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Microsoft Windows Server 2016 TP4

Windows Server 2016 -
Windows Server 2016 Released

Microsoft have released Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4.

I am really excited about this release cause now Microsoft RemoteFX have added support for OpenGL and OpenCL with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) previously Microsoft RemoteFX only supported DirectX.

RemoteFX technology works with GPU vendors such as NVIDIA, INTEL and AMD

 

Whats new in Windows Server 2016 TP4

What’s New in Microsoft Nano Server.  Microsoft Nano Server now supports the DNS Server and IIS server roles, as well as MPIO, VMM, SCOM, DSC push mode, DCB, Windows Server Installer, and the WMI provider for Windows Update. Its Recovery Console supports editing and repairing the network configuration. A Windows PowerShell module is now available to simplify building Microsoft Nano Server images.

  • Windows Containers: Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview now includes containers, which allow many isolated applications to run on one computer system. They build fast and are highly scalable and portable. Two different types of container runtime are included with the feature, each with a different degree of application isolation. Windows Server Containers achieve isolation through namespace and process isolation. Hyper-V Containers encapsulates each container in a light weight virtual machine. For some additional information on containers, see Containers: Docker, Windows and Trends.
  • What’s new in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in Windows Server Technical Preview. Active Directory Domain Services includes improvements to help organizations secure Active Directory environments and provide better identity management experiences for both corporate and personal devices.
  • What’s New in Active Directory Federation Services. Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview includes new features that enable you to configure AD FS to authenticate users stored in Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directories. For more information, see Active Directory Federation Services Overview [Role/Tech Overview].
  • What’s New in Failover Clustering in Windows Server Technical Preview. This topic explains the new and changed functionality of Failover Clustering. A Hyper-V or Scale-out File Server failover cluster can now easily be upgraded without any downtime or need to build a new cluster with nodes that are running Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview.
  • What’s new in Hyper-V on Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview. This topic explains the new and changed functionality of the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, Client Hyper-V running on Windows 10, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server Technical Preview.
  • Windows Defender Overview for Windows Server Technical Preview. Windows Server Antimalware is installed and enabled by default in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, but the user interface for Windows Server Antimalware is not installed. However, Windows Server Antimalware will update antimalware definitions and protect the computer without the user interface. If you need the user interface for Windows Server Antimalware, you can install it after the operating system installation by using the Add Roles and Features Wizard.
  • What’s New in Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2016. For the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, the Remote Desktop Services team focused on improvements based on customer requests. We added support for OpenGL and OpenCL applications, and added MultiPoint Services as a new role in Windows Server.
  • What’s New in File and Storage Services in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview. This topic explains the new and changed functionality of Storage Services. An update in storage quality of service now enables you to create storage QoS policies on a Scale-Out File Server and assign them to one or more virtual disks on Hyper-V virtual machines. Storage Replica is a new feature that enables synchronous replication between servers for disaster recovery, as well as stretching of a failover cluster for high availability..
  • What’s New in Web Application Proxy in Windows Server Technical Preview. The latest version of Web Application Proxy focuses on new features that enable publishing and preauthentication for more applications and improved user experience. Check out the full list of new features that includes preauthentication for rich client apps such as Exchange ActiveSync and wildcard domains for easier publishing of SharePoint apps.
  • What’s new in the Windows console. The underlying console host (Conhost.exe) has been updated in several ways, adding new and different functionality to the Windows command prompt, the Windows PowerShell prompt, and any other character-mode applications. For details, see What’s New in the Windows Console in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview and Console Improvements in the Windows 10 Technical Preview , but you should take note of these important changes:
    • The new console functionality is enabled by default. If an existing application doesn’t work properly with the new console, you can select Use legacy console on the Options tab and then restart your application. You can also control individual aspects of the new functionality with registry keys; see details at the linked topics.
    • Console windows can be resized dynamically with the mouse. This could cause issues with some console applications.
    • Quick Edit mode is enabled by default. If this conflicts with your application, you can disable it on the Options tab.
    • There are new keyboard shortcuts for copy, paste, and history navigation. If these conflict with your application, you can disable them on the Options tab (look for Enable CTRL key shortcuts and Extended test selection keys).
    • The default font type for new console windows is TrueType. You can still use raster fonts, but they won’t scale properly on some displays.
    • Text wraps and reflows by default when you resize a window. If necessary, you can disable this on the Layouts tab.
    • In some cases, after upgrade installation, fonts in the console window might be very small. To adjust this, use the Fonts tab.
  • What’s New in Windows PowerShell 5.0. Windows PowerShell 5.0 includes significant new features—including support for developing with classes, and new security features—that extend its use, improve its usability, and allow you to control and manage Windows-based environments more easily and comprehensively. Multiple new features in Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) are also described in this topic.
  • What’s New in Networking in Windows Server Technical Preview. The majority of what you’ll find for networking is new in TP3. We bring a scalable network controller for programming policies, an L4 load balancer for high availability and performance, enhanced gateways for hybrid connectivity, and an underlying network fabric that converges RDMA traffic together with tenant traffic, DNS policies that control how your DNS servers respond to incoming requests, and better integration of DNS and IPAM.

