Hi, Max Herrmann here again from the Remote Desktop Services team at Microsoft. Lots of news and activity this week at VMworld in San Francisco, including Microsoft’s open letter to VMware customers. Today, I wanted to discuss a question that is important to our large base of session virtualization customers: How do you decide between virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and session virtualization? And if you have already successfully deployed session virtualization, should you replace it with VDI?

Session virtualization is a centralized desktop computing architecture where multiple users share a single operating system and application image within individual sessions on a Windows Server host. Some key benefits of this architecture are streamlined desktop management, flexible access, and simplified regulatory compliance, all realized by routing the end users to a single desktop image in the datacenter. This sounds a lot like the promise of VDI, specifically of what some vendors, including Microsoft, refer to as (virtual) desktop pools.

This one-to-many relationship between a (more or less) static desktop image and a user population is possible today both with identically configured virtual desktop pools and with session virtualization. Both approaches make the most sense when personalization of the desktop or administrative access to the desktop is not critical for the user’s tasks, or not desirable from an IT support standpoint. This is often the case with so-called task workers, where high user productivity and providing users with a consistent and appropriate user experience specific to their task are important. So which technology—VDI with virtual desktop pools or session virtualization—should a customer deploy? The white paper that we recently published, Achieving Business Value through Microsoft VDI Together with Session Virtualization, provides you with some criteria to consider in your decision. Please also check out Michael’s blog on this subject; he argues that “… pooled VDI can be expensive and painful” – certainly when compared with session virtualization.

Now, what about “personal” virtual desktops: virtual desktops that are dedicated to specific users? What about those customers who deploy a combination of VDI and session virtualization? Well, with desktop virtualization, it always comes down to the use case and the worker profile you are targeting; there is really no one size fits all, and the white paper will actually provide some good, common sense guidance there as well.

The main point is that with Remote Desktop Services you don’t have to choose a single model. Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 provides customers with a comprehensive platform to explore and deploy these different scenarios, while a whole ecosystem of Remote Desktop Services software and hardware partners provides powerful solutions designed to meet a much broader set of customer requirements. For example, while you could deploy Microsoft's inbox solution for virtual desktop pools on its own in low complexity environments, environments with higher complexity scale virtual desktop pools on top of Hyper-V should be implemented in conjunction with partner solutions such as Citrix XenDesktop. And, because a blog from me without the mention of Microsoft RemoteFX wouldn’t be complete, let me add that you can use products such as vWorkspace from Quest Software or PowerTerm WebConnect from Ericom today with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (now in beta) to experience and enhance a VDI or session virtualization environment with RemoteFX. Check out Ericom’s solution for managed access to RemoteFX desktops; you can find more information on their offering here. Or take a look at this RemoteFX demo which shows some of the work Quest have done to accelerate RemoteFX for the WAN.

If you haven’t already done so, I suggest that you download the beta of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and familiarize yourself with the new virtualization capabilities in it. And make sure you give our partners’ solutions consideration as well, as they will undoubtedly make your life easier as you try and scale up your planned server-hosted desktop environment. As you conduct your evaluation, remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Sessions scale, while personal virtual desktops let you give your users more control. Use your own needs—not the limitations of a technology—to decide which model(s) fit(s) your business best.

The Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster is available in PDF format on the Microsoft Download Center (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=200520).

This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2. It explains the functions and roles of Remote Desktop Session Host, Remote Desktop Virtualization Host, Remote Desktop Connection Broker, Remote Desktop Web Access, Remote Desktop Gateway, and Remote Desktop Licensing and RemoteFX.

As part of the RDP Client Licensing program, RDP licensees are now able to get reference source code for an implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol and its extensions.

Important to note:

• This is for reference only. Copying is not provided.
• This is only for the client side of the Remote Desktop Protocol.
• This applies to RDP Client version 7.1.
• The code is written in C++.
• The RDP client reference source code will be provided together with a small testing utility.

The following table outlines the functionality included in the RDP client reference code.

Feature

Details

Connectivity and capability, including codec negotiation

Maintains connectivity stages and client capability exchange

Bitmap remoting

Enables bitmap remoting over Remote Desktop Protocol

Bitmap compression

Includes multiple bitmap decoding codecs, including the basic RLE and latest RDP 7.1 RemoteFX codec

Bulk compression

Includes multiple bulk compressors, including the most recent RDP 7 era decompressors

Clipboard redirection

Supports copy and paste of content and files between remote sessions or between local and remote sessions

Audio playback redirection

Enables audio remoting over RDP and played on the client device

This code will be made available as an amendment to the existing RDP Client License. For more information, contact Dick Greeley (dickg@microsoft.com) or iplicreq@microsoft.com.

