The modern workplace is no longer confined to the four walls of an office. Today’s businesses thrive on agility and empower their workforce to be productive from anywhere in the world. Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), a game-changing cloud-based solution from Microsoft, addresses this need by offering a revolutionary desktop and application delivery approach.
Imagine a scenario where your London-based employees can access their essential work applications and data – from industry-specific software to custom internal tools – regardless of their physical location. This is precisely what Azure Virtual Desktop facilitates. By leveraging Microsoft’s robust Azure cloud infrastructure, AVD delivers virtual desktops and applications that are:
- Secure: Data and applications reside within the highly secure Azure environment, minimising the risk of data breaches or unauthorised access. This is particularly crucial for businesses operating in regulated industries or handling sensitive information.
- Accessible: Employees can access their virtual desktops and applications from any device with an internet connection. This empowers a truly mobile workforce, allowing them to be productive from the office, home, or travelling.
- Simplified Management: For your IT team, managing user access, applications, and updates becomes a breeze. AVD offers a centralised platform for streamlined administration, saving valuable time and resources.
Cost savings on Microsoft RDS Licensing and IT Infrastructure with Azure Virtual Desktop
- The complete decommissioning of the on-premises RDS Setup eliminates RDS Client access licensing costs and any compute storage and networking costs associated with the RDS environment. You save money on expenses like power and utilities related to their RDS deployment.
- Reinvesting new servers to continue running on-premises RDS includes direct server hardware costs and Infrastructure maintenance fees.
- Cost reduction on employer-provisioned PCs. Employees or Contractors preferred to use their own devices for work. Azure Virtual Desktop enabled companies to allow bring-your-own-device (BYOD) in the environment without security trade-offs.
Benefits of using Azure Virtual Desktop
In today’s competitive landscape, staying ahead of the curve requires a solution that fosters a secure, productive, and cost-effective work environment. Here’s how Azure Virtual Desktop can transform the way your London-based business operates:
- Enhanced Security: Azure’s built-in security features safeguard your data and applications. Say goodbye to concerns about data loss on employee devices or the risks associated with traditional remote access solutions. AVD encrypts data at rest and in transit, ensuring only authorised users can access your virtual desktops and applications. Furthermore, Azure’s multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security, requiring users to verify their identity beyond just a username and password.
- Empower BYOD (Bring Your Own Device): With AVD, employees can utilise their personal laptops, tablets, or even smartphones for work purposes without compromising security. This fosters a flexible work environment that caters to today’s mobile workforce. Employees appreciate the convenience of using their preferred devices, while your IT team has peace of mind knowing that corporate data remains secure within the Azure cloud.
- Improved User Experience: Users experience a consistent, high-performance desktop environment regardless of their device. Whether they access their virtual desktop from a high-end workstation or a basic laptop, AVD delivers a seamless and responsive experience. This translates to a smoother workflow, increased productivity, and a happier workforce.
- Reduced Costs: Eliminate the need for expensive hardware upgrades or maintaining a vast physical desktop infrastructure. With AVD, you can ditch the traditional desktop lifecycle management, freeing up valuable IT resources for strategic initiatives. AVD offers a pay-as-you-go model, allowing you to scale your virtual desktops up or down depending on your business needs. This flexible approach optimises your IT budget and ensures you only pay for the resources you utilise.
- Improved Scalability: Easily adapt your virtual desktop environment to accommodate a growing workforce or fluctuating workloads. With AVD, you can quickly provision new virtual desktops or decommission unused ones, ensuring your IT infrastructure scales seamlessly with your business. This agility allows you to respond to changing market demands and seize new opportunities without being hindered by IT limitations.
- Simplified Application Management: Centrally deploy and manage applications across your virtual desktops, ensuring everyone has access to the latest versions of the tools they need. This eliminates the need for manual application installations on individual devices, saving valuable IT resources and ensuring consistency across your virtual desktop environment. Additionally, AVD integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365, allowing you to deliver a unified cloud-based experience for your users.
- Disaster Recovery: Azure’s inherent redundancy ensures business continuity even during an unexpected outage. Your virtual desktops are automatically replicated across geographically dispersed data centres within the Azure cloud. If a localised issue occurs, your virtual desktops remain accessible from another location, minimising disruption. This level of reliability translates to peace of mind for your business and ensures your operations remain uninterrupted.
