People often compare the experience they get using a physical workstation with the experience they get when working in a Remote Desktop session environment – but they forget that almost all physical workstations and even laptops these days contain a GPU. They forget to add a GPU to their remote desktop session hosts and are surprised by the less-than-stellar user experience. Comparing a GPU-backed user experience to one that only uses the CPU is comparing apples to oranges. The folks at REX Analytics decided to show this - and then they leveled the playing field... REX Analytics first compares user [...]

Windows Virtual Desktop is Generally Available! So it's been an exciting trip from the time Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) was announced last year until now.  Today all the hard work of the Microsoft RDS team pays off. WVD is now generally available! Here are some important datapoints: Here is the big announcement Listen to Scott Manchester talk about: The production release of WVD Using FSLogix technology to attach user profile data AppAttach (in preview) AV Redirect for Teams (in preview) A new way to  lift-and-shift file shares into Azure easily WVD uses Azure Traffic Manager to route incoming connections through [...]

Well, this is huge news: Microsoft acquired FSLogix! We did some extensive testing of FSLogix with Outlook and Skype for Business a while back, which clearly showed the value add of FSLogix. Claudio also wrote a whitepaper on how FSLogix can be used to complement UPDs or even replace it completely.  And now these capabilities are all under one roof. From an RDS / WVD perspective this is great. Read more about the acquisition here: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/11/19/microsoft-acquires-fslogix-to-enhance-the-office-365-virtualization-experience/  

RDS Gurus is thrilled to welcome end-user computing heavy hitter Cláudio Rodrigues to our team. Long time Citrix CTP, Microsoft MVP and entrepreneur with several companies under his belt (see his bio for the details) he brings a wealth of industry knowledge, technical skill and business sense to RDS Gurus. Welcome aboard, Cláudio!

Here is the link to the latest news on the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility & Security blog. This download is not an upgrade to the old one, so as stated on that blog post, don't delete your old app if you want to migrate your connections! Install the new app, migrate your connections, then uninstall the old app. Report issues by going to the Help menu!  

RDS Gurus is happy to welcome Esther Barthel to our ranks. Esther is a Citrix CTP, Microsoft MVP and Netscaler Extraordinaire! She brings vast EUC experience and knowledge to RDS Gurus and we are going to use all of it to further the interests of our client base. Check out her bio here. Welcome aboard Esther!

For those of you who missed the tweet, Freek is giving a talk about how to use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) to deploy Parallels RAS. Sign up here: Creating a Parallels RAS High-Available Deployment in Microsoft Azure in 30 Minutes Hurry, the talk is tomorrow, November 2, at 10AM PDT! And if you can't make tomorrow, Freek will give another talk on November 7th at 11am CET. Come learn how Freek leverages the power of Azure to deploy a high-availabile Parallels RAS IaaS deployment. This is exciting stuff folks!  - Great automation and a really fast deployment.    

If you did not see the session at Microsoft Inspire, this is big news: The new RDS "modern infrastructure" is announced, as well as the new HTML 5 web client. Check out the announcement here: Today at Microsoft Inspire–Next generation architecture for RDS hosting and be sure to sign up for the technical preview! I went ahead and signed up through the survey form, and FYI: "Due to the limited number of slots available, we may not be able to provide opportunities to all interested customers at this time. We will let you know about the status of your request by end [...]

We have been asked more than once for documentation on the RDP protocol, UDP transport, RD Gateway protocol, etc. So we have put a list together of this kind of documentation. RDP Protocol Specifications are at MSDN. Go to the  MSDN Library > Open Specifications >. Then go to navigate to Protocols > Windows Protocols > Technical Documents> The RDP specs are way down in that list under [MS-RDP…] [MS-RDPADRV]: Remote Desktop Protocol: Audio Level and Drive Letter Persistence Virtual Channel Extension [MS-RDPBCGR]: Remote Desktop Protocol: Basic Connectivity and Graphics Remoting [MS-RDPCR2]: Remote Desktop Protocol: Composited Remoting V2 [MS-RDPEA]: Remote [...]

For those interested in learning how much it might cost you to move your Azure RemoteApp deployment or your on premises RDS deployment to XenApp and XenDesktop on Azure, here's a cost calculator to get you started. https://costcalculator.azurewebsites.net/costCalculator This tool takes two paths: Extend your current Citrix deployment into Azure, or move to Azure and let the new Citrix Cloud Service do the heavy lifting (more on Citrix Cloud here).