololens so you can publish UWP apps to Hololens 😉 Imagine that. I can keep going on with all these new features lets dig in below and learn whats new, its incredible that Citrix raises the bar and comes with huge improvements and they this each 3 months 🙂 yes each 3months, you read it correct. If you dont have a plan for this in your company I highly recommend you build a strategy on how you upgrade you Citrix environment frequently to get these awesome new features.

NVIDIA GRID vGPU 352.83-354.80

NVIDIA GRID – vGPU 352.83-354.80

Hi All

Its time to update your NVIDIA GRID K1, K2, M6, M60 environment.

NVIDIA have released new drivers that supports Windows 10 + fix several bugs.

If you want to test Server 2016 then the new Windows 10 drivers works, I have just tried and they work but they are not “certified” so test this with your own risk, please. Always test this in a test environment and this is not for production environments, unless you want to be early innovators 😉

#HINT – Windows 10 is not supported on Citrix XenServer 6.2 only on Citrix XenServer 6.5.
## HINT – Linux drivers are only available with Tesla M6, M60.

Whats new in vGPU 352.83-354.80

NVIDIA have released a new version of vGPU 352.83-354.80 for NVIDIA GRID 1.0 (K1, K2) GRID 2.0 Tesla M6 and Tesla M60 platform.

Included in this release is

NVIDIA GRID Virtual GPU Manager versions 352.83 for Citrix XenServer 6.5 SP1
NVIDIA GRID Virtual GPU Manager versions 352.83 for Citrix XenServer 6.2 SP1 with hotfixes XS62ESP1009 and XS62ESP1011
NVIDIA GRID Virtual GPU Manager version 352.83 for VMware vSphere 6.0 Hypervisor (ESXi)
NVIDIA Windows drivers for vGPU version 354.80
NVIDIA Linux drivers for vGPU version 352.83.

Important:

The GRID vGPU Manager and Windows guest VM drivers must be installed together. Older VM drivers will not function correctly with this release of GRID vGPU Manager. Similarly, older GRID vGPU Managers will not function correctly with this release of Windows guest drivers

Update existing vGPU GRID Manager (Hypervisor)

GRID vGPU Manager 352.83 upgrade for Citrix XenServer 6.2

If you have a NVIDIA GRID K1, K2 vGPU GRID manager installed in Citrix XenServer. Upgrade with below methodology:

Methodology 1 – the manual way “No GUI”

Upgrading an existing installation of the NVIDIA driver on Citrix XenServer 6.2, use the rpm -U command to upgrade:

If you have NVIDIA GRID K1 / K2

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-xenserver-6.2-352.83.i386.rpm 
Preparing packages for installation...

If you have NVIDIA GRID TESLA M6 / M60

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-6.2-352.83.i386.rpm 
Preparing packages for installation...

The recommendation from NVIDIA is to shutdown all VMs using a GPU. The machine does continue to work during the update, but since you need to reboot the XenServer itself, it’s better to gracefully shutdown the VMs. So after your VMs have been shutdown and you upgraded the NVIDIA driver, you can reboot your host.

[root@localhost ~]# xe host-disable
[root@localhost ~]# xe host-reboot

Validate from putty or XenCenter CLI

run lsmod | grep nvidia

Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:

Check driver version is 352.83, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

GRID vGPU Manager 352.83 for Citrix XenServer 6.5

If you have a NVIDIA GRID K1, K2, M6, M60 vGPU GRID manager installed in Citrix XenServer. Upgrade with one of below methodology:

Methodology 1 – the manual way “No GUI”

Upgrading an existing installation of the NVIDIA driver on Citrix XenServer 6.5, use the rpm -U command to upgrade:

If you have NVIDIA GRID K1 / K2

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64.rpm 
Preparing packages for installation...

If you have NVIDIA GRID TESLA M6 / M60

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64.rpm 
Preparing packages for installation...

