GRAPHICS VIRTUALIZATION

Virtualizing applications and desktop computing environments on centralized

servers has delivered a wide range of benefits to corporations in recent years.

Those benefits include lower management costs, greater employee mobility

and productivity, and improved security for corporate data and applications.

Until recently, however, virtualization solutions couldn’t deliver the graphics

performance needed to support computer-aided design (CAD) and other

graphics-intensive applications. Now, thanks to a number of technological

advances, organizations performing complex design, engineering and other

graphically demanding tasks can finally take advantage of the many business

and IT benefits that virtualized solutions provide.

Virtualizing Graphics Workloads Delivers Solid Benefits

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NOT EVERY COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS ADVANCE IS IMMEDIATELY RELEVANT to, or practical for, every company or application. Even advances that have the potential to benefit broad communities of users over time may be too costly, too complex or too limited for certain users right out of the gate. Indeed, it can take years or even decades of refinement and fine-tuning for some technology developments to meet the needs of their intended audience.

Application virtualization is a case in point. When application virtualiza-tion first materialized about 25 years ago, it sought to address some of the problems created by the then-ascendant computing model: PC-based distributed computing. Application virtualization pioneer Citrix and others noted that placing application software and data on every desktop PC introduced a host of management, security and operational challenges.

Instead, why not place the most important applications and data on central servers, the proponents asked, where those resources could be more easily secured and managed? Users could then access the “virtualized” applications over high-speed local-area networks, which carried the user’s keystrokes and mouse movements to the centralized apps. The servers, in turn, would transmit only the application screen images back to the local client devices for display.

Although many companies quickly recognized the potential benefits of this centralized computing model, it took years before application virtualization approached mainstream adoption status. Along the way, Citrix and others improved the technology’s performance and user experience by, for example, refining data-compression algorithms and remote display protocols, and by taking advantage of the proliferation and ubiquity of broadband networks.

The range of client devices supported also expanded beyond desktop PCs to thin clients, laptop PCs and, most recently, smartphones and tablets. Application virtualization was later broadened with the advent of desktop virtual-ization, which relocated the entire client-device environment (operating system, applications, user preferences, etc.) to central servers. With the emergence of cloud computing, increasing numbers of those central servers reside not only in corporate data centers, but in service provider server farms accessible over the Internet and other wide-area networks (WANs).

Still, some organizations were forced to watch the growing embrace of application and desktop virtualization from the sidelines. Architectural and engineering firms, energy-exploration companies, manufacturers and others with data-intensive, 3D graphics and analytics workloads couldn’t get the performance their users required when computer-aided design (CAD) and other like applications ran on centralized servers instead of on dedicated worksta-tions at an employee’s desk. These companies, therefore, continued to rely on distributed computing platforms — high-end workstations, in this case — even as others were able to shift PC-based workloads and data to more easily managed and more secure centralized servers.

Just within the past year or two, this situation has changed. Thanks to a confluence of technological advances — most notably, the ability to share individual graphics processing units (GPUs) among multiple users — companies running graphics-intensive workloads can now realize the same types of benefits that their peers in other industry sectors have long taken for granted.

THE CHALLENGES OF OPERATING IN A GLOBAL, REAL-TIME WORLD

Corporations and other organizations have had to navigate a rapidly changing technological and operational landscape in the years since application virtualization first emerged. For example, thanks in part to the prolif-eration of high-speed networks and powerful, real-time computing solutions, more companies than ever have found it practical to expand their operations beyond their home countries. For some organizations, that means their operations can “follow the sun,” with workers in some time zones being productive while those in other locations are off the job.

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At the same time, workforces are becoming increasingly mobile thanks to the ubiquity of high-bandwidth networks as well as new generations of laptop PCs, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Consider just the stunning growth in tablets. In 2014, market research firm Gartner expects that worldwide tablet ship-ments will reach 256.3 million units. That number will grow to 316.7 million units in 2015, Gartner predicts.

The majority of tablet (as well as smartphone) sales are to individual consumers, but corporate purchases of these devices are increasing rapidly. At the same time, many personal mobile devices are serving double-duty as work platforms thanks to the widespread implementation of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs by many organizations.