 

Source

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn765472.aspx

Download Microsoft Windows Server 2016 TP4

Professional Services:

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

AutoCAD mouse pointer issues with Citrix XenApp 7.6

Citrix have released a limited hotfix for Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 and XenApp 7.6 that fixes an issue with Autodesk AutoCAD & AutoCAD Civil 3D where the  mouse pointer permanently displays as an hour glass. By applying this hotfix this fixes the issue for AutoCAD.

Source

Download the ICATS760WX64039 – For VDA Core Services 7.6 for Windows Server OS (64-bit) for Citrix XenApp 7.6 here

 

 

NVIDIA GRID 2.0 integrated in Microsoft Azure

AzureConHeader

NVIDIA GRID 2.0 integrated in Microsoft Azure

At Microsoft Azurecon 2015, NVIDIA announced that Microsoft will offer NVIDIA GPU-enabled professional graphics applications and accelerated computing capabilities to customers worldwide through its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.

Deploying the latest version of NVIDIA GRID™ in its new N-Series virtual machine offering, Azure is the first cloud computing platform to provide GRID 2.0 virtualized graphics for enterprise customers.

nvidia in azurecustomized-experience

For the first time, businesses will have the ability to deploy NVIDIA Quadro® grade professional graphics applications and accelerated computing on-premises, in the cloud through Azure, or via a hybrid of the two using both Windows and Linux virtual machines. Azure will also offer customers supercomputing-class performance, with the addition of the Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform’s flagship Tesla® K80 GPU accelerators, for the most computationally demanding data center and high performance computing (HPC) applications.

Unprecedented Virtualized Graphics Performance

With NVIDIA GRID enterprises can deliver graphics intensive applications from companies such as Autodesk, ESRI and Siemens from the cloud to their users. Announced last month, NVIDIA GRID 2.0 provides the NVIDIA Quadro GPU driver support, features and performance that graphics-intensive applications require, as well as other enhancements including double the application performance of the previous generation of GRID GPUs and Linux OS support.

Supercomputing in the Cloud

The Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform is designed from the ground up for power-efficient, high performance computing (HPC), computational science, supercomputing, data analytics and deep learning applications.

Powering some of the world’s highest performance supercomputers, the Tesla platform delivers dramatically higher performance and energy efficiency than a CPU-only approach and unprecedented application throughput in the data center.

By deploying the Tesla K80 GPU accelerator in its N-Series virtual machines, Azure dramatically expands access to supercomputing-class performance, enabling enterprises worldwide to accelerate their most demanding workloads, without requiring them to invest in, build and maintain dedicated computing resources.

Azure N-series, a new family of Azure Virtual Machines 

Available in preview within the next few months, the N-series will feature the NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform as well as NVIDIA GRID 2.0 technology, providing the highest-end graphics support available in the cloud today.

azure

Source

NVIDIA

Microsoft

 

Mozilla Firefox 40.x Blocks GPU Acceleration for WebGL, Direct2D, DirectWrite with Citrix XenApp on Windows 2008R2/2012/2012R2

Mozilla Firefox 40.x Blocks GPU Acceleration for WebGL, Direct2D, DirectWrite with Citrix XenApp on Windows 2008R2/2012/2012R2

One of the great things about adding a GPU in a Citrix XenApp environment is that you can allow rich graphics and offload CPU and run your DirectX, OpenGL  applications on a XenApp server. In latest version of Mozilla Firefox WebGL, Direct2D, DirectWrite this have been disabled, so you can’t open webpages that uses these graphics in a Citrix XenApp session.

Symptoms or Error

If you open Mozilla Firefox 40.x and try to open a webGL website like http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water
this will not load anymore cause WebGL is default now disabled in Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox 40.x  blocks GPU acceleration for WebGL, Direct2D, DirectWrite in remote sessions on Windows Server operating systems.