[root@localhost ~]# xe host-disable
[root@localhost ~]# xe host-reboot

Methodology 2 – the “GUI” way

Select Install Update… from the Tools menu
 Click Next after going through the instructions on the Before You Start section
 Click Add on the Select Update section and open NVIDIA’s XenServer Supplemental Pack ISO

If you have NVIDIA GRID K1 / K2 select following file:

“NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64-supplemental-pack.tar.bz2 ”

If you have NVIDIA GRID K1 / K2 select following file:

“NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64-supplemental-pack.tar.bz2 ”

Click Next on the Select Update section
 In the Select Servers section select all the XenServer hosts on which the Supplemental Pack should be installed on and click Next
 Click Next on the Upload section once the Supplemental Pack has been uploaded to all the XenServer hosts
Getting Started
 Click Next on the Prechecks section
 Click Install Update on the Update Mode section
 Click Finish on the Install Update section

After the XenServer platform has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

Validate from putty or XenCenter CLI

run lsmod | grep nvidia

Check driver version is 352.83, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

GRID vGPU Manager 352.83 for VMware vSphere 6.x

To update the NVIDIA GPU VIB, you must uninstall the currently installed VIB and install the new VIB.

To uninstall the currently installed VIB:

Stop all virtual machines using 3D acceleration.
Place the ESXi host into Maintenance mode.
Open a command prompt on the ESXi host.
Stop the xorg service by running the command:/etc/init.d/xorg stop
Remove the NVIDIA VMkernel driver by running the command:vmkload_mod -u nvidia
Identify the NVIDIA VIB name by running this command:esxcli software vib list | grep NVIDIA
Remove the VIB by running the command:esxcli software vib remove -n nameofNVIDIAVIBYou can now install a new NVIDIA GPU VIB
Use the esxcli command to install the vGPU Manager package:

If you have NVIDIA GRID K1 / K2 select following file:

[root@lesxi ~] esxcli software vib install -v /NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-VMware_ESXi_6.0_Host_Driver_352.83-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585.vib

If you have NVIDIA GRID TESLA M6 / M60 select following file:

[root@lesxi ~] esxcli software vib install -v /NVIDIA-vGPU-VMware_ESXi_6.0_Host_Driver_352.83-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585.vib

After the ESXi host has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

[root@lesxi ~]# vmkload_mod -l | grep nvidia 
Preparing packages for installation...

Validate

run nvidia-smi

Check driver version is 352.83, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

Update existing vGPU Driver (Virtual Machine)

When the hypervisor vGPU GRID manager is updated next is updating the Virtual Machines vGPU.

Update your Golden Images and reprovisioning the new virtual machines with updated vGPU drivers, if you have stateless machines update vGPU drivers on each.

#HINT – Express upgrade of drivers is the recommended option according to the setup. If you use the “Custom” option, you will have the option to do a “clean” installation. The downside of the “clean installation” is that it will remove all profiles and custom settings. The pro of using the clean installation option is that it will reinstall the complete driver, meaning that there will be no old driver files left on the system. I most of the time recommends using a “Clean” installation to keep it vanilla 🙂

New driver functionality with 354.80

354.80_grid_win8_win7_64bit_international.exe
354.80_grid_win8_win7_international.exe
354.80_grid_win10_64bit_international.exe
354.80_grid_win10_international.exe
NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.83-grid.run

#1 Linux driver is not available with Citrix XenServer 6.2 or 6.5 and ESX for K1/K2. This is only available with GRID vGPU for M60

Linux support in only available with GRID Tesla M6 / M60

GRID vGPU with Linux guest VMs is supported on Tesla M60 and M6, with the following distributions:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6, 7
CentOS 6.6, 7
Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04 LTS

Source

GRID K1/K2 – sources

Download vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.2 for GRID K1 / K2 her

Download vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.5 for GRID K1 / K2 her

Download vGPU 352.83-354.80 for vSphere 6 for GRID K1 / K2 here

Tesla M6/M60 – sources

vGPU Grid Manager + Drivers are only available to customers and NVIDIA NPN partners.

Download if you are a NPN partner

Download if you are a GRID 2.0 customer

vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.2 for Tesla M6 / M60

vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.5 for Tesla M6 / M60

vGPU 352.83-354.80 for vSphere 6 for Tesla M6 / M60

For more information about the update from NVIDIA GRID – vGPU 352.83-354.80 contact me.