Azure Virtual Desktop Prerequisites
To successfully set up and run your Azure Virtual desktop, you need the following components: If you buy or use us as your Cloud Solution Provider, we help you set everything up.
- Windows 10 Enterprise for each AAD user or qualified Microsoft 365 subscription for each user
- Active Azure Active Directory (AAD) Tenant
- Active Azure Subscription
- Azure Active Directory Domain Services ( Azure AD DS)
- Storage Account with Azure file Share
- A Remote Desktop Client
Beyond the Basics: Advanced Features of Azure Virtual Desktop
While the core functionalities of AVD cater to a wide range of business needs, it also offers advanced features that can further enhance your virtual desktop experience:
Multi-session Support: AVD allows you to leverage Windows 10/11 Multi-Session capabilities, enabling multiple users to share a single virtual machine instance. This maximises resource utilisation and can significantly reduce costs, particularly for scenarios involving less resource-intensive applications.
- Application Groups: Organize your applications into logical groups for easier deployment and management. This allows you to assign specific application sets to different user groups based on their requirements. For example, you might create a separate application group for your marketing team that includes creative design software. At the same time, your finance department receives an application group containing accounting and financial analysis tools.
- RemoteApp Streaming: Deliver individual applications directly to users’ devices without needing a full virtual desktop environment. This is ideal for situations where users only require access to specific applications and do not need the full functionality of a Windows desktop. RemoteApp Streaming offers a lightweight alternative, reducing bandwidth usage and improving performance for users with limited internet connectivity.
- Custom Desktops: Create custom virtual desktops tailored to your business needs. You can pre-install essential applications, configure settings, and personalise the user experience to streamline workflows for different departments or user roles. This ensures that users have immediate access to the tools and resources they need upon logging into their virtual desktop.
- FSLogix Profile Management: Simplify user profile management with FSLogix, a technology that separates user profiles from the virtual desktop. This lets users maintain a personalised desktop experience with their settings and preferences roaming across virtual desktop sessions or devices. FSLogix also streamlines desktop rebuilds and migrations, minimising downtime and ensuring a seamless user experience.
Getting Started with Azure Virtual Desktop in London
Unlock the potential of a secure, flexible, and scalable work environment with Azure Virtual Desktop. Server Consultancy, a leading IT solutions provider based in London, can help you explore the benefits of AVD and determine if it is the right fit for your business. Our experienced team possesses in-depth knowledge of Azure cloud technologies and extensive experience deploying and managing AVD solutions for businesses of all sizes.
We offer a comprehensive range of services, including:
- Azure Virtual Desktop Assessment: We will work closely with you to understand your business needs and assess how AVD can be leveraged to optimise your work environment.
- Deployment and Configuration: Our team will handle the entire AVD deployment process, from initial configuration to user setup and application deployment.
- Ongoing Support and Management: We provide ongoing support to ensure your AVD environment runs smoothly and efficiently. This includes proactive monitoring, performance optimisation, and user support.
Contact Server Consultancy today to schedule a consultation and discover how Azure Virtual Desktop can empower your workforce and propel your business forward. With our expertise and Microsoft’s innovative AVD solution, you can create a secure, flexible, and cost-effective work environment that fosters productivity and innovation within your London-based business.
AVD is a license-free cloud-based virtual desktop solution for companies running Microsoft 365. It enables employees to securely access corporate desktops, files, and applications through the cloud without requiring customers to invest in on-premises environments.
Azure Virtual Desktop could reduce your ongoing IT infrastructure cost when migrating from on-premises Remote Desktop Services to Azure Virtual Desktop. Windows Virtual Desktop improves latency and connectivity issues experienced by end-users in the on-premises RDS environment while making security response more effective at remote sites.
What is Azure Virtual Desktop used for?
Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based desktop and application virtualisation service that allows users to access a virtual desktop from anywhere, on any device, at any time. It provides a complete virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in the cloud, enabling users to remotely run Windows desktops, applications, and other resources.
Azure Virtual Desktop is used for a variety of purposes, including:
Remote work allows employees to access their desktops and applications from anywhere, enabling remote employment and improving productivity.
Application delivery: It provides a way to centrally manage and deliver applications to users without installing them on each device.
Secure access: Azure Virtual Desktop provides a fast and scalable way to access virtual desktops and applications, with features such as multifactor authentication and conditional access policies.