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To determine what content Firefox is blocking, run Firefox in your XenApp remote session and enter the address about:support into the browser address bar. In the section labelled “Graphics” you will see the following content disabled (as of Firefox version 40.0.3):

Direct2D Enabled             Blocked for your graphics card because of unresolved driver issues.
DirectWrite Enabled         false (6.3.9600.17999)
WebGL Renderer             Blocked for your graphics card because of unresolved driver issues.

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Solution

The text “Blocked for your graphics card” is misleading as, in this case, it is not the specific graphics card but general Windows Server operating system remote sessions that are blocked. Mozilla’s published advice on how to override the graphics driver blocks also applies to XenApp sessions on workstation operating system (see bottom of this Mozilla Wiki – Blocklisting/Blocked Graphics Drivers).

Enable WebGL in Mozilla Firefox

In Mozilla Firefox entering the address about:config into the address bar and setting webgl.force-enabled=true will enable WebGL for XenApp on operating system (Server 2008R2/2012/2012R2)

webgl

 

You can double click on it and then it will become enabled. (with the value=true) and this is user set.
These settings can be change with a policy or with profile management such as RES Workspace Manager or others.

webgl-working

Now you can open the WebGL demo and the graphics will work

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Enable DirectDraw2D

In Mozilla Firefox entering the address about:config into the address bar and setting gfx.direct2d.force-enabled=true will enable WebGL for XenApp on operating system (Server 2008R2/2012/2012R2)

direct2d

You can double click on it and then it will become enabled. (with the value=true) and this is user set.
These settings can be change with a policy or with profile management such as RES Workspace Manager or others.

direct2d-working

Enable DirectDraw2D

In Mozilla Firefox entering the address about:config into the address bar and setting gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled=true will enable DirectWrite for XenApp on operating system (Server 2008R2/2012/2012R2)

directwrite

You can double click on it and then it will become enabled. (with the value=true) and this is user set.
These settings can be change with a policy or with profile management such as RES Workspace Manager or others.

directwrite-working

Users should be aware and note the caveats and warnings that Mozilla advises if taking this route to above settings for DirectWrite, Direct2D, WebGL

This issue only affects server operating system (example – Win 2012 R2 and Win 2008 R2) and XenApp.

How to force-enable blocked graphics features

If you would like to forcibly enable a graphics feature that is blocked on your system, follow these instructions. Warning: do this at your own risk. There usually are good reasons why features are blocked.

To force-enable WebGL, go to about:config and set webgl.force-enabled=true.

To force-enable WebGL anti-aliasing, go to about:config and set webgl.msaa-force=true.

To force-enable Layers Acceleration, go to about:config and set layers.acceleration.force-enabled=true.

On Windows Vista and Windows 7, to force-enable Direct2D Content Acceleration, go to about:config and set gfx.direct2d.force-enabled=true.

On Android, to force-enable StageFright software decoding, go to about:config and set stagefright.force-enabled=true.

On Windows, you can also spoof your graphics system information to help debug driver blacklisting issues (see bug 604771):

  1. Create spoofed-firefox.bat in the installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox)
  2. Set the new values of spoofed variables ending with a command to launch Firefox:
    SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_WINDOWS_VERSION=60001
    SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_VENDOR_ID=0x8086
    SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_DEVICE_ID=0x0046
    SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_DRIVER_VERSION=8.15.10.2302
    “C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -p -no-remote
  3. Double-click spoofed-firefox.bat and create a profile if required
  4. Click the Firefox button, then select Help, finally Troubleshooting Information and check the Graphics section.

If force-enabling a feature doesn’t work, that probably means that your hardware doesn’t support it. For example, layers acceleration currently requires support for 4Kx4K textures, which rules out some graphics cards, like the Intel G31/G33.

Source

Firefox article

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX202065 (credits to Rachel Berry for writing this CTX article)

Another great blogpost to read about this subject is my friend / CTP fellow Barry Schiffer http://www.barryschiffer.com/citrix-hdx-3d-pro-and-nvidia-grid-browser-experience/ He was the guy who wrote a great blogpost with some very interesting results on performance tuning Mozilla Firefox in a XenApp/XenDesktop session.

