Transforming BIM to Remote Workspaces with HPE Edgeline, NVIDIA and VMware

HPE Edgeline BIM/Engineering Workstation – Overview

The new offerings have new enhanced GPU capability with the HPE Proliant m750 and providing a dedicated GPU from NVIDIA more specific the NVIDIA P1000 or NVIDIA T4. The solution requires no hypervisors and lowers complexity while enabling the mobility of users and enhancing user experience. This solution is designed to meet the requirements of power users such as designers, architects and visualizers that require high performance with reduced physical footprint, and targeted towards 1-499 users.

Challenges with CAD workstations today

Engineers are chained to desk
Not flexible with getting compute as they need
No scalable solution
Data requires to be copy down from network locations and can take long time
Data requires to be modified quickly and takes long time with synchronising−Engineers can’t work on any device

Transforming high end workspace to current working style

Benefits of replacing physically BIM workstations with HPE remote workstations.

Move physically workstation to a central location and unchain engineers for their desk
Work from Home−Centralizing compute
Benefit of a scalable GPU solution
Benefit from central datacenter performance accessing the CAD/BIM files
IT Security and IP Protection
Providing mobility to work from any device such as tablet
Providing engineers/designers a great dedicated and guaranteed user experience

Expanding the bare metal VDI family

HPE now have 3 hardware solutions and its 3 different form factors.

HPE Moonshot 1500
HPE Edgeline EL4000
HPE Edgeline EL8000 / EL8000t

HPE now supports VMware Horizon on all Moonshot/Edgeline solutions with bare metal but also running virtualised with VMware ESX & VMware Horizon.

I am proud to share that I was interviewed as part of HPE announcement of the new Bare Metal VDI for Engineering & BIM workstations; see the above video where you can see the new HPE Moonshot/Edgeline offerings and also a customer sharing their experience.

VMware Horizon supporting Bare Metal

VMware has been supporting bare metal setup for a while actually let’s dig into the facts.

VMware Horizon RDSH has been supporting Bare metal since Horizon 6, which is 6.5 years.
VMware PCoIP has been supporting +10years with host card for bare metal
VMware Blast for VDI has been supporting Bare metal for the last 2 years and have been supporting Windows 1803 or 1809.

The big news is that as of today, officially, HPE is supporting VMware Horizon on bare metal in HPE Moonshot and Edgeline. It used to be only Citrix that was positioned the last 7 years and this changes today, which I am really excited about as the platform becomes more open as it should and can benefit customers in the world.

HPE Edgeline and VMware Horizon 8 Architecture

Let’s dig in to the architecture.

HPE Edgeline and VMware Horizon show in the below picture you can use VMware Horizon cloud, but it’s also fully supported with onprem VMware Horizon infrastructure if you have a requirement for that. You can use a thin client from HP T740 which is the best hardware thin client on the market that also can decode multiple 4K monitors without any user experience gets impacted. The great thing about below archictecture is you can have 4 physical workstation’s in 1U centralised in your datacenter or edge location without compromising user experience with virtualising. The power of bare metal is you get exactly what the hardware can deliver. Now that said, if you wanna virtualise below hardware, you can do that with no issues and it is fully supported as well.

VMware Horizon 8

VMware have released a new version of VMware Horizon 8 (2006), and this release is for now general available from August 2020. 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 11, as this is supporting VMware Horizon 8 (2006). I have in this article also included the new features of Horizon Cloud service for IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure. Lets dig into what is new.

What is new in VMware Horizon 8

VMware Horizon 8 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 2006
VMware Unified Access Gateway 3.10
VMware Horizon Clients 2006 for Android, Linux, iOS, Mac, Windows, HTML Access

VMware Horizon Cloud services:

VMware Horizon Cloud Service v3 (Azure, AWS, On-prem)

NVIDIA vGPU Software v 10.0

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 10.0. NVIDIA have released new drivers for vGPU 10.0.

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 10.0 is supported with VMware Horizon 7.11, 7.10, 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0, 6.2
NVIDIA vGPU 10.0 is only supported with Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops 7.15, 7 1808, 7 1903, 7 1906, 7 1909, 7 1912 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 10.0 and should plan upgrading to Citrix Hypervisor 8.1

This release includes the following software:

NVIDIA vGPU Manager version 440.43 for the Citrix Hypervisor, VMware vSphere, RHEL KVM, Nutanix AHV
NVIDIA Windows driver version 441.66
NVIDIA Linux driver version 440.43

New Features in Release 10.0

Support for NVIDIA^® GRID™ Virtual PC and GRID Virtual Applications on Quadro RTX 6000 and Quadro RTX 8000 GPUs
Increase in the maximum number of virtual display heads supported by -1Q, -2B, and -1B4 vGPUs:
- All -1Q vGPUs now support 4 heads instead of 2 heads.
- All -2B vGPUs now support 4 heads instead of 2 heads.
- All -1B4 vGPUs now support 4 heads instead of 1 head.
Flexible virtual display resolutions
Instead of a fixed maximum resolution per head, vGPUs now support a maximum combined resolution based on their frame buffer size. This behavior allows the same number of lower resolution displays to be used as before, but alternatively allows a smaller number of higher resolution displays to be used.
Virtual display resolutions greater than 4096×2160
10-bit color
Changes to allow cross-branch driver support in future main release branches
Note: This feature cannot be used until the next NVIDIA vGPU software main release branch is available.

The purpose of this change is to allow a release of the Virtual GPU Manager from a later main release branch to be used with the NVIDIA vGPU software graphics drivers for the guest VMs from the previous branch.
Miscellaneous bug fixes

Hardware and Software Support Introduced in Release 10.0

Support for passively cooled Quadro RTX 6000 and Quadro RTX 8000 GPUs
Support for Tesla V100S PCIe 32GB GPUs
Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 as a guest OS
Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 and CentOS 8.0 as a guest OS
Support for Windows 10 November 2019 Update (1909) as a guest OS
Support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops version 7 1912
Support for Citrix Hypervisor 8.1
Support for VMware Horizon 7.11

Features Deprecated in Release 10.0

The following table lists features that are deprecated in this release of NVIDIA vGPU software. Although the features remain available in this release, they might be withdrawn in a future release. In preparation for the possible removal of these features, use the preferred alternative listed in the table.

Deprecated Feature	Preferred Alternative
-1B4 vGPU types	-1B vGPU types
-2B4 vGPU types	-2B vGPU types

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

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