RDP Performance Improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

By Matt McSpirit - virtualboy. Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist for Virtualization;
http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit

Hat-tip to the RDS Team Blog for this one.

One of the biggest requests I’m hearing around RDS in 2008 R2 and Windows 7, is for RDP performance information and benchmarks.  For those interested, it’s a close call on requests for this information, or for RDS Sizing guidance.  The sizing guidance is coming soon, trust me!

So, back to the RDP Performance Improvements, to quote the RDS Team…

“As with Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2, virtual machine-based desktop virtualization faces increasing performance challenges when enterprises attempt to use this technology to support a globally distributed workforce. A key consideration of performance relates to Remote Desktop protocol efficiency which continues to present an issue for bandwidth constrained environments. This limitation can manifest itself by limiting the number of users who can access virtualized desktops (user density) over available bandwidth, and with a degraded user experience. Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 7.0, similar to previous RDP versions, provides a competitive experience for low bandwidth (e.g. 56 Kbps) connections. After bandwidth requirements, network latency is the second fundamental challenge for customers and partners that wish to deploy virtualized desktops for a broad range of end-users and applications”

Very true indeed.  If you’d have said, 18 months ago, you can play a rich multimedia video over RDP, and it wouldn’t be jerky, out of sync etc, people would have laughed at you, yet that laughter would have been mostly based on older iterations of RDP, and it’s traditional, functional use within an infrastructure.  Fast forward to now, with RDP7, that kind of experience is a reality, but would I expect that level of rich experience over all connectivity types, fast and slow?  No, inevitably not.  As you’d expect, the experience would degrade, especially over the WAN, which could, as the paragraph above suggests, degrade the experience for others too.  Therefore, understanding the RDP protocol in the latest release is pivotal when evaluating an RDS infrastructure.

So, back to the whitepaper…

“With the release of the Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 operating systems, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is more feature rich, enabling new presentation and remote-oriented functionality such as accelerated bitmap rendering, multi-media redirection streaming, and network topology awareness. As these features become integrated in the enterprise environment, it is important to analyze and understand their impact on your current network infrastructure and the end-user experience. This paper details the various RDP features and the potential improvements to usability and quality of the end-user remoting experience, as well as system deployment metrics. To test the impact of different features and compare RDP 7.0 to the previous RDP 6.1 version, we performed a variety of tests by using automated and simulation tools to demonstrate the user scenarios outlined in this white paper. These tests are broken down into two broad groups: a set that simulated a user working with actual Microsoft® Office applications at realistic speeds, and a set of multi-media scenarios that simulated a rich media environment commonly expected by today’s and tomorrow’s users.

To test the impact of different features and compare RDP 7.0 to the previous RDP 6.1 version, we performed a variety of tests by using automated and simulation tools to demonstrate the user scenarios outlined in this white paper. These tests are broken down into two broad groups: a set that simulated a user working with actual Microsoft® Office applications at realistic speeds, and a set of multi-media scenarios that simulated a rich media environment commonly expected by today’s and tomorrow’s users. In addition, some of the scenarios have been run at increased network latencies to demonstrate the viability of using RDP in distributed environments, such as in Branch offices or telecommuting scenarios where broadband capabilities exist”

There’s actually some very useful information in the whitepaper, particularly around what tweaks you could make to your user experience to optimise the bandwidth utilisation.  One thing I found useful, is the frame-rate achieved with Silverlight content, versus Flash, at different colour levels:

I really didn’t know that!

This, and other useful bits of info, are available in the whitepaper.  Check it out now!