The RD Gateway Capacity Planning in Windows Server 2008 R2 is now available on the download center.  This document contains scalability results, testing methodologies, analysis, and guidelines for RD Gateway. It describes the most relevant factors that influence the capacity of a given deployment, methodologies to evaluate capacity for specific deployments, and a set of experimental results for different combinations of usage scenarios and hardware configurations. 

The Remote Desktop Services Migration Guide is now live on TechNet.  This document provides guidance for migrating the Remote Desktop Services role services in Windows Server® 2008 R2 and for Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 to Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2.

This migration guide contains step-by-step instructions for migrating the following role services:

• Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host)
• Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host)
• Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RD Connection Broker)
• Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access)
• Remote Desktop Licensing (RD Licensing)
• Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway)

The migration guide provides an overview of the Remote Desktop Services migration and what will be migrated for Remote Desktop Services role services, tasks that apply to migrating all the role services, and the migration process.

In March, Microsoft announced RemoteFX and how it enables a rich desktop experience for endpoint devices ranging from traditional PCs to the most lightweight of thin client devices. Customers have since been eager to get their hands on the code. Yesterday, at WPC, we announced that RemoteFX is available to the public through Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta! We want to make sure that your testing of RemoteFX for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session virtualization goes smoothly. Therefore, in this blog, we provide additional guidance on the documentation we’ve created for your beta testing.

To get started with RemoteFX, first identify the server and hardware that you’ll use. In the RemoteFX for RD Virtualization Host (RDVH) (VDI) scenario, the server must meet the requirements identified in the hardware considerations guide for Windows Server 2008 SP1. This includes CPU support for SLAT and up to 4 GPUs. (We discuss more about GPUs below.) For the RemoteFX for RD Session Host (session virtualization, formerly known as the Terminal Server) scenario, the server CPU must support SSE2 but GPUs are not required.

Our partners have blogged about GPUs that will work with RemoteFX in SP1 beta. For details, see Max’s blog post. The list of GPUs will continue to grow and evolve as we near our final release. To evaluate the beta, we recommend that you select GPUs from this list. We recommend the following drivers available from our partners: Nvidia drivers version 195.62 and 196.21, and ATI driver versions 8.720 and 8.723. We continue to work closely with all our partners to ensure that customers can reliably access drivers for their RemoteFX solutions, including through our participation in the next Logo kit.

At this time we are also publishing a set of documentation, listed below. We recommend that you start with the hardware considerations guide when beta-testing the VDI scenario, in order to understand server requirements and capacity planning for your virtual machines. We recommend that customers test the RemoteFX Beta with up to 12 users for each Enterprise class GPU. You can then learn how to configure a single server in the Deploying a Single RemoteFX Server Step-by-Step Guide. For the session virtualization scenario with RD Session Host, you can jump directly into the Using RemoteFX with “Classic” Remote Desktop Services Step-by-Step Guide. The other documents provide overviews for the technology and detailed steps for configuring RemoteFX based on each scenario.

We appreciate your interest in RemoteFX and invite you to download and evaluate the beta. Please try out your use cases and scenarios by using this beta and post your feedback. Please post your queries on http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en/winserverTS/threads or send an email to remotefx@microsoft.com

The following list includes all the new documents available with the SP1 Beta:

• Step-by-step guides:

• Deploying a Single RemoteFX Server Step-by-Step Guide
• Configuring USB Device Redirection with RemoteFX Step-by-Step Guide
• Deploying Remote Desktop Licensing Step-by-Step Guide
• Using RemoteFX with “Classic” Remote Desktop Services Step-by-Step Guide
• Deploying RemoteFX for Personal Virtual Desktops Step-by-Step Guide
• Deploying RemoteFX for Virtual Desktop Pools Step-by-Step Guide

• Overview guides:

• Hardware Considerations for RemoteFX
• What’s New in RemoteFX

• Script for Creating Virtual Machines for VDI
• Online Help for Configuring (available Wednesday, July 13):
• Configuring RemoteFX
• Configuring the RemoteFX 3D Video Adapter

Hi, Max Herrmann here again, and today I am writing to you from our Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington D.C. where we are talking to 9,000+ partners about the public beta release of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Check out Oliver's blog about SP1 beta and download the code to evaluate the new features and benefits that SP1 can provide for server and desktop installations.