Citrix technology professional – CTP, and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional MVP, Thomas Poppelgaard provides professional services. Write to me on my email thomas@poppelgaard.com or call on my cell +45 53540356

Citrix XenDesktop 7.8 and Citrix XenApp 7.8

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix XenDesktop 7.8 and XenApp 7.8 and is now available for download.

Citrix raises the bar of for user experience and new product release for Storefront 3.5, Provisioning Services 7.8, Citrix Receiver 12.1.10 for Mac (OSX), License Server 11.13.1.2 for Windows, XenApp Secure Browser Deployment Kit, AppDNA 7.8, Session Recording 7.8.

This is WILD Citrix released 7.7 in 30th December 2015 with so many features and already two months after we got a major release out.. If you havent upgraded your 7.x environment 7.8 is worth a try.

HINT! – Remember first thing you do is downloading the new version of Citrix License Server 11.13.1.2 cause this is a requirement for below products to work.

Lets look at the build Citrix XenDesktop 7.8 and Citrix XenApp 7.8

The product release includes the following new and enhanced features.

AppDisks For more information, see the AppDisks article.
Enhanced support for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) App-V article.
Applications node in Studio For more information, see the Manage applications and Create Delivery Groups articles.
Updated Create Delivery Group wizard and Edit Delivery Group interface For more information, see the Create Delivery Groups and Manage applications articles.
Improved tag interface in Studio For more information, see the Tags article.
Requirements, installation, and configuration updates
Call Home Citrix Call Home performs periodic collections of your system and product configuration, plus performance, error, and other information. This information is sent to Citrix Insight Services for proactive analysis and resolution For details, see the Citrix Insight Services article.
Citrix Insight Services link available from within Director You can access Citrix Insight Services (CIS) from the User drop-down in Director to access additional diagnostic insights. The data available in CIS comes from sources including Call Home and Citrix Scout.
VMware SSL thumbprint The VMware SSL thumbprint feature addresses a frequently-reported error when creating a host connection to a VMware vSphere hypervisor. Previously, administrators had to manually create a trust relationship between the Delivery Controllers in the Site and the hypervisor’s certificate before creating a connection. The VMware SSL thumbprint feature removes that manual requirement: the untrusted certificate’s thumbprint is stored on the Site database so that the hypervisor can be continuously identified as trusted by XenApp and XenDesktop, even if not by the Controllers. When creating a vSphere host connection in Studio, a dialog box allows you to view the certificate of the machine you are connecting to. You can then choose whether to trust it.

Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) 7.8

Version 7.8 of the VDA for Server OS and the VDA for Desktop OS include the following enhancements:

App-V and Framehawk installer options. The VDA installers offer two additional items you can select on the Features page in the graphical interface or specify on the command line.

Framehawk. Opens UDP ports 3224-3324. Framehawk uses a bidirectional UDP port range (default is 3224-3324) to exchange Framehawk display channel data with Citrix Receiver. For more information, see Framehawk virtual channel.

Citrix App-V Publishing Components. Installs components required if you will use applications from Microsoft App-V packages. For more information, see App-V.

HDX 3D Pro product edition availability. HDX 3D Pro is now available in the VDA for Windows Desktop OS in all XenApp 7.8 and XenDesktop 7.8 product editions. In earlier releases, only certain product editions supported the 3D Pro VDA. HDX 3D Pro is not currently supported on Windows 10.
KACD .MSI file included in VDA packages. This file is included to support future customization of authentication. This file was not included with earlier releases.

