So it was initially labed Server 2016, for then I forgot an important part of it, which ill come back to later.
This year, Microsoft is most likely releasing Windows Server 2016 and with it a huge number of new features like Containers, Nano, SDN and so on.
But what about RDS? Well Microsoft is actually doing a bunch there,
- RemoteFX vGPU support for GEN2 virtual machines
- RemoteFX vGPU support for RDS server
- RemoteFX vGPU with OpenGL support
- Persional Session Desktops (Allows for an RSDH host per user)
- AVC 444 mode (http://bit.ly/1SCRnIL)
- Enhancements to RDP 10 protocol (Less bandwidth consuming)
- Clientless experience (HTML 5 support is now in tech preview for Azure RemoteApp) which will also most likely be ported for on-premises solutions as well)
- Discrete Device Assigment (Which in essence will be GPU-passtrough) http://bit.ly/1SULnLD
So there is all these stuff happening in terms of GPU enhancements and performance increase of the protocol and of course delivering hardware offloading uses the encoder.
Another important piece is the support for Azure which is coming with the N-series, which is DDA (GPU-passtrough) in Azure which will allow us to setup a virtual machine with dedicated GPU graphics running for a per hour price when we need it! and also in some cases can be configured for an RDMA backbone where we have need for high compute capacity for deep-learning. This N-series will be powered by NVDIA and K80 & M60.
So is still RDS the way to go in terms of full-scale deployment ? Can be, RDS has gotten from a dark place to become a good enough solution (even thou it has its limitations) and the protocol itself has gotten alot better (even do I miss alot of tuning capabilities for the protocol itself..
Now VMware and Citrix are also doing their things, with a lot of heavy-hitting being done at both sides, but also this again gives ut alot of new feature since both companies are investing alot in their EUC stack.
- VMware Horizon 7 with BLAST Extreme Protocol and a tight partnership with NVIDIA
- VMware Horizon Air Hybrid Mode
- Citrix XenServer and Intel GVT-d GPU Passtrough
- Citrix XenDesktop protocol improvements with FrameHawk and ThinWire+
- (Also looks like AMD is betting on VMware –> http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/server/s7150-x2?sf21196953=1)
The interesting part is that Citrix is not putting all their eggs in the same basket, with now adding support for Azure as well (Which already includes support for ESXi, Amazon, Hyper-V and so on), meaning that when Microsoft releases the N-series as well, Citrix can easily integrate to the N-series to deliver the GPU using their own stack which has alot of advantages over RDS. Horizon with GPU usage is limited to running on ESXi.
VMware on the other hand is focusing on a deep partnership with Nvidia and also moving ahead with Horizon Air Hybrid (which will be a kinda Citrix Workspace Cloud setup) and also VMware is doing ALOT on their Stack
- AppVolumes
- JIT desktops
- User Enviroment Manager
Now 2016 is going to be an interesting year to see how these companies are going to evolve and how they are going to drive the partners moving forward.