 

Partner support and momentum for Microsoft RemoteFX is heating up. Back in March, when we first disclosed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, a number of hardware and software partners   expressed their future support for this exciting, new set of technologies that will enable a local-like, media-rich desktop experience for users of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. Since then,  software and hardware partners have accelerated their RemoteFX-related developments, and today several partners made statements around products that you can use today to set up and experience RemoteFX in your own beta test environment:

 

• AMD in their blog today explains how RemoteFX allows virtualization to go visual, and highlights the compatibility of AMD's ATI FirePro professional graphics cards with the rich media enhancements enabled by RemoteFX.
• Nvidia has also posted a blog today about how Microsoft RemoteFX and Nvidia Quadro server-discrete GPUs allow the corporate desktop to move into the server room while enabling the full Windows 7 desktop experience from low-cost access devices.
• Dell's blog is providing guidance regarding offerings from Dell that have been tested with SP1 beta code and which can be used for beta installations. Dell is pointing out several configurations for RemoteFX, including a high-availability configuration that adds details on rack and blade server options from Dell.
• And of course HP, which has also been engaging with the RemoteFX team at Microsoft for quite some time, has tested both servers and thin clients to ensure they "speak RemoteFX" - and provide a great platform for beta evaluations of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and RemoteFX. Jeff Groudan, from HP's commercial desktop and thin client team, commented on how HP is supporting today's RemoteFX beta launch: "Today's beta release of RemoteFX is bringing HP that much closer to delivering the most advanced remote computing experience to our joint customers, plus exciting new opportunities for expanding the client virtualization market with a new generation of simple, high-performance, low-cost access devices. HP's innovativet5740 Flexible Series Thin Clients and industry-leading ProLiant servers have been tested and proven to support an amazing RemoteFX experience today. Building on our more than 20-year history of joint innovation, the two companies will continue to engineer complete, pre-defined, scalable reference architectures including hardware, software and services to reduce the complexity and risk of deploying client virtualization."

 

With the help of our partners, RemoteFX is coming along nicely, and really offer great value-add for folks looking to deploy server-hosted desktops in the datacenter.  I would strongly encourage you to download the SP1 bits and take RemoteFX for a ride - I am sure you will like what you will see.  And please make sure you check the RDS blog site tomorrow where we will provide additional guidance for beta deployments of RemoteFX.

 Max

The RD Virtualization Host Capacity Planning in Windows Server 2008 R2 is now live on the Download Center.  This white paper is intended as a guide for capacity planning of RD Virtualization Host in Windows Server 2008 R2. It describes the most relevant factors that influence the capacity of a given deployment, methodologies to evaluate capacity for specific deployments, and a set of experimental results for different combinations of usage scenarios and hardware configurations.

In April, Max Herrmann posted a blog article announcing our newest device redirection feature for Remote Desktop Virtualization Host: RemoteFX USB redirection. In this three-part series, we’ll take a closer look at the feature and how it helps close the gap between the user experience of a local user sitting at their physical desktop and that of a remote user connected to a virtual desktop. The first part of the series gives an overview of the feature and what it can do, and how to set up a basic deployment of the feature.

Feature Overview

The goal of RemoteFX USB redirection is simple: the user should be able to use any device they want, and have it just work. RDP has numerous high-level redirections that allow specific types of devices to be used effectively in a remote session, such as:

• Easy Print, which allows users to print to local printers in remote sessions
• Drive Redirection, which allows users to access the file system on any local drive in a remote session, including USB drives
• Smart Card Redirection, which allows users to authenticate to and in a remote session by using smart cards/e-tokens
• Plug-and-Play Device Redirection, which allows users to access PTP digital cameras, MTP music players, and POS for .NET devices in a remote session, among others
• Input Redirection, which allows the use of keyboards/mice in remote sessions
• Audio Redirection, which allows recording and playback of audio in remote sessions
• Port Redirection, which allows the use of serial and parallel ports in remote sessions

However, there are many devices which are not covered by these redirections, such as scanners, multifunction printers, webcams, and more. RemoteFX USB redirection acts as a catch-all mechanism that redirects these USB devices! Unlike high-level redirections such as drive redirection, RemoteFX USB redirection happens at the port protocol (USB request block or URB) level, and is similar to how one can redirect serial or parallel ports via RDP. This provides some unique advantages, as you’ll see below. However, RemoteFX USB redirection is meant to supplement high-level redirections, not to supplant them. By combining RemoteFX USB redirection with RDP high-level device redirections, you can have the best of both worlds. Here is a table that compares and contrasts the two forms of redirection.

