With VMworld in full swing, it’s already been a busy week full of announcements offering proof points of how VMware Horizon 6 continues to lead in the mobile cloud era, with a clear focus on apps, while delivering an unbeatable user experience for more use cases than ever before. Yesterday we announced our Tech Preview of Project A2, intersecting our AirWatch and App Volumes solutions, promising to redefine the way organizations can deliver and manage applications for physical devices while accelerating their adoption of Windows 10. This is also a big week for VDI and app virtualization as we announced VMware Horizon 6.2, bringing:
- Efficient management and delivery of applications at-scale that will deliver a rich user experience to global, multi-site deployment of virtual environments
- An enriched user experience with support for Skype for Business
- New VMware Virtual SAN storage optimizations that include all-flash options delivering much lower costs and incredible performance
- Enhanced security capabilities including support for biometric fingerprint authentication
- Federal government readiness including FIPS 140-2 compliance
- Day zero pport for Windows 10
Additionally we’ve announced Horizon 6.2 for Linux, providing a robust platform for customers who need specialized security, or high end designer workstations with support for NVIDIA GRID vGPU, vSGA and vDGA 3D delivery technologies.
Introducing NVIDIA GRID 2.0: Delivering High-Performance Graphics on VMware Horizon
It should be no surprise that improved graphics performance underpins a number of substantive enhancements in 6.2, directly tied to raising the bar in user experience. At the surface, 3D graphics might seem like a limited use case in the enterprise, but as we’re seeing firsthand with many customers, no longer is this solely the concern of designers and engineers, but the need for high-performance rendering of 2D and 3D graphics is also increasingly important for office productivity tools that demand the performance uplift of hardware-based acceleration.
Improving the delivery of immersive graphics within virtualized desktops and apps has had huge impact on our customers’ business workflow and productivity. Let me give you just three anecdotal examples we’ve heard from customers who’ve implemented our solution, powered by NVIDIA GRID vGPU:
|
Before VMware Horizon |
After |
| 4 hours per week spent by a designer just waiting for their files to download | Designer files opened in minutes! |
| $40,000 / month spent shuttling temporary workers to corporate facilities just to access designs | 16 hours of productivity gained per week in added productivity, by enabling anywhere access to applications |
| 3 days spent synchronizing graphics datasets across replicated copies in 6 datacenters across the globe | Datasets now instantly mirrored across 3 datacenters |
It should therefore be no surprise that we’re very excited about NVIDIA’s announcement of GRID 2.0, built on their award-winning Maxwell GPU. You can check out their announcement here if you haven’t seen it, or better yet, stop by to see their VMworld demo. We prepped this quickie walk-through of why GRID 2.0 is such a big deal, captured in this short one minute video – check it out:
Now that we’ve got your attention, let’s net this out. Think of GRID 2.0 as taking GPU virtualization and expanding the envelope of that value proposition to offer:
- Greater density of users per GPU (2x), with up to 128 users per GRID-enabled server
- Dramatically better performance for comparable workloads (2x better vs. current)
- Flexibility in use case and deployment, now supporting both Linux and Windows guest OS’s, as well as choice of rack and now blade servers from Cisco, Dell and HP
As Shawn Bass shared in his “The Future of End-User Computing” session earlier this week, the trend towards GPU technology is inevitable. This capability is only going to become tablestakes for more and more of the apps we’re dependent on, whether you’re a designer or a knowledge worker. Look to NVIDIA and VMware to continue to collaborate on delivering the best platform for delivering immersive, high-performance graphics to every app, every desktop.
For more information, please visit the VMware and NVIDIA product pages on VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU.