 

NVIDIA GRID 2.0

Nvidia grid 2.0 2x

NVIDIA GRID 2.0

NVIDIA have released the next generation of GRID 2.0. GRID 2.0 is based on the Maxwell architecture and the GRID 1.0 (K1/K2) was based on the Kepler architecture. I have been working with the GRID 1.0 technology since 2012 and it have matured alot in its 2 years of history. When the K1/K2 was released they was first working with GPU pass-through and then vGPU got introduced and you could virtualize the GPUs and increase density, which people wanted. Citrix was with their hypervisor the first company that supported NVIDIA GRID 1.0 and they was also the first company integrating vGPU into their Citrix Studio, so companies could easier provisioning machines with either MCS technology or PVS technology. VMware supported GRID 1.0 vGPU technology in 2015 in their hypervisor VMware vSphere 6.0 and fully integrated with their EUC stack VMware View, so companies can fully provisioning machines. The great thing about GRID 2.0 is that there is no need for a conversation when to choose either a K1 or a K2, if you required GPU compute or GPU framebuffer, M60 are being added to the tope end of the range  and bringing 2x the performance, and if you have bladeserver’s, you can add the powerfull vGPU technology into the bladeserver’s with the M6.

Please notice that M6 will 0nly be supporting newer architecture of vendors not old platforms.

Maxwell architecture

Maxwell architecture is the new architecture of GPUs and a powerful GPU you might know is the Titan X

New GPUs GRID 2.0 and specifications

In GRID 2.0 NVIDIA now have a GPU for blade servers a MXM single socket, High-end GPU called M6

In GRID 2.0 NVIDIA replaces K1/K2 with the new PCIe 3.0 Dual Socket, Dual High-end GPU called M60
The M60 delivers 4096 CUDA or compute and 16GB GDDR5 memory/framebuffer

The M60 has 6x the h.264 encoders of the K2, and also Maxwell supports 4:4:4 chroma sub sampling, which is great news for encoders.

maxwell_grid

Certified GRID 2.0 servers

Click the link to see which servers are certified for M60 and M6
http://www.nvidia.com/object/grid-certified-servers.html

M6 have following servers supported:

m6 certifiedM60 have following servers supported:

m60 certificed

vGPU software editions and license

nvidiagrid20licensemodel

NVIDIA GRID 2.0 software is available in three editions that deliver accelerated virtual desktops to support the needs of your users. These editions include Virtual PC, Virtual Workstation, and Virtual Workstation Extended. GRID perpetual licenses are sold by Concurrent User (CCU).

NVIDIA GRID 2.0 (CCU) stands for ConCurrent User. So basically, per running VM as regardless of whether the user is connected to the VM or not, the VM is connected to the GPU and so consumes a license

NVIDIA GRID 2.0 software is much more than a “driver”. While the software package does include a guest driver for Windows and Linux, it also includes the NVIDIA GRID vGPU manager for VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer, as well as the license server and M6/M60 mode switching utility.

NVIDIA Tesla M6 and M60 profiles are specific to the M6 and M60. There will be similar profiles as to what NVIDIA had on K1 and K2 (512 MB through 4 GB), all with twice the number of users on M6/ M60 compared to K1/K2. Plus, there is an additional 8 GB profile on M6/M60 which also adds support for CUDA, which wasn’t available on K1/K2.

NVIDIA GRID 2.0 is Maxwell only. If you are an existing customer K1/K2 are unchanged and will remain as a parallel option.

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nvidiagrid20licensemodel 3

The NVIDIA GRID 2.0 solution

nvidiagrid20

Summary

GA of NVIDIA GRID 2.0 (M60 and M6) will be 15 September 2015.

To get NVIDIA GRID 2.0 if you are a Citrix customer you need:
Server hardware that supports NVIDIA GRID 2.0 +NVIDIA GPU M60 or M6 + NVIDIA vGPU Software license + Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp License (XenServer is included in XD/XA licenses)

To get NVIDIA GRID 2.0 if you are a VMware customer you need:
Server hardware that supports NVIDIA GRID 2.0 +NVIDIA GPU M60 or M6  + NVIDIA vGPU Software license + VMware Horizon license (Horizon includes vSphere for Desktop)

If you are a Citrix customer that wants to run on VMware vSphere you need:

Server hardware that supports NVIDIA GRID 2.0 + NVIDIA GPU M60 or M6 + NVIDIA vGPU Software license + Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp License + VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus license or vSphere for Desktop license

Source

NVIDIA GRID Test Drive

NVIDIA GRID Website

NVIDIA GRID News

NVIDIA GRID YouTube Channel

Questions? Ask on our Forums

NVIDIA GRID on LinkedIn

Follow NVIDIAGRID on Twitter

Citrix License FAQ regarding vGPU 

Vmware License FAQ regarding vGPU