The proliferation of computing locations and client devices poses significant management and security challenges for IT and business managers. If mobile devices hold sensitive corporate data and enable access to corporate applications, for instance, employers must ensure they aren’t at risk if the device is lost, stolen or compromised in some other fashion. One way to secure these devices and the data they hold is to implement mobile device management and application management solutions. Another popular

option, however, is to use application and desktop virtualization to place sensitive information and apps in the data center, rather than on the devices themselves.

3D GRAPHICS WORKLOADS POSE ADDITIONAL CHALLENGES

Corporations and other institutions running 3D graphics- and data-intensive workloads must deal with these and other operational challenges that are common to most companies. This subset of organizations, however, has additional challenges related to the characteristics of graphics workloads and processes.

If a company has globally dispersed engineering, design, architectural or like operations, it has had to purchase, deploy and maintain high-end workstations at each location. Many such organizations also run large, project-based programs, adjusting their workforces dramatically to support complex, multifaceted projects. It can be an IT support nightmare to install, maintain and de-install local workstations as projects evolve and cycle. Complicating the picture further is the common participation of third-party partners in these projects. The access these partners get to project data and applications must be tightly managed, and shut down at the project’s completion.

Coordinating design changes and revisions being made on workstations in different locations can also be diffi-cult and error prone. Furthermore, transferring graphics files from one design team to another introduces its own set of challenges. With file sizes of hundreds of megabytes and more not uncommon, the bandwidth costs and time requirements for transferring files from workstation to workstation and site to site can be daunting. With extremely large files, real-time sharing and collaboration become impractical, if not impossible.

The size of the files, as well as the size and platform requirements of the 3D graphics applications them-selves, have prevented their deployment on many of the mobile devices now in employees’ hands. As a result, graphics designers and their peers have been tied to their workstations. Likewise, second-tier users such as sales and marketing employees, service engineers and others haven’t been able to use their mobile devices to hold and display the sophisticated graphics images being created by their organizations’ tier 1 users.

LEVERAGING MULTIPLE LAYERS OF VIRTUALIZATION

To understand how virtualization can now aid organizations that run demanding graphics workloads and projects, it’s important to comprehend the various forms of virtualization at play. The term “virtualization” has come to apply to many distinct technologies and modes of operation, and all of the variations can play roles in solutions that address the needs of engineering, architectural, design and other like firms.

As described earlier, application and desktop virtualization involves relocating workloads and data from PCs, workstations and other client devices to central servers in data centers or in the cloud. Software and client

Server virtualization has become a popular practice because it can ensure that servers are more fully utilized and reduced in number, resulting in data center space and energy consumption reductions.

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hardware that might be underutilized and difficult to manage when distributed across individual users instead runs on easy-to-manage, secure servers. These servers, in turn, can be operated more efficiently and at higher utilization rates than individual client machines.

The clients only need to run a lightweight application locally — for example, Citrix Receiver — which gives users access to the centrally run applications and data and helps manage the communications to and from those applications. Companies can equip employees with whatever client devices make the most sense operationally and financially. One of the most cost-effective and easy-to-manage device options, for example, is that of thin clients. These devices have no hard drives; usually last two to three times longer than the typical PCs, laptops or workstations before needing to be replaced; and use up to 10 times less power than a typical laptop.

As popular as application and desktop virtualization have become, the most familiar form of virtualization for many people is server virtualization. With server virtualization, a single physical server runs software called a hypervisor. The hypervisor creates a layer of virtual machines (VMs) on top of the server operating system and allocates the machine’s resources to the VMs based on user and application needs and corporate policies. Server virtualization has become a popular practice because it can ensure that servers are more fully utilized and reduced in number, resulting in data center space and energy consumption reductions.

Servers aren’t the only types of IT hardware that can be virtualized and shared among multiple applications or users in a fluid, adaptive manner. For example, the virtualization and sharing of networking devices and storage platforms has also become increasingly common.

