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Azure Virtual Desktop
Succinctly
By
Marco Moioli
Foreword by Daniel Jebaraj
Copyright © 2022 by Syncfusion, Inc.
2501 Aerial Center Parkway
Suite 200
Morrisville, NC 27560
USA
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-64200-222-5
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Technical Reviewer: James McCaffrey
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Table of Contents
The Story Behind the Succinctly Series of Books ................................................................. 7
About the Author ..................................................................................................................... 9
Chapter 1 Introduction ...........................................................................................................10
What is Azure Virtual Desktop? ............................................................................................10
The reason why ....................................................................................................................11
The business values .............................................................................................................11
On-premises VDI vs. Azure Virtual Desktop .........................................................................13
Licensing ..............................................................................................................................13
Technical advantages...........................................................................................................14
Cost advantages ..................................................................................................................16
Windows 10 multi-session ...............................................................................................16
Linux rates .......................................................................................................................16
Extended support included ..............................................................................................18
Avoid license double counting..........................................................................................19
Publishing layer ...............................................................................................................20
Main adoption scenarios.......................................................................................................21
Migration of an existing solution .......................................................................................21
Support of legacy applications .........................................................................................21
Implementation of new use cases ....................................................................................21
Chapter 2 Architecture ..........................................................................................................23
A simple architecture ............................................................................................................23
Pooled vs. personal ..............................................................................................................25
Identity .................................................................................................................................28
End user connection .............................................................................................................29
4
Azure Portal .........................................................................................................................30
Virtual machine sizing...........................................................................................................31
Network sizing ......................................................................................................................32
Scaling logic .........................................................................................................................33
FSLogix ................................................................................................................................34
MSIX app attach ...................................................................................................................38
Disaster recovery and business continuity ............................................................................41
Microsoft Teams optimization ...............................................................................................42
How to print ..........................................................................................................................43
Service monitoring................................................................................................................45
GPU workloads ....................................................................................................................46
Image Builder and Shared Image Gallery .............................................................................48
User support.........................................................................................................................50
RDP Shortpath .....................................................................................................................51
Start VM on connect .............................................................................................................52
Chapter 3 Security .................................................................................................................54
Reverse connection ..............................................................................................................54
Multifactor and conditional access ........................................................................................55
Service tag ...........................................................................................................................56
Web category control............................................................................................................57
Antivirus and anti-malware ...................................................................................................60
Security baseline ..................................................................................................................61
Azure Security Center ..........................................................................................................61
Azure Defender for Storage ..................................................................................................62
Redirection control ...............................................................................................................63
Security controls ...................................................................................................................64
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Screen capture protection ....................................................................................................65
Chapter 4 Image Optimization ...............................................................................................67
Virtual Desktop Optimization Tool ........................................................................................67
Logon blur prevention ...........................................................................................................67
Microsoft Edge tabs optimization ..........................................................................................70
Chapter 5 How to Build a Laboratory ...................................................................................72
Automatic .............................................................................................................................72
Manual .................................................................................................................................75
Chapter 6 Value-Added Partners ..........................................................................................84
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops with Azure .........................................................................84
VMware Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure .............................................................85
Thin clients ...........................................................................................................................87
Lakeside ...............................................................................................................................87
Nexthink ...............................................................................................................................88
Nerdio ..................................................................................................................................89
Chapter 7 Windows 365 .........................................................................................................91
Windows 365 Business ........................................................................................................92
Windows 365 Enterprise.......................................................................................................93
Resources ...............................................................................................................................98
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................99
6
The Story Behind the Succinctly Series
of Books
Daniel Jebaraj, CEO
Syncfusion, Inc.
S taying on the cutting edge
As many of you may know, Syncfusion is a provider of software components for the
Microsoft platform. This puts us in the exciting but challenging position of always
being on the cutting edge.
Whenever platforms or tools are shipping out of Microsoft, which seems to be about
every other week these days, we have to educate ourselves, quickly.