Flexible scaling allows organisations to quickly increase or decrease the resources they need, enabling them to respond rapidly to changes in demand.
Cost-effective: Azure Virtual Desktop can be a cost-effective solution for virtual desktop infrastructure, eliminating the need to purchase and maintain on-premises infrastructure.
Overall, Azure Virtual Desktop is a powerful solution that enables organisations to provide secure, remote access to desktops and applications, with flexibility and scalability, to meet changing needs.
What is the difference between Azure VM and a virtual desktop?
The main difference between an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) and a virtual desktop is that an Azure VM is a virtualised computing resource that provides access to an entire operating system and can be used for various purposes, including hosting applications, web servers, databases and more. In contrast, a virtual desktop is a wholly virtualised environment that can be accessed remotely.
An Azure VM is a virtualised computer that gives users access to a complete operating system, allowing them to run software and applications like a physical computer. Azure VMs can host various workloads, from basic web applications to large-scale databases and machine learning models. Azure VMs can also run virtual desktop infrastructure, providing users with a fully functional desktop experience that can be accessed remotely.
On the other hand, a virtual desktop is a complete desktop environment hosted on a server and accessed remotely from a thin client or another device. It provides users with a whole desktop experience, including access to applications, data, and other resources, regardless of their device. Virtual desktops are often used when users need to access their desktops and applications from different locations or devices or where multiple users need access to a familiar desktop environment.
In summary, while Azure VMs and virtual desktops are virtualised computing resources, the main difference is that Azure VMs provide access to a complete operating system and can be used for various purposes. In contrast, virtual desktops provide a completely virtualised desktop environment that can be accessed remotely from any device.
Is Azure Virtual Desktop a VDI?
Yes. Azure Virtual Desktop is a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution. VDI technology enables a desktop operating system, such as Windows, to run on a virtual machine hosted on a server in a data centre or cloud environment. Users can access the virtual desktop environment using remote access technologies from any device, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based VDI solution that allows users to access a virtual desktop environment hosted in the cloud. It provides a complete VDI infrastructure, including desktops, applications, and other resources that can be accessed remotely. Azure Virtual Desktop also supports a range of deployment scenarios, including pooled and personal desktops and session-based desktops.
Azure Virtual Desktop is designed to be highly scalable and flexible, allowing organisations to add or remove virtual machines quickly based on their needs. It also includes advanced security features, such as conditional access policies, multifactor authentication, and integration with Azure Active Directory to help ensure that data and applications are accessed only by authorised users.
Overall, Azure Virtual Desktop is a powerful and flexible VDI solution that can help organisations provide secure, remote access to desktops and applications. It is also scalable and flexible enough to meet changing needs.
Is Azure Virtual Desktop a VM?
The answer is yes. Azure Virtual Desktop is built on top of virtual machines (VMs).
Azure Virtual Desktop provides a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution, which enables users to access a virtual desktop environment hosted in the cloud from any device. This is achieved by deploying virtual machines in Azure, which are then used to provide virtual desktops and applications to end users.
Azure Virtual Desktop creates and manages the virtual desktop environment using various Azure services, including virtual machines, storage, networking, and Active Directory. Depending on their specific needs, each user or group can have a dedicated virtual machine or share a pooled virtual machine.
Azure Virtual Desktop also provides management and automation tools to help administrators deploy and manage the virtual desktop infrastructure. These include the Azure portal, PowerShell, and other automation tools.
Overall, while Azure Virtual Desktop is not a virtual machine itself, it is built on top of virtual machines and uses them to provide the virtual desktop environment to end-users
How does Azure Virtual Desktop work?
Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution that enables users to access a virtual desktop environment hosted in the cloud. Here’s how it works:
Deployment: To set up Azure Virtual Desktop, administrators must deploy virtual machines in Azure, which will provide the virtual desktop environment to end-users. These virtual machines can be either Windows 10 multi-session or Windows Server-based.
Configuration: Once the virtual machines have been deployed, administrators can configure the virtual desktop environment using the Azure portal, PowerShell, or other automation tools. This includes setting up user profiles, installing applications, configuring access policies, and more.
Access: Once the virtual desktop environment has been configured, end-users can access it from various devices, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Users can access the virtual desktop environment using a Remote Desktop client, a web client, a virtual desktop client, or integrated solutions from third-party vendors.