RemoteFX USB Redirection…

RDP High-Level Device Redirection…

Does not require drivers on the client

Requires drivers for the device to be installed on the client

Requires the device driver to be installed on the server

Generally does not require drivers on the server

Uses one redirection method for many types of devices

Uses a specific, unique method for each type of device being redirected

Forwards URBs to and from the device over the RDP connection

Exposes high-level device functionality in the remote session by using an optimized protocol for the device type

Enables only one session to use a device at a given time; the local client cannot use the device while an RDP session is using it

Enables any number of sessions to access the device simultaneously, including the local client

Is optimized for the LAN, like the rest of RemoteFX

Works with both LAN and WAN

Setting up a Basic Deployment

Now that you’ve seen what RemoteFX USB redirection can do, let’s take a look at how to set up the feature.

Prerequisites

You will need the following:

• A RemoteFX-capable client (Remote Desktop Connection 7.1 or later)
• A virtual machine hosted on a RemoteFX host (Windows 7 SP1 or later)

Enabling RemoteFX USB redirection on the clients

1. In order to redirect USB devices from a given machine, the RemoteFX USB redirection feature must be enabled. In Group Policy, navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Connection Client\RemoteFX USB Device Redirection, and edit “Allow RDP redirection of other supported RemoteFX USB devices from this computer.” Enable the policy, and specify whether you wish to allow all users or only admins to redirect devices.
   
2. On the client machines, run “gpupdate /force” (without quotes) from an Administrator command prompt to enable/disable the feature, and then restart the computer for the changes to take effect. The feature will not work until you restart.

Using the feature

1. On the client, open Remote Desktop Connection. If the tabs are not listed, click Options to expand the dialog box.
2. On the Local Resources tab, click More to display the Local devices and resources dialog box. If at least one supported RemoteFX USB device is connected, it should be listed in the device tree under Other supported RemoteFX USB devices.
   
   Note: The heading “Other supported RemoteFX USB devices” will only appear if the RemoteFX USB redirection feature is enabled on the client (apply the Group Policy setting, run gpupdate, and then restart) and at least one supported RemoteFX USB device is connected and available for redirection.
   
3. After you are connected, the devices that you have selected should appear in the remote virtual desktop.
   

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first part in our series of blogs about RemoteFX USB redirection. In Part 2, we’re going to talk about some deployment-related topics, including setting up publishing and RD Web Access for rich and thin clients, and server device security. If you have any questions or comments, please post them to the blog, or send us an e-mail at rfxusb@microsoft.com . We look forward to hearing from you.

Hello there,

I’m Nelly Porter, Group Program Manager at Microsoft, and I'm working on the coolest remoting technology: Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and RemoteFX.

This week I’m attending TechEd 2010 in New Orleans discussing RDP and RemoteFX in depth and show some very interesting demos.

For all of you who are planning to come to TechEd this week, we’ll see you during our breakout sessions and in our booth. Please keep in mind that some of the sessions are scheduled at inconvenient times like 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. I know that it will be a heroic act for you to join these sessions, but without you—our RDP supporters, fans, and critics—all of our efforts will be wasted.

Track

Title

Speakers

Date/Time

VIR317

Desktop Virtualization: You Have a Choice

Robin Brandl

Monday, 6/7

2:45 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

VIR07-INT

Solving the VDI Licensing Puzzle

Robin Brandl

Monday, 6/7

4:30 p.m.–5:45 p.m.

VIR305

Microsoft RemoteFX: Rich Windows Desktop Experience for VDI and Session Virtualization

Karthik Lakshminarayanan

Tuesday, 6/8

9:45 a.m.–11:00 a.m.

VIR311

Planning and Deploying Microsoft VDI with Management Technologies

Michael Kleef

Tuesday, 6/8

1:30 p.m.–2:15 p.m.