The type of virtualization that is most directly relevant to companies doing CAD and other graphics-intensive work is a relative newcomer to the virtualization family: the sharing of individual GPUs. The hardware accelera-tion that GPUs have long provided for 3D graphics applications in a one-to-one arrangement can now be shared by multiple virtual desktops.

Leading graphics hardware vendor NVIDIA debuted GPU virtualization in March 2012. The NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology allows graphics commands from each virtual machine to flow directly to the shared GPU, without needing to be translated by the hypervisor. As a result, the GPU hardware can be time-sliced in a way that delivers high-performance virtualized graphics capabilities to each user.

To each user and graphics application, it appears that they have their own dedicated graphics processor, just as they would if they were using a dedicated workstation. With NVIDIA’s technology, a single GPU can be shared by as many as eight users.

GRAPHICS VIRTUALIZATION: MOVING FROM TECHNOLOGY TO SOLUTIONS

The ability to share individual GPUs, combined with the already established capabilities of application, desktop and server virtualization, means that organizations running CAD workloads can finally experience the virtualiza-tion benefits long available to those running less-demanding applications. Three complementary technology vendors — NVIDIA, Citrix and Dell — have brought their respective products and expertise to bear to create solutions for these types of users.

Citrix has collaborated with NVIDIA for more than a decade and has worked closely with the GPU leader to develop the virtualized GPU solution. Citrix’s XenDesktop and XenApp, which were already leading solutions for desktop and application virtualization of PC-based workloads, can now accommodate 3D CAD and other high-end workstation applications.

To more fully leverage the NVIDIA shared GPU capabilities, Citrix has extended XenDesktop and XenApp with its HDX 3D Pro portfolio of technologies. Among the enhancements delivered by Citrix HDX 3D Pro are:

• Support for OpenGL and DirectX applications

• WAN optimization technologies to improve user density over the network, increase server scalability in the data center, and lower bandwidth requirements

Server virtualization has become a popular practice because it can ensure that servers are more fully utilized and reduced in number.

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• Deep-compression technologies and quality-of-service controls to prioritize and optimize application performance over any network connection, including WANs, with as little as 2MB of bandwidth

To the core graphics virtualization and desktop/application virtualization capabilities delivered by NVIDIA and Citrix, Dell brings comprehensive, end-to-end solutions and reference architectures. Under the umbrella of its Dell Wyse Data Center for Virtual Workstations solution, the company offers:

• DATA CENTER PLATFORMS — The Dell PowerEdge R720 rack server platform and the Dell Precision R7610 rack workstation platform, which provide a wide range of system configurations — including different NVIDIA GPU options — to match the requirements of any virtualized graphics workloads and user base.

• CLIENT PLATFORMS — In addition to its wide range of desktop and laptop PCs, Dell offers a line of energy-efficient and virus-immune thin clients specifically designed for desktop and application virtualization environments.

• SYSTEM AND ENDPOINT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE — While Citrix’s and NVIDIA’s software offerings provide core graphics, application and desktop virtualization functionality, Dell fills out the software spec-trum with system management software to manage server, storage and networking elements; endpoint management software to efficiently and in most cases remotely manage thin clients; and other software elements necessary to implement a full solution.

• COMPLETE SET OF SERVICES — Dell’s services portfolio includes application, infrastructure, security, deployment and support services, enabling customers to reduce project risk and benefit from one-touch support.

• APPLICATION CERTIFICATION — Dell has worked with a wide variety of ISVs to certify that their applications run reliably and at optimal performance levels on its platforms. Those certifications include workstation-class graphics applications from ISVs such as PTC, Siemens and Dassault Systemes.

• Center of Excellence — Dell operates a workstation virtualization center of excellence where, with little to no financial outlay, customers can work with Dell experts to develop and test proof-of-concept virtualized graphics solutions before rolling them out in their own production environments.

SOLID BENEFITS FROM VIRTUAL GRAPHICS SOLUTIONS

Organizations adopting virtualized graphics solutions can now realize many of the same cost, management, efficiency and other benefits common to other organizations that are already using application or desktop virtualization. Among the advantages more specific to design and engineering, architectural and other 3D graphics shops are:

• OPERATIONAL BENEFITS — Centralizing graphics applications and data in the data center and enabling employees to access them from any location is an ideal model for supporting follow-the-sun development projects and 24/7 production cycles. This approach also works well with graphics projects that involve outside design firms and experts, who can be given need-based access rights to applications and files. At the same time, the virtualized graphics model eliminates the need to transfer huge files from site to site, since the master files remain on central servers and can be leveraged for collaborative work scenarios.

