This blog post guides you through the process of migrating or deploying Azure Virtual Desktop. We’ll highlight its benefits, step-by-step migration process, and deployment best practices.
In brief:
- Deploying Azure Virtual Desktop offers you a scalable, secure, and cost-effective solution for delivering virtual desktops and apps in the cloud.
- AVD is more customizable and cost-flexible than Windows 365, making it ideal for complex or variable environments.
- To successfully deploy AVD, you need to carefully assess the premigration requirements, plan your resources, and align it with security and compliance frameworks.
- You need to consistently optimize AVD — including autoscaling, session monitoring, and cost management — to maintain performance and return on investment (ROI).
Deploying Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is one of the most strategic moves an organization can make to enable secure, flexible, and scalable remote access to corporate applications and desktops. Whether you’re migrating from traditional infrastructure or setting up a new virtual desktop environment, you’ll need to understand the deployment process, key benefits, cost considerations, and security implications.
AVD is a cloud-based desktop solution that reduces infrastructure costs, enhances information technology (IT) agility, and simplifies secure access for employees, contractors, and remote teams.
Compared to traditional virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) systems or Microsoft’s own Windows 365, AVD offers greater customization, scalability, and pay-as-you-go pricing.
This blog post guides you through how to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop — from initial planning and infrastructure assessment to migration, optimization, and ongoing management. We’ll also compare AVD with Windows 365, discuss real-world use cases, and outline best practices for ensuring performance and compliance.
The Basics of Azure Virtual Desktop
First, let’s discuss the basics of AVD: what it is, how it compares to the traditional Microsoft 365, and why you might choose it over different options.
What Is Azure Virtual Desktop?
Azure Virtual Desktop provides virtualized desktops and applications securely in the cloud using Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). It’s accessible through any home or commercial network using a personal or government device that runs Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android.
Core components include Azure virtual machines, which are typically Windows desktops or applications, and session hosts, host pools, app groups, and Azure Active Directory (now Microsoft Entra ID), which houses role-based access control.
Unlike traditional VDI solutions, AVD doesn’t require any on-premises infrastructure, complex hardware setup, expensive equipment, or significant ongoing maintenance. Azure Virtual Desktop setup is faster and can often be done entirely remotely.
Windows 365 vs. Azure Virtual Desktop
For existing Microsoft users, Windows 365 is a familiar platform. Let’s quickly compare flexibility, control, cost structure, and different licensing requirements between Windows 365 versus Azure Virtual Desktop.
Windows 365:
- Focused on cloud environments
- Minimal management complexity
- Scalability is one cloud PC per user
- Fixed monthly per-user pricing
- Limited customization
- Requires a Microsoft 365 license
Azure Virtual Desktop:
- Best for personal virtual desktops
- Requires more management control
- Highly scalable
- Cost is pay-as-you-go based on consumption
- Extremely customizable
Competitors vs. Azure Virtual Desktop
My colleague Chris Thompson, Centric Consulting Azure Cloud Lead, has decades of experience working with Azure Virtual Desktop’s competitors. He says platforms like VMware and Citrix have annoyed their user bases with licensing and user management changes, and as a result, “There’s a high degree of frustration with them right now.”
Key Benefits of AVD
AVD offers a wide variety of benefits over Microsoft 365 and other VDI solutions. These include more control, more flexibility in consumption and costs, the ability to pull resources, and minimal infrastructure and ongoing maintenance. AVD also offers more advanced and complex security features, simplified management, and pay-as-you-go pricing models.
Azure Virtual Desktop Real-World Use Cases and Applications
AVD is a popular solution for businesses that need scalable, flexible controls for fluctuating workforces. For call centers with shifts or high turnover, seasonal fluctuations, or a migration to remote work, AVD helps improve productivity, offers secure access to corporate data and applications, supports end users, and empowers the IT team to transform the workplace.
Let’s explore some of the real-world use cases of Azure Virtual Desktop.
Flexibility for Remote Work
A company moving away from a physical headquarters to a dispersed, remote work setup still needs to provide the same level of security to all endpoint devices. AVD helps ensure the most secure access across hundreds of employees and potentially thousands of devices.
Security for Contractors
Perhaps your business is hiring seasonal contractors during a busy time. AVD helps onboard contractors securely and, with the help of Active Directory (AD), maintains crucial granular security controls for file and application access.
Once you’re ready to offboard these seasonal workers, AVD helps ensure secure offboarding.
