Hi All

A good friend of mine from Citrix, Mayunk Jain & Pushpal have created these reviewers guide for Citrix XenDesktop 7 HDX 3D Pro.

The guides will help you how to either configure GPU pass-through on XenServer or VMware vSphere with Citrix XenDesktop 7 HDX 3D Pro.

He is using following hardware: Dell R720 with NVIDIA GRID K1 and K2, just like I have been using in many of the articles and videos I have shared to the community, and solutions I have build at customers.

In the first guide, they cover physical installation of GPU cards in a server, and how to enable GPU pass-through in XenServer 6.2. High-end graphics apps running on Windows Server VMs can share GPU among multiple user-sessions when delivered using XenDesktop 7 Apps or XenApp 6.5 FP2.

In part two, they see a similar use case on VMware vSphere platform. It describes the steps to enable GPU pass-through feature in vSphere 5.1, called virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA). You learn how to set up XenDesktop 7 Apps and access 3D graphics using Citrix Receiver.

Part three walks through the steps to deliver virtualized access to a class of high performance graphics-intensive applications, which haven’t previously been considered virtualization friendly. Known as the vGPU feature in XenServer, this will be released as a tech preview later this month.

Part four looks at a different use-case on VMware vSphere, where the GPU is shared between several desktop VMs using software emulation. Called virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA), this feature allows desktops published in XenDesktop 7 to deliver hardware-accelerated graphics apps on a vSphere platform.

HDX 3D Comparison (GPU pass-through vs vGPU, sVGA, dVGA)

The table above summarizes at a high-level, the key differences between the XenServer and vSphere technologies.

Reviewers Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics

A 4-part series of easy to follow, step-by-step instructions that guide you to building a 3D enabled virtual app infrastructure using Nvidia GRID cards, compatible servers, XenServer and/or vSphere, with HDX 3D Pro feature in XenDesktop 7.

Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Part 1

Part 1 discusses the physical installation of Nvidia GRID GPU cards in compatible hardware, and enabling GPU pass-through in XenServer. Refer the guide for links to other parts in the series.

Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Part 2

Part 2 discusses the GPU pass-through feature in VMware vSphere, called vDGA. This allows XenDesktop 7 Apps to share a single GPU on vSphere platform, when running Windows Server RDS workloads. Refer the guide for links to other parts in the series.

Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Part 3

This is a placeholder for the vGPU guide on XenServer. It will be activated at the time of launching Tech Preview later this month. Refer article 12010 for the first part in the series

Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Part 4

Part 4 describes the steps to enable software-based GPU sharing in VMware vSphere, called vSGA. This allows graphics apps running on multiple Windows desktops to share a single GPU on vSphere platform, delivered using XenDesktop 7. Refer the guide for links to other parts in the series.

Source

Download Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Configure GPU pass-through Part 1 here

Download Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Configure vDGA – Part 2 here

Download Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Configure vGPU – Part 3 (Available in end of September 2013)

Download Reviewer’s Guide for Delivering 3D Graphics Apps: Configure sVGA – Part 4 here

Read the full blog from Mayunk at Citrix blogs