• MANAGEMENT BENEFITS — Rather than deploying, maintaining and updating distributed workstations, IT professionals can more efficiently manage centralized data center hardware and distributed thin clients.

• MOBILITY BENEFITS — Tier 1 designers and engineers as well as tier 2 sales, marketing and support personnel can log into the virtualized applications from any location using any client device, including laptop PCs, tablets and thin clients.

• SECURITY BENEFITS: Valuable and sensitive designs and other corporate data are secured behind the corporate firewall, rather than distributed to the client devices of employees and external project partners.

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• PERFORMANCE BENEFITS — Virtualized graphics solutions can actually offer better performance than graphics workstations interacting with database servers over a LAN. With virtualized applications, the workstation, in effect, is sitting in the data center and communicating with the database over a high-speed network. As a result, the application can pull up drawings, do analysis and perform other tasks faster than a LAN-based graphics workstation.

• TCO BENEFITS — Although converting to a virtualized workstation model involves some up-front costs, benefits such as lower client-device costs (e.g., swapping high-end workstations for thin clients), higher server utilization rates, lower IT operations expenses, and reduced networking costs (no massive file transfers) deliver reductions in both CAPEX and OPEX over time

A number of companies are already realizing these and other benefits by taking advantage of graphics virtualization solutions based on Dell, Citrix and NVIDIA products and technologies. Some examples:

• KNIGHTEC — Knightec, a technical consultancy specializing in product and produc-tion development, employs more than 350 engineers working from different locations

throughout Sweden. By deploying a Citrix XenDesktop with HDX 3D Pro solution built on NVIDIA-equipped Dell servers, the firm has eliminated the need to bring all of a project’s engineers together in the same location, and to equip them with professional CAD workstations. Now, engineers in any location can form teams, access common files and collaborate remotely in real time. Among other benefits, new project lead times have been reduced from three weeks to one or two days, and Knightec’s ability to quickly assemble teams has allowed it to take on larger projects. The centralized graphics virtualization solution has also delivered dramatic improve-ments in CAD application performance, including a 400 percent decrease in calculation time for Ansys.

• TURKISH AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES — Ankara-based Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) serves as Turkey’s design, development, manufacturing and modernization center for all forms of inte-grated aerospace systems and vehicles. TAI is in the process of more than doubling its base of 1,500

engineers at its central facility, and has deployed a graphics-accelerated virtual desktop and application solu-tion incorporating NVIDIA, Citrix and Dell technologies. TAI engineers use hardware ranging from thin clients to advanced workstations, and as many as eight engineers can share a single GPU without compromising graphics performance. Resources can be easily shared and transferred among users as their individual requirements change, project to project. The virtualized graphics solution is allowing TAI to expand its base of engineers rapidly while avoiding the prohibitive costs of buying and maintaining workstations and graphics cards for each engineer.

• ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY — A leading independent university in Rhode Island, Roger Williams University (RWU) has deployed a virtualized graphics solution to support students in its architecture program. The solution incorporates Dell PowerEdge servers, Citrix XenServer

and NVIDiA’s GPU virtualization technologies, and runs CAD applications including Autodesk’s AutoCAD and Adobe Creative Suite 6. RWU’s earlier attempts to deliver virtualized graphics solutions to students suffered from various performance problems. “As soon as we had more than eight to 10 people connected, the frame rates in 3D renderings just go way down and get jumpy,” explained James Galib, RWU’s IT director. With the shared GPU technology now in place, even students working with low-end client devices are getting worksta-tion-quality graphics performance.

For more information on how your organization could benefit from virtualized graphics and shared GPU solutions, go to:

Citrix: Citrix.com/XenDesktop/3d

Dell: www.dell.com/workstationvirtualization

NVIDIA: www.nvidia.com/vdi