WSV309

WSV309 - Microsoft RemoteFX: USB and Device Support

Nelly Porter

Wednesday, 6/9

8:00 a.m.–9:15 a.m.

VIR313

VDI from Microsoft and Citrix:  What is it?  How do I manage it?  What benefits does it provide?

Robin Brandl

Wednesday, 6/9

11:45 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

WSV205

Remote Desktop Services: Virtual and Session-Based Desktops and Applications Architecture with Partners

Michael Kleef

Thursday, 6/10

9:45 a.m.–11:00 a.m.

WSV13-INT

Next Generation VDI with Microsoft RemoteFX

Karthik Lakshminarayanan; Michael Kleef

Thursday, 6/10

8:00 a.m.–9:15 a.m.

I hope you can make it! See you there.

Hi everyone,

We have two important announcements to make:

1. Availability of the Remote Desktop Services Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
2. Availability of the Remote Desktop Services BPA Update for Windows Server 2008 R2

1. RDS Management Pack

The Remote Desktop Services Management Pack enables proactive health monitoring of the following role services:

• Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host)
• Remote Desktop Licensing (RD Licensing)
• Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access)
• Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway)
• Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RD Connection Broker)
• Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host)

This management pack can be downloaded from the following locations:

• Microsoft Download Center
• Microsoft Pinpoint

Some of the key features of the pack include:

a. Health monitoring of all Remote Desktop Services role services (RD Session Host, RD Virtualization Host, RD Connection Broker, RD Web Access, RD Gateway, and RD Licensing)

b. Detailed troubleshooting knowledge content

c. Dashboard view of session statistics and performance

You can also customize the management pack to add your own health monitoring scenarios or override the behavior of the built-in health monitoring scenarios. Refer to the management pack guide for additional information.

2. Best Practices Analyzer update for Remote Desktop Services

The Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) is a server management tool that is available in Windows Server 2008 R2. BPA can help you reduce best practice violations by scanning one or more roles that are installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 and reporting best practice violations.

We have released a Windows update that adds new best practices to the list of best practices that are available with Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM. The update is available through Windows Update and can be downloaded from the Download Center.

In addition, you can access online articles about these best practices at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd391873(WS.10).aspx.

Thanks, and we hope you find this useful.

Companies that are creating an implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol set can license the Intellectual Property(IP) rights they need from Microsoft by signing the RDP Client License. Products that might need these rights to interact with Windows Remote Desktop Servers (Sessions or VM based) include:

• Non-Windows Thin Client devices
• Non-Windows based client software

To understand if you might need the patent rights associated with the protocols, Microsoft has also published a map of which patents are associated with each protocol.

http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/patent-rights/mcpp-licensing/

The copyrighted documentation for the protocols has been available for free on MSDN for over two years:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216517(v=prot.10).aspx

To learn more about the license and other benefits of being a licensee, please contact Di‍ck Greeley (dickg@microsoft.com) or iplicreq@microsoft.com.

Other Benefits of the RDP Client License

In addition to receiving a license to the patent rights you need, companies that have taken the RDP Client license will also enjoy:

• Free documentation support via community forums
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc320426(v=PROT.10).aspx
• Free attendance at protocol plugfest events: these are quarterly meetings where attendees receive presentations about a specific area of protocol technology and have a chance to interact directly with Microsoft engineers.
• Network Monitoring (NetMon) tool, a protocol analyzer that allows you to capture network traffic, view and analyze it.
• Test Suites: Microsoft has begun releasing test suites for different protocols and will continue to roll them out over time.
• Reference Source Code: Microsoft will shortly be making available reference source code for an implementation of RDP 7.1 only to RDP Client licensees. Look for a future blog post for more information.

The Remote Desktop Services Deployment Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 is now live on the Download Center and on TechNet.  This guide is intended for use by system administrators and system engineers who are responsible for deploying the role services and features for Remote Desktop Services for the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment. It provides detailed guidance for deploying a Remote Desktop Services design that is preselected by you, an infrastructure specialist, or a system architect in your organization.

The Terminal Services Deployment Guide for Windows Server 2008 is now live on the Download Center and on TechNet.  This guide is intended for use by system administrators and system engineers who are responsible for deploying the role services and features for Terminal Services. It provides detailed guidance for deploying a Terminal Services design that is preselected by you, an infrastructure specialist, or a system architect in your organization.