Compliance in Regulated Industries
For companies that comply with industry standards like HIPAA, GDPR, or ISO/IEC 27001, AVD offers more access, encryption, audit logging, and security controls to help maintain compliance in highly regulated industries such as finance, retail or healthcare.
Seamless Mergers and Acquisitions
AVD helps support a seamless, disruption-free transaction for IT environments during mergers and acquisitions.
For example, we helped Carbonite, an online backup recovery service, quickly migrate and deploy a complex internal and external web portal landscape and applications for themselves and a recent acquisition. AVD provided scalability, speed, and security on Microsoft Azure products with minimal disruption to our client’s customers and employees.
Now that you understand the basic definition, benefits, and use cases for a virtual desktop, let’s discuss how to plan to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop.
How to Deploy Azure Virtual Desktop: Essential Considerations
Any major migration is daunting. But with careful planning and consideration, your team can assess your current infrastructure, plan resources appropriately, and ensure a robust security and compliance framework after implementation.
But first, you’ll need to assess AVD itself to ensure it fits your requirements for cloud migration.
Predeployment Assessment
Start by taking inventory of different desktops, apps, licenses, and dependencies, and evaluate what requires unique compliance, offline access, or continual high performance.
Review your existing usage and start defining your business and technical requirements. Evaluate the number of users, desktop access, security needs, potential legacy infrastructure limitations, and your budget. Your careful assessment and documentation gathering help lay the foundation for a successful migration.
Resource Planning and Optimization
It’s essential to plan resources accurately. If your organization lacks internal IT expertise, consider outsourcing to an outside expert vendor to get help. Understand how many host pools, session hosts, and application groups you’ll need to ensure optimal performance and cost efficiency.
Security and Compliance Framework
Your organization likely has unique compliance features tailored to your industry’s specific standards and regulations. You’ll want to carefully consider identity and access management for secure user access, decide on data encryption, and optimize or explore any existing threat detection and response tools.
Now that your team and business are ready for your AVD deployment, here’s a step-by-step guide to bringing this to life.
Azure Virtual Desktop Setup: From Migration to Management
From migration to management, deploying AVD requires adequate preparation, smart deployment, and ongoing optimization.
Deploy Azure Virtual Desktop: A Step-by-Step Guide
Here’s a brief step-by-step guide to get you started.
- Create an Azure subscription, and connect your Azure AD or on-premises identity platform. Connect a virtual network to your domain controller.
- Create and deploy a host pool by defining your session hosts and virtual machines.
- Configure your application groups by assigning users who will have access to this desktop experience.
- Set up FSLogix to maintain consistent and compliant user profiles on all session hosts.
- In Active Directory, assign users to different groups.
- Tell employees to download the Remote Desktop client.
- Apply any additional conditional access, multifactor authentication, or role-based user access you need to secure and optimize your environments.
- Closely measure and monitor performance and make adjustments as needed. For example, implement autoscaling to reduce costs during nighttime or off-hours.
Optimize Your AVD Performance
Once you have successfully deployed AVD, you need a consistent and ongoing optimization process to ensure the best possible user experience while maintaining cost efficiency.
Check out Microsoft Cost Management for detailed usage statistics and ways to stay within your budget better. Monitor usage and security closely, and receive regular feedback from your end users.
Azure Virtual Desktop setup is not a set-it-and-forget-it process, so follow these best practices for ongoing maintenance:
- Track user activity and session issues.
- Continually review performance load and established autoscaling rules if necessary.
- Update patch management software to keep infrastructure up to date.
- Review and reinforce multifactor authentication for end users.
- Established performance baseline so you can quickly spot unusual activity, spikes in traffic, or other anomalies.
Now, you might feel pretty confident about managing and optimizing Azure Virtual Desktop. Let’s discuss how to get started and talk to an expert about a migration.
Consider Microsoft AVD
If you’re looking for a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective virtual desktop infrastructure, Microsoft AVD is an excellent option for modern businesses.
Whether your business needs enhanced security, more remote access, or simply wants to reduce costs and migrate away from its existing, expensive hardware, start your transition to AVD today.
First, carefully assess your existing infrastructure, applications, and licenses to establish your current state. Work through resource and budget allocation and planning, keeping all stakeholders involved throughout the process. Successful deployment requires careful planning, thorough testing, and ongoing optimization.
Whether you’re facing a merger or acquisition, transitioning to a hybrid or remote workforce, or experiencing any other changes that make virtual desktops and cloud the natural solution, consider Azure Virtual Desktop.
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