RemoteFX (SP1) Countdown to support

Question

Ok…. So now that Windows 7 SP1 and 2008R2 SP1 have been released to 'partners' is the 30 day countdown for Quest/vWorkspace support already started or does it start as of public release on the 22 nd of this month? Also… What level of support for RemoteFX/Dynamic memory are we expecting to see with the initial support? XP client support for RemoteFX? – Critical for us! We’re just in the process of tendering for the hardware to support up to 600 RemoteFX enabled VMs due to be in production by September… 80% of our end-points will be XP based for at least 12 months so XP support is critical for us. We know MS have given the means for hardware and software vendors to develop their own hardware/software decoders so what is Quest’s position on this? Also are we expecting to see software decoding support on the Linux (thin clients being the main use case here) and OS X connectors any time soon? Also as we’re expecting to have an RDS SP1 (remotefx without GPU) infrastructure to support up to 2000 connections by September – again 80% (or more) of the clients will be XP based! Dan.

DELL-Jon Ro · Answer

Actually, SP1 works great with vWorkspace 7.2, but we will of course be adding a few more features to make management easier in the near future, especially Dynamic Memory.

We are an RDP and RemoteFX licensee, but in terms of what clients will support RFX, we will only support what Microsoft supports, at least for now. If you're using the RemoteFX encoder on RD Session Host, then that will be supported by any RDP 7.1-capable client. So, if you have the latest RDP client on your Windows desktop, then the Quest AppPortal will use that and you'll get RemoteFX support. Note that RemoteFX on RD Session Host is an alternative set of compression codecs that are primarily intended for use with pure RemoteFX thin client devices. We can set up a time to talk if you want to go over this in more detail.

dbolton · Answer

Hi Jon, Cheers for the reply… I’ll be happy to 'chat' at some stage but for now… Do you know if MS are planning on updating RDP for XP? - I’m guessing not. Until RemoteFX decoding is supported on Windows XP I really don’t see it being used at scale in the short-term. Who is going to upgrade their XP end-points just to connect to the back-end? I know it is a new feature and nobody is expecting huge deployments from day one but by not supporting XP it will hold up rollouts even longer. - We're one of the few that see a huge use for it - hence the tender to support up to 600 VMs. Our approach (like many) for a large percentage of our users is to keep our current XP environment running and co-existing with rds/vdi for some time before we’re in a position to repurpose/replace existing machines. Soon approaching is our cut-off date for any further application/system development on XP and post XP cut-off all apps will be delivered as remote/seamless apps or full screen remote desktops (where that makes sense). – We have too much legacy baggage tied to XP for at least 8 – 12 months! This is our 'migration phase' currently underway. We’re at least 12 months away (if not longer) from being able to remove XP for good for all users. Some of our apps need protocols like RemoteFX (not just solitaire) to be accepted by our users. Windows XP (client) support would be a perfect area for Quest to add value to RemoteFX! - And I'm pretty sure wouldn't be that difficult - I have oodles of faith in your devs! Interested to hear what the plans are for Linux and OS X clients too – as MS don’t really support these yet as end-points go, deployments are increasing rapidly. Cheers, Dan.

prit1 · Answer

Agree with Dan , having seen the RemoteFX Demo - a XP RFX and Linux RFX in academia would be a very possitive step

dbolton · Answer

Citrix also agree with Dan - *Sike*...

vWorkspace

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