Finally, the long wait is over and Microsoft virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution "Windows Virtual Desktop" preview is now available in Azure. If you ever worked with on-premises VDI solutions such as Microsoft RDS or Citrix solution, you may already know how much planning, management involve with it. It is costly as performance & availability of the solution depends on so many things such as networking, hardware resources, skills, connection, etc. But now with a cloud-based solution, we can create a robust, scalable VDI solution with few clicks.
According to Microsoft we can do following with Windows Virtual Desktop,
- Set up a multi-session Windows 10 deployment that delivers a full Windows 10 with scalability
- Virtualize Office 365 ProPlus and optimize it to run in multi-user virtual scenarios
- Provide Windows 7 virtual desktops with free Extended Security Updates
- Bring your existing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Windows Server desktops and apps to any computer
- Virtualize both desktops and apps
- Manage Windows 10, Windows Server, and Windows 7 desktops and apps with a unified management experience
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/virtual-desktop/overview
Windows Virtual Desktop's Key capabilities are recognized as following,
- Create a full desktop virtualization environment in your Azure subscription without having to run any additional gateway servers.
- Publish as many host pools as you need to accommodate your diverse workloads.
- Bring your own image for production workloads or tests from the Azure Gallery.
- Reduce costs with pooled, multi-session resources. With the new Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session capability exclusive to Windows Virtual Desktop and Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) role on Windows Server, you can greatly reduce the number of virtual machines and operating system (OS) overhead while still providing the same resources to your users.
- Provide individual ownership through personal (persistent) desktops.
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/virtual-desktop/overview
Windows Virtual Desktop preview setup required following,
- Azure Active Directory – Windows Desktop Machines must join to the Azure AD in the stranded method. It can't be Azure AD-Join
- Virtual Desktop only should be Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session or Windows Server 2016/2019
- OS should have one of the following licenses – Microsoft E3, E5, A3, A5, Business Windows E3, E5, A3, A5
- VM should be using subnet which has a connection to the same virtual network as Azure AD.
- Azure AD & VM should be in the same region.
As same as any other VDI solution, user experience has a huge impact from "connectivity". Therefore Microsoft says,
- Round-trip (RTT) latency from the client's network to the Azure region where host pools have been deployed should be less than 150 ms.
- Network traffic may flow outside country borders when VMs that host desktops and apps connect to the management service.
- To optimize network performance, we recommend that the session host's VMs are collocated in the same Azure region as the management service.
There are few new terms related to the Windows Virtual Desktop setup, let's see what are they.
|
Term |
Description |
|
Tenant |
It is the primary interface for managing Windows Virtual Desktop environment. Each tenant must be associate with Azure Active Directory instance. |
|
Host pools |
Host pool is collection of virtual machines which will serve the users as session hosts. each of machine in the pool should have same OS and configuration. Host pool operations can categorize in to two types,
|
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App Groups |
App group is a logical group which includes applications installed in host pool’s sessions hosts. There are two types of app groups,
When a host pool is created, by default system generates a desktop app group called “Desktop Application Group”. A host pool only can have one desktop app group but it can contain multiple remote app groups.
In this demo I am only going to use desktop app group. I will be writing another blog post to cover remote apps.
|
|
Tenant Groups |
Tenant groups help to manage multiple Windows Virtual Desktop tenants at once. This is helpful if you are a service provider. |
In this blog post, I am going to demonstrate how to set up a desktop application group. before start let's see how is the environment looks like.
In my demo setup, I have Azure AD Domain Service enabled for tenant rebeladmlive.onmicrosoft.com
This is set up under resource group called AAD and it is using subnet called AAD-vnet
I also set up a subnet called AAD-VM for session hosts.
