Microsoft VDI: allows users to seamlessly access their rich and full fidelity Windows environment running in the datacenter, from any device. Microsoft VDI is powered by upcoming Windows Server 2012. With Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012, organizations get the following benefits:
 

• 1 Platform: Windows Server 2012 provides a single platform to deliver any type of hosted desktop, making it simple to deploy and easy to manage.
• 1 Experience: RemoteFX provides a consistently rich user experience, irrespective of what type of virtual desktop is being accessed, or where the users are accessing their desktops from.
• 3 deployment choices: RDS can host either Session based desktops, pooled VMs or personal VMs. So customers have the flexibility to deploy the right type of VDI desktop for their users, all from a single platform.

Some of the benefits of Microsoft VDI in Windows Server 2012

Efficient Management: Quick Deploy helps customers get started with VDI fairly quickly and easily, in just a few clicks, customers can set up a basic VM or session based VDI; thereby reducing the complexity associated with setting up such an environment. The RDS administration console has been greatly simplified so that IT has plenty of options to setup and manage users, sessions and VMs from a single console. Intelligent patching and scanning thru task randomization makes sure no single server gets inundated at the same.

Best value for Virtual Desktops:Fairshare ensures that no single VM or session hogs machine resources thereby providing high system performance. Hyper-V provides an enterprise grade hypervisor platform that has been designed to host large VDI deployments. RDS now supports various lower cost storage, such as SMB based file shares, or Direct Attached Storage (DAS); hence storing VMs is now cheaper, as customers do not have to rely on expensive storage area networks (SANs).

Rich Experience Everywhere: RemoteFX now supports software GPU which is able to encode and decode graphics and multimedia which provides the same rich experience as a physical GPU. RemoteFX provides superior user experience with support for both LAN and low bandwidth high latency WAN networks, and with capabilities like USB redirection and multi-touch remoting. RDS provides critical solutions for IT teams in a business environment that prioritizes flexibility, improved compliance and continuity, and simplified management and delivery.

Components and hypervisors

The full range of features available in the Microsoft VDI Standard Suite and Microsoft VDI Premium Suite includes the scalable and stable high-performance Hyper-V Server 2012 hypervisor, the Microsoft System Center integrated management suite including Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, as well as technologies for application virtualization (Microsoft App-V) and Remote Desktop Services (RDS) for session virtualization including Microsoft RemoteApp. Dynamic desktop delivery can be accomplished with either Citrix XenDesktop or Microsoft's own native VDI connection broker.

Microsoft RDP and RemoteFX

Access to Remote Desktop and RemoteApp is handled by the Microsoft RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) standard protocol; the Microsoft RemoteFX protocol extension (as of RDP 7.1) enhances the local user experience. The improved RemoteFX (RDP 8) that comes with Windows Server 2012 is also WAN-compatible and offers better USB and multimedia redirection.