Information is plentiful but harder to digest
In reality, this translates into a lot of book orders, blog searches, and Twitter scans.
While more information is becoming available on the internet and more and more books are
being published, even on topics that are relatively new, one aspect that continues to inhibit us is
the inability to find concise technology overview books.
We are usually faced with two options: read several 500+ page books or scour the web for
relevant blog posts and other articles. Just as everyone else who has a job to do and customers
to serve, we find this quite frustrating.
The Succinctly series
This frustration translated into a deep desire to produce a series of concise technical books that
would be targeted at developers working on the Microsoft platform.
We firmly believe, given the background knowledge such developers have, that most topics can
be translated into books that are between 50 and 100 pages.
This is exactly what we resolved to accomplish with the Succinctly series. Isn’t everything
wonderful born out of a deep desire to change things for the better?
The best authors, the best content
Each author was carefully chosen from a pool of talented experts who shared our vision. The
book you now hold in your hands, and the others available in this series, are a result of the
authors’ tireless work. You will find original content that is guaranteed to get you up and running
in about the time it takes to drink a few cups of coffee.
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Free forever
Syncfusion will be working to produce books on several topics. The books will always be free.
Any updates we publish will also be free.
Free? What is the catch?
There is no catch here. Syncfusion has a vested interest in this effort.
As a component vendor, our unique claim has always been that we offer deeper and broader
frameworks than anyone else on the market. Developer education greatly helps us market and
sell against competing vendors who promise to “enable AJAX support with one click,” or “turn
the moon to cheese!”
Let us know what you think
If you have any topics of interest, thoughts, or feedback, please feel free to send them to us at
[email protected].
We sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book and that it helps you better understand the topic
of study. Thank you for reading.
Please follow us on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook to help us spread the
word about the Succinctly series!
8
About the Author
I am a Cloud Solution Architect who really enjoys technology.
My goal is to enable Microsoft partners to understand new products
and solutions, create compelling offerings, and deliver the project
following the most advanced best practices.
I spent more than 17 years at Microsoft covering multiple roles in
different business units. For the first 10 years, I was in the field in
the role of consultant/architect. Next, I spent four years as a pre-
sale engineer. I’m currently part of the One Commercial Partner
division that is responsible for partner enablement.
I was always involved in projects related to Windows migration (the first one was Windows 2000
Professional to Windows XP) and management products like Microsoft SMS 2.0 (which became
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager). I also had the opportunity to contribute on a
project related to data center virtualization and workplace virtualization.
In 2019 I took the role of Partner Cloud Solution Architect, specializing in Azure Virtual Desktop
for the West Europe area with the goal to help our partners understand the value and technical
aspects of this new Azure service.
I strongly believe in the power of technical communities and the importance of sharing
knowledge, so I’m quite active on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter with my articles (in
English) about Azure Virtual Desktop, endpoint management, and security. I’m also leading
three different LinkedIn User Groups in Italian dedicated to these topics.
Let’s connect!
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email to tell me what you think about
this ebook, and your feedback on what can I improve.
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcomoioli/
• Email: [email protected]
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Chapter 1 Introduction
What is Azure Virtual Desktop?
Many people are aware of the existence of a new Microsoft service called Azure Virtual Desktop
(AVD), but it seems that not so many of them are able to describe exactly what it is and how it
can be helpful.
When I’m delivering trainings about this service, my typical introduction is: Azure Virtual
Desktop is a Microsoft Azure service that is publishing Windows resources through the internet
channel.
Figure 1: Azure Virtual Desktop
In a nutshell, I can use this service to publish the whole desktop or just specific applications
installed inside Azure virtual machines, and my users will be able to consume these resources
from any place on any device.
Azure Virtual Desktop was shipped in general availability in the summer of 2019 with the name
“Windows Virtual Desktop,” and was recently renamed Azure Virtual Desktop.
This service is about a lot of things: new and old technical concepts, security, productivity, and
cost savings.
10
