Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations have realized the value of having systems in place that enable flexibility in the face of change. Higher education IT teams are tasked with achieving agility, often with considerable financial constraints.
Even more challenging is providing secure, reliable, and performant remote access to high-graphics workloads and apps. Many universities and colleges face hard choices because of costs and technical complexity that come with the graphically demanding work many courses require.
What Are High Graphics?
Computer-based 3D design and modeling courses help students develop crucial technical skills across disciplines such as manufacturing, electronics, and even data management. Additionally, the generative design, simulation, and computer gaming sectors offer attractive career prospects.
In higher education, software applications that power work in these areas of study typically fall in one of these categories:
- Computer-aided design (Autodesk’s AutoCAD and SolidWorks CAD)
- Video editing and graphic design (Adobe Premier Pro and Final Cut Pro X)
- Game design and development (Unreal Engine 4 and GameMaker Studio 2)
Each of these apps or programs can be considered “high-graphics workloads” because they depend on graphics processing units (GPUs).
The Challenge for Higher Education IT
Educational institutions face specific challenges around delivering high-graphics solutions successfully, usually around access, security, and performance.
- Access: Remote access to physical hardware investments on a campus has been critical when in-person attendance is limited. A reliable, simple method to connect from home to virtual or physical machines, either on premises or in the cloud, is essential.
- Security: Identifying the staff and students who should get access to resources in a way that is secure, consistent, and auditable is difficult. They’re working from different locations and on different devices, while authentication processes must be integrated and seamless to ensure an excellent user experience.
- Performance: If access is unified, consistent, and secure but does not enable a great experience, the solution will not be popular. Performance issues are highlighted even more so when it comes to using high-graphics applications because symptoms like lag caused by latency are difficult to ignore. Traditional tools like remote desktop protocols and SSL VPNs can provide basic access but suboptimal security and poor performance.
Physical or Virtual? It’s All About Choice!
If we take a simplistic view of infrastructure architecture when looking to deliver graphical services, we essentially end up with two choices — investment in physical GPUs or consumption-based costs on a cloud platform.
- Physical Graphics Cards/Gaming PCs: Physical GPUs can be made available as local 1:1 installation on dedicated machines with their own local operating system (for example, 50 standalone Windows 10 PCs, each with their own dedicated GPU).
- Virtual Graphics Processing (virtualized or streamed): Alternatively, we can pool our physical GPUs through virtualization (for example, five servers with higher spec GPUs, offering greater user density and flexibility).
The key differentiator with virtual graphics processing is that it can occur on premises in your own datacenter or you can pay-as-you-use in someone else’s datacenter (public cloud). Physical and virtual options are not mutually exclusive either; you can combine both physical on premises with the ability to burst to the cloud and scale out when required.
Citrix and High Graphics
Citrix offers several technologies that can help universities and colleges deliver high graphics to their students.
Citrix Workspace
Alongside published applications and file access, Citrix Workspace can be the front door for accessing virtual machines on premises or in the cloud, from any device, in any location. Even if you don’t have the Citrix Workspace app for Windows, Mac, iOS or Android installed, you can use a web browser to gain access to apps and desktops. Authentication on Citrix Workspace can be directly bolted to your existing Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, or other identity providers like Google and Ping.
Citrix HDX
With Citrix HDX, you can optimize screen content encoding for 3D graphics workloads. The Citrix platform intelligently recognizes the network traffic and video codecs to optimize the performance and frame rates in real time*. Even if there are fluctuations in bandwidth on a very poor network connection, the frame rates are maintained as a priority over momentary image quality adjustments. This efficiency significantly reduces bandwidth dependency and makes the user experience much more resilient to networking changes when working remotely.
In addition to HDX, you can offload and cache the graphics processing to the local device to add a few extra horsepower to the final delivery of the application to an endpoint. The combination of these technologies ensures a market-leading user experience when consuming a high-graphics workload.
HDX gives you the ability to fine tune visual quality, compression, and frame rates to suit the different high graphics use-cases.
Remote PC Access
If you’re licensed with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (Adv/Premium), you’re entitled to a feature called Remote PC Access.
Remote PC Access can be used to make physical machines available through Citrix Workspace. For example, a gaming PC can be made available to a student working from home in the same unified secure experience as virtual desktops, apps, and files. This integration enables admins to cover a plethora of scenarios with the same approach to management, security, and delivery of systems and services with a single plane of glass.
Summary
The successful provision of high graphics capabilities in higher education is dependent on several factors that can create complexity.
Citrix can help universities solve access, security and performance challenges and flexibly accommodate the different scenarios of existing and future investments in graphical capabilities. Citrix has proven technologies to provide learners with the right tools, in a reliable, secure and fast way. Historically, highly graphical systems have been associated with powerful apps, but other applications like Microsoft Teams and even operating systems rely heavily on a GPU to functional properly.
Learn more about Citrix Workspace, Remote PC Access, Citrix HDX, and Citrix’s education technology solutions. For more information on how Citrix can help you and your organization build a strategy to approach and deliver high graphics workloads successfully, contact your Citrix sales rep today!
*Requires a supported GPU on VDA and client