HDX technologies

The following new and enhanced HDX technologies features are included in the VDAs:

Framehawk support for HDX 3D Pro VDI. HDX 3D Pro support for the Framehawk virtual channel is extended from XenApp to XenDesktop VDI. This gives users greater flexibility to view large CAD models while on the move on a corporate or public wireless network, or working from an offshore location over a high latency connection. For more information on Framehawk, see Framehawk virtual channel.
Framehawk server scalability improvements. Over 40% average reduction in memory footprint. Up to 20% increase in CPU efficiency.
Framehawk touch scrolling improvements. Over 50% improvement in bandwidth efficiency when scrolling via touch input. Significantly increased frame rate resulting in a smoother user experience.
GPU acceleration for DirectX windowed applications on Windows 10 VDAs. This release adds support for GPU acceleration for DirectX 10, 11 and 12 windowed applications on Windows 10 VDAs.
Thinwire Build to lossless enhancements. The Build to lossless visual quality for Thinwire has been updated to sharpen fuzzy imagery at a faster rate than delivered in XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6 FP3, and to improve lossy or lossless frame detection. For the main Thinwire article, see Thinwire Compatibility Mode.
Reduced VDA memory footprint in Thinwire. The graphics encoder processing pipeline now eliminates the use of an intermediate frame buffer when running Thinwire without video codec compression.
Clientname passthrough in double-hop sessions. Applications can use the updated WFAPI SDK to query the client endpoint name and pass this information from any Citrix Receiver to published desktops (XenApp/XenDesktop) and through to a XenApp application (a “double-hop”). This clientname awareness in the XenApp session means that users can seamlessly roam from location to location, and the “double-hop” application will be notified of the change in clientname without having to disconnect or reconnect the session. For more information on how to write conforming applications, see the WFAPI SDK documentation or defer to your application SI/ISV.

Session Recording 7.8

Session Recording 7.8.0 includes support for Platinum XenApp 7.8 and XenDesktop 7.8. This support includes:

Session recording support from a Desktop OS VDA. Record on-screen activity of a user session hosted from a Desktop OS VDA over any type of connection, subject to corporate policy and regulatory compliance.
Record sessions on remote PC. Support for recording sessions in Remote PC Access.
Delivery Group rules.
Keyword filtering during rule configuration.
Special handling for unsupported graphics modes.
Windows 10 support.
Thinwire Compatibility Mode support.

AppDNA 7.8

AppDNA 7.8 includes the following enhancements:

Provisioning 7.8

The folllowing new features are available with Provisioning Services 7.8:

Support for Hyper-V Generation II virtual machines
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) enhancements
Numerous fixes to customer-reported and internally identified issues

Generation 2 Virtual Machines

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Generation 2 VMs can be provisioned through Provisioning Services. Generation 2 VMs are optimized for modern workloads, that is, the operating system does not carry the overhead of legacy drivers, devices and x86 architectures.

How does it work?

Virtual machine (VM) generation determines the virtual hardware and functionality available to the VM. Within a Hyper-V environment, there are two types of supported VMs: generation 1 and generation 2. Generation 2 VMs possess a simplified virtual hardware model, and support Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware rather than BIOS-based firmware.

In previous versions of Hyper-V, only Generation 1 VMs were supported. With the introduction of Windows Server 2012 R2, there are two generations of VMs to choose from when you create a VM. With Generation 2 VMs,the following functionality was introduced:

PXE boot by using a standard network adapter
Boot from a SCSI virtual hard disk
Boot from a SCSI virtual DVD
Secure boot
UEFI firmware support

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) enhancements

This release of Provisioning Services provides continued hardening for UEFI support. UEFI represents a standard firmware interface for PCs, and is designed to replace BIOS (basic input/output system). With these enhancements, Citirx Provisioning Services provides:

improved security by helping to protect the pre-boot process against bootkit attacks.
support for larger disk drives (greater than 2.2 terabytes).
support for modern, 64-bit firmware device drivers which can be used to leverage large amounts of memory during startup.
the capability to use BIOS with modern UEFI hardware.

StoreFront 3.5

What’s new in the StoreFront 3.5

StoreFront includes the following new features and enhancements.

Updated StoreFront management console – The StoreFront management console contains a significant number of changes, which enable:

Store-centric console architecture – Authentication and Citrix Receiver for Web settings are organized around stores to simplify navigation for multi-store deployment.
Different authentication settings for different stores.
Configuring delegation of authentication to XenApp or XenDesktop farms or sites.
Configuring multi-site high availability.
Configuring optimal NetScaler Gateway routing.
Setting a Receiver for Web site as the default site in IIS.
Configuring many other settings previously done with web.config.