Management: Azure Virtual Desktop provides various management and automation tools to help administrators manage the virtual desktop environment. This includes monitoring performance, applying updates and patches, managing user profiles, and more.
Security: Azure Virtual Desktop includes advanced security features to help protect data and applications. This provides integration with Azure Active Directory, multifactor authentication, conditional access policies, and more.
Overall, Azure Virtual Desktop is designed to be a flexible, scalable, and secure VDI solution that enables organisations to provide virtual desktop environments to their users from the cloud. Using Azure Virtual Desktop, organisations can reduce costs, improve flexibility, and provide a consistent user experience across various devices and platforms.
Which operating systems does Azure Virtual Desktop support?
Azure Virtual Desktop supports various operating systems for virtual machines and devices that access the virtual desktop environment. Here are some of the main operating systems that are supported:
Virtual machines: Azure Virtual Desktop supports Windows 10 multi-session and Windows Server-based virtual machines. These virtual machines can provide a range of virtual desktop environments, including full desktops, remote apps, and persistent and non-persistent virtual desktops.
Access devices: Users can access the virtual desktop environment using various devices, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and web browsers. The specific operating systems supported will depend on the device and the method used to access the virtual desktop environment.
Applications: Azure Virtual Desktop supports various applications, including Microsoft and third-party applications. These applications can be installed on virtual machines and made available to users through the virtual desktop environment.
Overall, Azure Virtual Desktop is designed to be a flexible and scalable VDI solution that supports a wide range of operating systems and devices. By supporting multiple operating systems, organisations can offer a consistent user experience across different devices and platforms.
How do I access Azure Virtual Desktop?
There are several ways to access Azure Virtual Desktop, depending on your needs and devices. Here are some standard methods:
Remote Desktop client: You can use the Remote Desktop client to access Azure Virtual Desktop from a Windows or Mac device. You must download and install the Remote Desktop client software on your device and then connect to the virtual desktop using the Azure Virtual Desktop URL.
Web client: Azure Virtual Desktop also includes a web client that can be accessed from a web browser. This allows you to access the virtual desktop environment from any web browser, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Virtual desktop client: Microsoft provides a dedicated virtual desktop client that can be used to access Azure Virtual Desktop from various devices, including Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. This client is free and can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
Integrated solutions: Some third-party vendors provide integrated solutions for accessing Azure Virtual Desktop, such as Citrix Workspace or VMware Horizon. These solutions may offer additional features and functionality, such as advanced management tools, improved performance, and support for other operating systems.
Accessing Azure Virtual Desktop is relatively easy and can be done from various devices and platforms. The specific method you choose will depend on your needs, the devices you are using, and any additional features or functionality you require.
How can you reduce costs with Azure Virtual Desktop?
You can reduce costs with Azure Virtual Desktop in several ways. Here are some options.
Right-size virtual machines: Virtual machines are used in Azure Virtual Desktop to provide users with desktops and applications. You can save money on resources by choosing the correct size of the virtual machine. For example, if you use a virtual machine with a high amount of memory but your applications don’t require much, you can switch to a smaller virtual machine that meets your needs. This will reduce costs as you only pay for the resources you need.
Use Reserved Instances: Azure Virtual Desktop supports Reserved Instances, which offer significant discounts for committing to use specific virtual machines for a one- or three-year term. This can result in substantial cost savings, especially for applications with predictable usage patterns.
Auto-shutdown virtual machines: If your employees work only during specific times of the day, you can consider scheduling the virtual machines to shut down outside of working hours. This can be done manually or using automation tools such as Azure Automation. This will help save costs as you only pay for the resources used.
Leverage Azure Hybrid Benefit: If you have already purchased Windows licenses, you can use Azure Hybrid Benefit to apply those licenses to Azure Virtual Desktop. This can result in significant cost savings as you only pay for the virtual machine, not the license.
Use third-party solutions: Azure Virtual Desktop supports a range of third-party solutions that can help you reduce costs, such as using file storage solutions for user profiles and data or monitoring and analytics tools to identify areas of cost savings.
These are just a few options available to reduce Azure Virtual Desktop costs. By optimising the resources used, committing to use reserved instances, scheduling virtual machine shutdowns, leveraging license benefits, and using third-party solutions, you can make the most out of Azure Virtual Desktop and save on costs.
