What is COE-VDI?
COE-VDI is a Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure. Using Omnissa Horizon software, it provides a flexible Windows desktop experience for students currently enrolled in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington Seattle Campus.
Each COE-VDI session is hosted on our Omnissa Horizon cluster and provides the operating system and all necessary software as part of the desktop environment. Each session is created on-demand and provides a clean workstation environment for each user when they log on.
Who can use COE-VDI?
The virtualized desktop infrastructure engineering pool is currently available to students and instructers registered in an Engineering course for the current quarter. There is also a separate resource pool for all UW Seattle students and faculty as resources allow. Since the VDI cluster is funded via STF, it is restricted to educational use only. Research use is not allowed.
Why use COE-VDI?
COE-VDI allows COE Students to access a managed workstation like they may find in their department’s student computer labs. COE-VDI desktops can be accessed from anywhere using the Omnissa Horizon Client or COE-VDI webpage.
In addition to improved accessibility, COE-VDI can help give students access to university licensed software from anywhere, using any device with an Internet connection.
What are the hardware specs?
COE-VDI is composed of multiple Virtual Machine pools. The two main pools are ENGR-GPU and UW-Basic. The hardware assigned varies on the pool used.
ENGR - 4 vCPUs from an AMD EPYC™ 9354 processor, and 18GB of RAM.
ENGR-GPU - 4 vCPUs from an AMD EPYC™ 9354 processor, 18GB of RAM, and access to an NVIDIA L40S GPU with 3GB of VRAM.
ENGR-HIRES - 8 vCPUs from an AMD EPYC™ 9354 processor, 20GB of RAM, and access to an NVIDIA L40S GPU with 6GB of VRAM. This pool is more designed for students engaged in capstone projects and its availability is based on if extra resources can be pulled from the ENGR-GPU pool
UW-Basic - 4 vCPUs from an AMD EPYC™ 9354 processor and 12GB of RAM.
Quick-Start Connect to COE-VDI
For more in-depth instructions, please see: Getting Started with COE-VDI.
COE-VDI may be accessed both on and off campus using various devices. Logging in with your UW NetID, you may access the COE-VDI VM pools by using either the Omnissa Horizon Client or the COE-VDI webpage.
- HTML access (easiest)
- Most web browsers are supported
- Omnissa Horizon Client (preferred)
- Windows, MacOS, and Linux clients are available
How to request access
Engineering pool access is enabled by default for students and instructors enrolled in a engineering affiliated course for the current quarter. Basic pool access is enabled for all instructors and students at the UW Seattle campus.
Faculty or students needing access may need to contact the COE-VDI help desk (you must use a UW or Gmail email address).