Microsoft: Use Hyper-V for VDI

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that Microsoft prefers customers to leverage its own hypervisor technology for their virtual desktop infrastructure needs and not rival solutions.

But the company has taken it one step further, providing a whitepaper titled “Hyper-V for VDI” in which it argues the case for Hyper-V.

According to the software giant, the Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 hypervisor-based virtualization technology is more than capable of satisfying any VDI needs that companies might have.

‘The best hypervisor for VDI is one that allows IT to implement VDI solutions that are easy to engineer, easy to tune, easy to manage and support, and cost-effective to deliver,” Microsoft stated.

“Based on the results obtained from internal testing and because VM density has a significant influence on datacenter cost structures; an integrated Citrix/Microsoft VDI solution that includes Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 and System Center delivers unique end-to-end business value for organizations planning on implementing VDI.”

Microsoft recently released the first service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2. Obviously, with the advent of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RTM, the platform’s hypervisor role was also kicked up a notch.

In fact, the two new features introduced with this upgrade are designed specifically to enhance VDI solutions.

While on the client side SP1 did not deliver anything new beyond patches, bug fixes and optimizations, on the server side it came with RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory.

“Dynamic Memory lets you pool available physical memory on the host and dynamically allocate that memory to virtual machines based on workload needs,” the Redmond company stated.

By taking advantage of Dynamic Memory customers will be able to cut down the investment in server hardware necessary for hosting virtual assets.

“RemoteFX lets you provide users with a rich user experience when accessing virtual desktops from a broad range of endpoint devices,” the software giant said.

With this new feature, endpoint devices in VDI environments can feel more like fully fledged PCs, meaning that users can enjoy Silverlight content, run 3D apps and even add the eye candy and functionality of Windows Aero.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM Build 7601.17514.101119-1850 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM are available for download here.