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High Performance Graphics with Scale – Enabled by VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU

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Delivering an easy and manageable user experience with great performance is key to a successful desktop virtualization implementation. For those with demanding graphics requirements, accelerated graphics play a pivotal role in that great user experience to enable architects, engineers, designers and power users to create and manipulate large 3D graphics datasets within applications, such as CAD or PLM software. Until recently, however, options for delivering those graphics capabilities in a virtual environment have been limited.

The newly announced NVIDIA GRID vGPU support on the VMware vSphere and Horizon 6 platforms allows organizations in the vast VMware ecosystem to deliver rich graphics capabilities to their users. While VMware has supported a dedicated graphics (vDGA) and shared graphics (vSGA) architecture for some time, the support of GRID vGPU allows customers to truly achieve the full benefits of shared graphics.  vGPU provides the best of both worlds – high user density and high performance – to Horizon 6 users.

Dell has worked in lock-step with VMware and NVIDIA to enable VMware customers to embrace this innovation. In line with the announcement by VMware and NVIDIA, Dell now supports vGPU on VMware through its Wyse Datacenter for VMware Horizon 6 solution. Through the Early Access Program announced at VMworld 2014, organizations have already begun adopting this next generation platform and are seeing significant benefits.

University of Southern California (USC) is one such customer. By adopting vGPU on the VMware Horizon View and vSphere platforms powered by the Dell PowerEdge R720, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering was able to share a single GPU across multiple users without any sacrificing compatibility or user experience. Additionally, USC was able to better allocate computer resources to drive higher user density on each vSphere host.

Great graphics performance is now attainable in a virtual desktop environment. Stay tuned to Dell as we continue to collaborate with our partners to offer greater choices to customers looking to embrace accelerated graphics.

About the Author: Jeff McNaught

Jeff McNaught is the Vice President of Marketing at Dell Cloud Client- Computing. Jeff is widely considered the most quoted spokesperson for cloud client-computing in the world. With the experience of hundreds of speaking engagements, articles and press interviews, he is considered an authority on the topics of green IT, cybersecurity, mobility, desktop virtualization and cloud computing. He joined Dell in 2012 as part of the Wyse acquisition and now leads end-to-end desktop virtualization marketing and strategy efforts with his talented team. Jeff joined Wyse in 1987 as an engineer, then led various strategy, development, marketing and general management roles where his most notable achievement was co-inventing and spearheading the development of the award-winning Wyse thin clients, now with tens of millions of units in use worldwide. He lives in El Dorado Hills, Calif., and earned his M.B.A. from Pepperdine University.