VMware Joins Hands With NVIDIA to Deliver Secure, High Quality 3D Graphics From the Cloud

We spoke to Ramesh Vantpalli, Head of EUC & Systems Engineering Manager South, VMware India and Sundara Ramalingam, Head - Manufacturing and Energy Industries, NVIDIA to understand this new collaboration initiative and how it helps graphics-intensive industries

How this new initiative is going to change the market for graphics virtualization?

Desktop virtualization has been around for years but of late with the surge in cloud computing, it has gained renewed vigour. The latest trends around Digital Workspaces suggest that customers want graphics applications such as AutoCAD, 3D, healthcare applications, etc to be available across any device comfortably. They want to have an exceptional graphics performance through a virtual desktop as well and we felt that it is difficult to achieve that on the software base and that it was time we actually partnered with NVIDIA to ensure we provide the same exceptional experience for a particular 3D application no matter what the device.  That is where NVIDIA helped us to come up with a capability called GRID vGPU. It is the most advanced technology for sharing 2 GPU hardware acceleration between multiple virtual desktops. We’re actually running the datacenter and this technology technically helps us to deliver high performance without compromising the user experience.  Some of the use cases what we have seen from customers today is in industries like real estate, manufacturing, healthcare, where information is intellectual property. For example, if a design gets leaked out it is disastrous for their business. Think about it, I am designing an image which is basically very proprietary in nature like a car manufacturer if that information gets leaked out, there is a huge potential loss.  So how do we ensure that the data security is maintained and the information is centrally located so that users can access the information but at the same time the information is highly secured inside the datacenter. Second use case, what we see in big time is collaboration, because usually what happens is when they are working on high end 3D graphics it is practically not easy for people to work on heavy designs like a ship design. Accessing these particular images in each PC is a technical challenge, because each person needs to download the entire image before he starts working on it and likewise the other person also needs to download for his set of changes. This makes collaboration very difficult. In this technology what happens is, since this entire information is located in the datacenter and the people who are remotely connecting into the virtual desktop from any device, the data is inside the datacenter and everybody is able to access it from his device. The collaboration has become much, much easier in terms of accessing this information.

For the end user are you able to provide high quality graphics to work upon?

Yes, and if I want to share information with my colleagues, he can instantaneously see the information that I am working on. For example, I can collaborate more easily with him, share my screens with him and he can also support me in terms of the information.  In case if he wants to access the information also he does not need to download the GBs of data into his machine, he will be able to connect easily and then access the information.

For instance, if my engineer’s here in Bangalore and he has to show his design to a supplier or a vendor, then the only way to do it earlier was to send images, maybe pictures or to send him the file. He then has to download it and needs to have the software installed in his machine at the required location in order to visualize it and he needs to have the expertise to open the file and operate upon it in order to visualize it.  That is not necessary today. The native data resides in the datacenter, software relates to the datacenter, the license to run the software also relates to datacenter in Bangalore. My collaborator who sits in daily, all he needs is his laptop. He or my friend who is assisting him there can access the native data which is residing in Bangalore and he can have the same experience as if the workstation is sitting on his desk and then collaborate or visualize it and the data does not travel from Bangalore to Delhi.

The idea is very simple.  Instead of allowing the workstation, it’s an individual graphics card to sit on each individual’s desk. It is removed from the individual’s desk and entire workstation is consolidated inside the servers in the datacenter. And irrespective of whatever device you are using and irrespective of whichever location you are in, this technology enables you to have same experience that you were getting from your own local workstation. For graphic interface applications like designing, creating interior designs, visualizing interior design, it gives exactly the same experience as working on digital workstations.  Only for those specialized subset of workloads, which needs high I/O, lot of talk happens in the storage, centralized storage and the workstation, only for them we actually see an improvement in performance.

Would VMware be hosting this technology and giving it out on say rent as in a software as a service model?

We have an offering called Horizon Air.  The beauty in Horizon Air is, we actually provide two kinds of services to our customers, one is he can completely run this entire environment in a cloud, wherein they don’t need to buy any infrastructure and endpoint you can just connect to the cloud and access desktops and Apps. That is usually called as DAAS, Desktop as a Service.  And we offer a high end 3D graphics desktop also as a part of this. This service is more available in countries like US, Europe and Australia.  In India this service can be offered to VSPP partners called VM Service Provider Partner Program.  And the second used case is, in most of the countries technologies called Enzo from VMware is used. This technology is very uniquely developed for customers like we just explained.  So your execution point is locally located in your office, in a local app through your datacenter but the entire control can be managed through cloud, like a service.  We still have a subscription based model wherein you pay as a monthly subscription but this technology will allow you to manage your entire environment in the public cloud but execution of your desktop, videos, audios, graphics, etc. can run locally on your Hyper Converged Appliances.