New administration PowerShell SDK:

Cmdlets in the new SDK are prefixed with STF and focus on administration tasks grouped around StoreFront deployment-wide configuration, stores, authentication, and Citrix Receiver for Web.
Citrix XenDesktop 7.8 and Citrix XenApp 7.8 provides high-level example scripts to enable you to script and automate StoreFront deployments quickly and easily.

The existing cmdlets prefixed with DS are deprecated. They are still available and supported in StoreFront 3.5 to enable a gradual transition to the new SDK.

Configuration export and import:

You can export the entire configuration of a StoreFront deployment. You can import the exported configuration to a deployment with the same StoreFront version for restoration or replication.

Self-service password reset (SSPR):

Users can unlock their Active Directory accounts or reset their passwords using StoreFront. This requires XenApp 6.5.

Zone-based optimal gateway routing:

XenApp 7.7 and 7.8 and XenDesktop 7.7 and 7.8 support applications or desktops from different zones in a single site. You can configure a different NetScaler Gateway for HDX connections to applications or desktops from a different zone.

Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) powered zone preference:

You can configure GSLB in NetScaler 11.0-65.x and above to supply zone preference information to StoreFront. Along with this feature, you can configure StoreFront to direct the startrequests to the most preferred XenApp or XenDesktop farms or sites for the user location.

Background Server Health Check:

StoreFront runs periodic health checks on each Citrix XenDesktop 7.8 and Citrix XenApp 7.8 broker to reduce the impact of intermittent server availability. You can control the frequency of the health check.

TLS 1.2 support

This StoreFront release supports TLS 1.2.

Source

Download Citrix XenDesktop 7.8 and Citrix XenApp 7.8 here and all the above medias included in the product release. (requires MyCitrix ID)

DEVELOP3D LIVE, Warwick, 31March 2016

Hi all, if you are looking for an event that is all about CAD, CAM, CAE, PLM, Rendering, 3D technologies, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 3D printing then is FREE!! then DEVELOP3D LIVE is the event to join. Rachel Berry opened my eyes going there last year 2015 and she made me come all the way from Denmark to Warwick and it was worth the long trip 🙂 If you are looking for travel advice Hotels and such I recommend you read Rachel Berry blogpost, I use myself Kayak.com 🙂 that always saves my life when i am traveling around the world and if you want it cheap use Airbnb.com.

My things learned from DEVELOP3D LIVE 2015

I went there and had high expectations and I was in for a surprise. It was all about above and much more I saw for the first time Carl Bass the CEO of Autodesk, Gian Paolo Bassi the CEO of SolidWorks, Jon Hirschtick the CEO of Onshore and the founder of SolidWorks, Nikola Bozinovic the Founder and CEO of FRAME, and many many more.

I got my hands on the HP Zvr for the second time, I saw the unit for the first time at NVIDIA GTC in 2013 and HP have acquired the company. I also saw another favorite Augmented Device the HP Sprout, which is an amazing unit. 3Dconnexion was off course also there so all my favorite CAD peripherals and next gen tools.

Below is the picture of Carl Bass CEO of Autodesk talking at DEVELOP3D LIVE last year and Rachel Berry trying Fra.me solution

Meet the Speakers of DEVELOP3D LIVE 2016

I am looking very much forward meeting a good friend of mine Adam Jull from IMSCAD Global.
Adam and his team have been early adapters of HDX 3D Pro like myself, so its great to see a pioneer talking at Develop3DLive.

I am also looking very much forward meeting the NVIDIA team + my favorite CAD genius Rachel Berry and also see if AMD have something interesting to show like the Multiuser gpu if its ready for that time.

Get your ticket for free here for joining the awesome CAD event in beautiful Warwick. If you never been to UK well this is your reason to go, learn from the best and brightest people on CAD and see the beautiful country side of England. Two awesome things.