NFDI4BIOIMAGE subproject on VDI showcased at the 10th bwHPC Symposium
The Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) subproject, aimed at enabling remote access to complete desktop environments for data analysis and visualization near large data sets, was showcased at the 10th bwHPC Symposium (High-Performance Computing Baden-Württemberg ), held on September 25-26 in Freiburg (https://indico.scc.kit.edu/event/3981/). The team presented their work on the general architecture of the proposed access gateway and details on framebuffer capture, endocing and SPICE transport.
The Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) subproject, aimed at enabling remote access to complete desktop environments for data analysis and visualization near large data sets, was showcased at the 10th bwHPC Symposium (High-Performance Computing Baden-Württemberg ), held on September 25-26 in Freiburg (https://indico.scc.kit.edu/event/3981/). The team presented two posters: one outlining the general architecture of the proposed remote access gateway and another detailing the processes of framebuffer capture, encoding, and SPICE transport. Additionally, a lightning talk was delivered on the requirements for long-term scheduling in OpenStack across various VDI use cases.
The team also demonstrated a functional prototype of the access gateway, highlighting its effective remote access to cloud-hosted virtual machines (VMs) with 3D rendering capabilities.
The symposium brought together researchers and infrastructure providers to discuss scientific developments and future projects under the bwHPC and bwCloud initiatives, which aim to offer large-scale digital infrastructure to researchers in Baden-Württemberg. The event emphasized
sustainability and energy efficiency in high-performance computing, cloud computing, and research data management. It featured workshops, tutorials, scientific presentations, and opportunities to engage with senior researchers already utilizing these advanced computational resources. New solutions for managing and accessing large-scale data were also introduced.
Based on discussions and feedback during the event, further development steps for the access gateway will be taken. The team aims to present an advanced version at the upcoming 1st Base4NFDI User Conference (UC4B2024) in Berlin ((https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/)), scheduled for the end of November. Additionally, connections were established with potential collaborators to explore joint initiatives and new opportunities.
Together, these results render an important step forward in the development of open-source solutions for Virtual Desktop Infrastructures.