Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop - Some best practices

Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop to the public some weeks ago. An nearly every week, Microsoft is adding new features and regions with gateways.

While all this happens, there is still some space for third-party vendors to give WVD more value-add. I covered some of our solutions in a blog post in the past month and will list this later. 

Mainly, my free community solution "WVD Admin GUI" gave me a deep insight into designing and building a WVD regarding performance and cost - and I'm happy to share this information.

The "secret" about Ephemeral disks

If you build a VM in Azure, you have to decide what kind of disk you want to use for the VM. There are different types available: From spinning HDD up to Ultra SSD. Each type differs regarding costs and performance. While the Azure VM doesn't produce cost in a deallocated state, the disk produce cost the whole time.

Ephemeral disks worked differently: An ephemeral disk only exists on the hypervisor itself using the fast Hypervisor storage, which has not to be paid. Meanwhile, the disk is very fast. It has approximately a five-time higher performance than SSD premium disks.

On the other hand: Azure VMs using ephemeral disks cannot be deallocated. They have to delete. And if the underlying hypervisor fails, the VMs are destroyed. What normally is not an option for application services running on VMs is perfect for a well designed WVD environment while sessions hosts should be state-less.

The "Windows Client licensing"

It's documented but not known by everybody: You can use a unique licensing scenario for your session hosts running in Windows Virtual Desktop. This licensing model can set by PowerShell or (more comfortable) if you deploy session hosts with my WVD Admin GUI.

But what do you save? You save the costs for the Windows OS, which you usually pay with your VM. I checked some VM types, and this is around 48%. It's amazing. It's comparable to the advantages of hybrid benefits.

Check, if you can use this licensing feature: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/apply-windows-license

Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop

A small agent running on each session hosts collects hundreds of relevant metrics to send it to Azure Monitor. Regarding classic monitoring, these metrics are relevant to the user experience and the applications the users run. The Analytics enables administrators and business owners to analyze performance, sizing and user experiences deeply at each time frame in the past and for the lowest expenses.

Project MySmartScale

The Microsoft Azure Cloud offers its customers the possibility to start and deallocate resources on demand. This is crucial in a WVD environment: Sessions hosts should be online a few minutes before the users try to connect and should deallocate fast after the last session has logged off. This is important to get the best ration between costs and performance. And the clue: The solution solves this challenge automatically and very smart.

WVD Administration GUI

This completely free Windows application gives administrators that what they need to administrate WVD, build new custom images and rollout several session hosts in minutes - including domain and WVD join. The advantage lies in the simplicity of use. For example, creating a new image is very easy: A template VM can be updated - e.g., with Windows updates and new applications - and a new image will be created with a click. The template VM itself is always retained and is not dissipated by the generalization.

More information and download: