RemoteFX

RemoteFX is a technology first introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that is designed to improve the visual experience of the Remote Desktop Protocol. RemoteFX is based on intellectual property that Microsoft acquired and continued to develop since acquiring Calista Technologies.^[1] It is a part of the overall Remote Desktop Services^[2] workload.

RemoteFX improvements include:

• the introduction of the RemoteFX codec, which is capable of preserving a high-fidelity experience for both video and text.
• the ability to present a virtualized instance of a physical GPU into multiple Windows 7 VMs. This provides virtual machines with access to the physical GPU, enabling hardware-accelerated rich graphics scenarios such as 3D rendering and game play.
• generalized support for redirection of USB devices into Windows 7 VMs, which allows peripheral devices to be used with guest operating systems.^[3]

The RemoteFX codec improvements are available to both Remote Desktop Session Hosts (RDSH) and Remote Desktop Virtualization Hosts (RDVH/VDI). the GPU virtualization, and USB redirection improvements are specific to Remote Desktop Virtualization Hosts. ^[4]

Requirements

Implementation of the RemoteFX codec for RDSH does not require any special hardware, and leverages the CPU for encoding. The RemoteFX codec can be optionally hardware-accelerated by a GPU or ASIC for RDVH scenarios.^[5]

Implementation of the virtual GPU for VMs has the following requirements:^[6]

• Hyper-V must be installed on the server.
• The server's CPU must support Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
• At least one DirectX 9.0c and 10.0 capable graphics card must be installed on the server.
• A RemoteFX encoder ASIC may also be optionally installed to further accelerate encoding.

Up to 12 virtual machines are supported per GPU.^[7]

Although any GPU meeting the above requirements will be capable of leveraging RemoteFX, The Windows Server Catalog carries an additional qualification to further define the requirements for server-qualified GPUs. These specifications define GPUs configuration requirements and provide VM performance targets.^[8] Graphics cards that meet these are typically professional workstation products such as ATI/AMD's FirePro, v5800, v5900, v7800, v7900, v8800, v9800, and Radeon HD 6300; Nvidia's Quadro 2000, 3800, 4000, 4800, 5000, 5800, 6000, Quadro FX 2800M and 880M, QuadroPlex 70000 and Tesla M2070Q.^[9]

Servers will need to accommodate such graphics cards with either larger power supplies and more PCI-E slots^[10] or alternatively connect existing servers to an external PCIe expansion chasis such as the Dell PowerEdge C410x.

References