Guaranteeing a cost-effective, secure, and efficient way to support your remote workforce has become vital for all organizations, considering today’s unprecedented events and challenging circumstances. Microsoft Azure alleviated some of this pressure by unveiling the 2020 Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) product offering last June.
AVD works in the cloud and combines virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), Remote Desktop Service (RDS), and App Virtualization. Azure Virtual Desktop allows companies to maintain desktop images, applications, and users; while relieving them of worrying about managing RDS gateways, licensing, and load balancing.
While all this may sound impressive, you may be wondering how AVD can practically help your organization. This list outlines our favorite benefits of implementing Azure virtual desktops.
- Great Potential / Range of Use:
The range of use potential for AVD is vast, limited only to your needs and imagination. Here are some ways to use AVD in your network.- Virtual desktops can be provided to remote workers, allowing users to securely utilize their desktops from home – a clear benefit in today’s workplace.
- Legacy applications can be installed on a AVD host and published to a specific and select group of users, minimizing needed management and maintenance.
- AVD is a worldwide service that deploys hosts in multiple regions to support your users wherever they are located around the globe. The provision of virtual desktops within the same geographic area guarantees a more satisfactory user experience.
- Departments with higher computing power requirements can be given different compute and storage performance SKUs for various sets of users. Organizations can set up AVD training environments to test new applications or settings.
- Easier Management of Infrastructure: The AVD service manages RDS components such as Gateways, Brokers, and Licenses. Companies will therefore only be required to oversee users, applications, and virtual machines. If Microsoft 365 licenses are already in place, AVD licensing for Windows 10 is included.With the Spring 2020 AVD release, the AVD components are now identified as Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resources. Conveniently, these resources are managed within the Azure portal or through PowerShell. Automated scaling allows for powering on and off AVD hosts based on session counts and peak hours, saving money by powering off idle virtual machines – and powering them back up as users begin logging in for work.
- Runs on Windows 10 Multi-Session: AVD can be hosted on Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows Server 2012R2, 2016, or 2019. However, we believe that a significant benefit of AVD is the availability of the Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-Session Operating System.This OS support permits multiple users to access a single Windows 10 VM. The multi-session capability results in tangible cost savings compared to other VDI platforms. With typical VDI solutions, single users are assigned a dedicated machine. Windows 10 multi-session with AVD allows multiple users to access a pool of desktops, sharing both resources and expenses.
- User Profile Capability and Maintenance: User profile shared storage is a necessity for pooled Windows 10 multi-session desktops to work efficiently. Because an individual user may access a different virtual machine each time they log in, their user profile must be available to respond.Azure File Storage works in concert with FSLogix to effectively meet this challenge. The user is not aware they are utilizing a remote profile- the profile appears local to their machine. Profile management is performed by FSLogix, which is installed on the VM image. Configuration settings are monitored through group policy. This solution easily manages user profiles without the need for roaming profiles or folder redirections. Additionally, synchronization conflicts do not occur as profiles are directly accessed from the remote location.As a bonus, Azure File Storage share can also be backed up to an Azure Backup Recovery Services vault and replicated to multiple regions, creating redundancy.
Are you ready to learn more? The IT professionals at Alliance IT are trained and ready to help you install Azure Virtual Desktop at your organzation – in fact, some of our Sarasota clients have already deployed the solution. Let’s talk!
