Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta: Review

Remote but not forgotten

RemoteFX is a set of features that in RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol, formerly Terminal Services) that I used in my tests of the beta to look at rich graphics applications and USB redirection. The results were impressive. RemoteFX dramatically improves graphic-intensive applications in a VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) environment. A virtual desktop that is hosted on a user client in a LAN performs with no noticeable difference than when it is running directly on the client hardware.

To achieve this effect requires dramatic changes in the server hardware. Because the graphics processing for the virtual desktop takes place on the server — not the client hardware — IT managers will need to beef up servers with professional-class graphics hardware. Combined with the increasing amount of RAM needed to support dense server deployments, system managers should be chucking their time-worn capacity planning formulas.

The good news is that Intel and AMD have taken steps to control processor thermals. The new question raised in my tests of the SP1 beta is how good are the add-in card makers doing on this front? With lots of RAM, CPU cores, hopped up graphics cards and the power supplies needed to juice up these systems, the thermal and power gains achieved by server consolidation must now be thought of as the cushion that will be used to implement workloads that RemoteFX capabilities make possible.

Besides the hardware requirements, there is also a fair amount of server and virtual machine setup needed to support the visually impressive results offered by RemoteFX. First off, all participating systems including client devices need to be running SP1, whether that is on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. Only Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs are licensed to take advantage of the RemoteFX capabilities. I needed to create Windows 7 virtual machine pools that were capable of supporting the Aero interface. And these systems needed to have the RemoteFX display driver added to them on the Hyper-V management server.

Once the virtual machine was equipped with the RemoteFX display driver it couldn’t be seen by the UI when accessed by the Hyper-V virtual machine console, a known issue in the beta. Thus, I had to do a number of configuration changes (such as setting the IP address of the VM) before activating the RemoteFX display capability. Once all the configuration changes were made in my test environment, the visual payoff was impressive. Video played flawlessly and the sound quality was good. Playing the test video side-by-side with a laptop running the video in a standalone Windows 7 environment, it was impossible for me to distinguish between the two systems.

Here and there

I used RemoteFX USB redirection to use the webcam on my test laptop inside a Windows 7 virtual machine. For IT managers who are evaluating VDI technologies, this is an important change and should be explored as an important advance in the Windows Hyper-V environment.

As with RemoteFX graphics, the client system and the virtual machine host must be running SP1. First I had to make a change to Group Policy in my test domain to enable RDP redirection of supported USB devices. On the laptop, I then forced the Group Policy update and then restated the laptop with all my USB devices (a Plantronics DSP 400 telephone headset, built in webcam and fingerprint reader) connected. During the Remote Desktop Connection process I was presented with a configuration screen that allowed me to specify which USB devices should be available for use in the remote session.

The devices worked as expected in my virtual desktop. In the final implementation of this feature I would like to see a more straightforward method of connecting USB devices at startup. For example, a reconfigured Remote Desktop Connection screen implementation that shows all discovered USB devices up front rather than forcing the user to navigate several tabs.