Surgient Success

I ran the URT test on a system with mutiple monitors and received all green checks.  I've also used other applications previously which all tested fine, but when it came to run them the muti-monitors prevented successul use.  Are multiple monitors supported?  I can see that the instructor would benefor greatly from having dual monitors - one for the VTMS interface, one for Centra and or other applications such as the Blackboard interface.

Thanks again for the heads up,

Best, HiEdTechie

Interesting! I have never used dual monitors before. May be some kind of drivers are required to support multiple monitors. I would like to confirm this.

Regards,

Praveen. 

Praveen,

Do you mean dual monitors with vitualization?  I would assume that you are now able to access multiple virtual machines on a single monitor so extending them to multiple monitors would serve to improve your IO.  Not sure where I obtained the figure, but I've told folks that a dual monitor setup has increased my personal productivity no less than 30%.  But on occasion I bet it is more~!

Regards, HiEdTechie

Yes, I meant dual monitors with virtualization. Thank you for clarifying. I can see why the productivity increases withe the multiple monitor support (saves lot of time by keeping the files or applications open that used on a frequent basis). I did not realize that this can be done with virtual machines too.

Thanks,

Praveen. 

I'm not sure where the 30% figure comes from, but I too will attest to the power of multi-monitor.  Don't believe it?  Try it.  Don't think you increased your productivity?  Try it for a few weeks and then get rid of the second monitor.  You'll go crazy!  ;)

Not sure exactly what your problem or question is.  But I will say, I used to use my Surgient and my virtualization environment with dual monitors all day long.  I'd have my Surgient management interface on one screen with my application on the other.  I could manage things on one and easily remote into my virtual machines on the other monitor.  Dual monitor makes perfect sense for a trainer in a classroom environment.

I wonder how this dual monitor works if a user works on a thin client instead of a fully built desktop?

- Praveen. 

DavidMarshall:

Dual monitor makes perfect sense for a trainer in a classroom environment.

This is exactly the feedback I was hoping for.  Great news indeed!

Dual monitors are great.  I use them everyday.  Windows XP comes with the drivers for dual monitors.  You may have to intall a dual monitor card in your PC for the functionality.  Wouldn't go back to a single monitor.  Definitely increases productivity. 

I'm not so sure I understand this one.  I assume that just as with any typical Windows install that mutiple windows are available within the virtualized environment as is a large screen resolution such as 1900x1200, etc..  So it is just a matter of the user's system having the proper hardware (and driver set) configuration to enable the spread of these windows to both monitors.  Right?

Best, HiEdTechie

I am sorry for not clearing this before. There is a requirement that came up in my environment for doing a POC on implementing the thin clients with the virtualization. Basically a user will not be using a physical desktop anymore, but will be working on a Thin client, basically a terminal connected to LAN. The virtual machines are expected to be deployed to these terminals. So coming back to my question, since these terminals do no have the required hardware, is there any specific driver that needs to be installed on the VM to support dual monitor?

HiEdTech,

URT is testing is limited to network connectivity requirements.  I don't believe screen resolution is tested much less detection of dual monitors. The discussion of multiple monitors for productivity is interesting, but keep in mind that RDP is limited to presenting one remote screen.  Having that one screen on one of your local screens is helpful if you want to continue working on the another screen and toggle between the two. RDP 6 even supports spanning a remote session across desktops.  We currently do not package RDP 6 because of the steep minimum requirements.  Existing RDP 5 is limited to a maximum resolution of 1600x1200.  I'm not sure what Citrix's limits are.

Virtual machines only emulate one virtual video card so there is at most only one remote virtual screen.  Interestingly there are some solutions out there to split out a huge physical screen (30+" screen) simulating dual screens so "maximize" is more constrained.  And there are solutions that let you "borrow" a second screen over the network if your laptop doesn't have a video out connector (video out over IP).

None of the above, except extra productivity from two local screens applies to a virtual environment.

As more and more people find the hidden treasures of using multiple monitors, this will change within the virtualization world as well.  I'm not certain, but I believe VMware Workstation is the only one that currently supports multiple monitors in a virtual machine.  I suspect that people will continue to ask for this support, and it will have to be added into ESX Server at some point, especially as people leverage ESX for pushing out client desktops.

David,

You are correct that VMware Workstation 6 is currently the only product that supports multiple monitors.  Xen, Microsoft and Parallels currently do NOT but I expect Citrix to change that for Xen soon.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is driving a lot of change currently in the remote desktop experience, if you want to read about how VDI is shaking things up read this link:

Remote display protocols for VDI: will RDP be enough?

The indy bloggers that cover this space fairly well are David, Brian Madden, Douglas Brown (DABCC) and Rowdy Bob.