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Remote Desktop Canary v2.3 Now Available!

September 30, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and current RDPSoft customers!  We’ve just released Version 2.3 of Remote Desktop Canary, our synthetic RDP and WVD monitoring and alerting workhorse.  This new version offers:

  • WVD support.  Whether you’re still using WVD classic (e.g. Fall 2019 Mode), or you’ve migrated over to WVD in ARM mode (e.g. the Spring 2020 Update), Remote Desktop Canary now supports WVD.
  • An enhanced workflow cloning wizard.  Now, if you want to test each of your session hosts or WVD hosts “all the way to the desktop” using OCR event detection, our new wizard duplicates your test settings across all of your hosts in one easy step.
  • We’ve improved our OCR alerting engine, so if specific text you are screening for is not seen within a certain number of seconds, Canary’s email alert will include all of the screenshots during the login sequence.  As a result, you will immediately see if the login attempt has stalled while loading user profiles/FSLogix, encountered a black screen, or encountered another issue.

We’re also excited to announce that you can now purchase Remote Desktop Canary as part of our brand new Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD!  Please read on for more details.

In this RDPSoft E-Newsletter:

Remote Desktop Canary Now Supports WVD

New Workflow Cloning Options

New Login Sequence Screenshot Playback With OCR Alerts

The Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

Version 2.3 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

Windows Virtual Desktop Support in Remote Desktop Canary

Set up comprehensive synthetic Windows Virtual Desktop login tests in a matter of minutes with Remote Desktop Canary

Some organizations are starting to look towards migrating to Windows Virtual Desktop in Microsoft Azure as their end user computing platform. As one of the Microsoft’s original WVD partners, RDPSoft is committed to supporting WVD throughout our product line. Most recently, we have now added support for WVD within Remote Desktop Canary.

Whether or not you are still running Windows Virtual Desktop in Fall 2019 (Classic) mode, or have migrated to the new ARM-based WVD model (Spring Update), Remote Desktop Canary supports both versions.

Since WVD now takes care of infrastructure components for you (e.g. brokering sessions on to hosts, providing a gateway that routes incoming connections into your hostpools in Azure, etc), Remote Desktop Canary’s value rests in testing each of your individual WVD hosts to make sure they are responding properly and can serve up a desktop quickly. Remember, issues with user profiles, FSLogix, and other components can turn session hosts sluggish, resulting in slow login times, and these sorts of issues cannot necessarily be deduced by WVD diagnostics information alone.

By building a “direct to server” workflow test against one of your WVD hosts, and then using our new cloning wizard (see below) to replicate that test across all of your different hosts, you can quickly set up an entire testing regime to keep eyes on each host’s responsiveness.

Moreover, with Remote Desktop Canary’s scriptable command line interface, you can schedule routine early morning “sanity checks” to make sure your WVD hosts are now up and online, especially if you have already established scaling automation to shutdown hosts and spin them back up each day as your users start to log back in.

Workflow Cloning Improvements

In initial versions of Remote Desktop Canary, cloning was done one workflow at a time. However, many of our users expressed interest in doing scheduled or routine RDP login testing of ALL of their RDS session hosts and/or WVD hosts individually. In order to make this easy, we have expanded our cloning feature so that you can define a synthetic login test for a single RDS or WVD session host, but then rapidly duplicate that test across many different servers from your Active Directory or WVD hosts in your Azure resource group.

Quickly clone an existing “single host” RDP synthetic login test to many different hosts in your domain or WVD tenant

To perform this type of cloning operation, simply:

  • Define a workflow synthetic RDP login test against one of your RDS servers or WVD hosts.
  • Test it to make sure it works exactly the way you want it to.
  • Select the workflow, and press the “Clone” button.
  • Use the wizard to select additional terminal servers or WVD hosts from your Active Directory or Azure Resource Group.

Remote Desktop Canary will then replicate your testing settings against all of the selected hosts, creating a new workflow testing entry for each host. That’s all there is to it!

If Canary Cannot Login and Access a Full Remote Desktop Quickly, You’ll Now See What Happened Via a Full Login Sequence Playback

Since the release of Remote Desktop Canary version 2.0, more and more of our users have started using OCR event detection to be notified if it takes too long for a user’s desktop to appear in a Remote Desktop session.

In previous versions of Canary, if specific OCR text was not detected within a certain time period, an email alert would be logged stating this fact. Now, in Version 2.3, we have expanded these email alerts to include all of the periodic screenshots Remote Desktop Canary captured during the login sequence.

Remote Desktop Canary will now show you exactly what the login sequence looked like when a desktop could not be loaded in a timely manner. Was it a black screen? Or a roaming profile/FSLogix problem?

Thanks to this login sequence playback with screenshots, a support desk worker or admin can immediately see the likely cause of the delay when loading a desktop, such as roaming profile problems, FSLogix initialization issues, or the dreaded black screen during login.

The Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD

At RDPSoft, we’re constantly seeking ways to deliver more features and more value to our clients, at an unbelievable price point. In furtherance of that goal, we have now released the Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle for RDS and WVD. Starting at only $16.99 per server per month or $185.99 per server per year – with a 3 server purchase minimum and volume discounts available – you gain access to all three of our products, including Remote Desktop Canary!

Even better, if you’ve deployed or are getting ready to deploy WVD, we have a special promotion for you on this Complete Bundle, but act fast, as it goes away on December 31st, 2020.

Please contact our sales department for a quote if you’re an existing customer who would like to upgrade to this new offer, OR if you use our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite tool and would now like to obtain full monitoring and management capabilities for your RDS or WVD deployment. Just mention you’re interested in our new “Complete Bundle” when you fill out the form.

Remote Desktop Canary 2.3 Upgrade, Purchase, and Demo Links

If you are an existing Remote Desktop Canary subscription licensee and/or active maintenance agreement holder, click here to request upgrade instructions.

If you’d like to learn more about Remote Desktop Canary, including its feature set and how to start a subscription immediately, click here. 

If you’d like to learn more about our Complete Monitoring and Management Bundle For RDS and WVD, click here.

Request a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert to see all our solutions’ features in depth.

Filed Under: Cloud RDP Monitoring, RDP Login Time, Remote Desktop Performance, Software Releases, Synthetic RDP, Terminal Server Monitoring, Windows Virtual Desktop, WVD Login Time Tagged With: rdp login time, rdp logon time, rds farm health, remote desktop services uptime, terminal server login time, terminal server logon time, windows virtual desktop, WVD, wvd host health, wvd login time, wvd logon time, wvd uptime

WVD Monitoring – Step By Step

August 24, 2020 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Greetings friends and customers!

The latest versions of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite (Version 4.9) and Remote Desktop Canary (Version 2.2) support the full monitoring of Windows Virtual Desktop, whether or not WVD is deployed in Fall 2019 (Classic) Mode, or Spring Update 2020 (ARM / Azure Resource Manager) Mode.

Here are the steps you need to take to deploy our solutions to monitor your Windows Virtual Desktop environment:

Step 1 – Provision a VM inside your WVD tenant or Azure Resource Group to run our software.

You may already have a VM deployed with management and monitoring tools on it, or you may wish to deploy a new one. All of our solutions work perfectly well on Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, Server 2019 or on Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session (EVD). You can always elect to place this VM in its own separate host pool, and then publish it as a desktop to your help desk and admin team so they can connect in and run tools when needed via the Windows Virtual Desktop client.

The key thing to remember is that this VM should be located on the same VNet and joined to the same Active Directory + Azure Active Directory domain as the WVD hosts you will be monitoring.

Step 2 – Install SQL Server Express or Azure SQL to store the WVD monitoring data collected by our solutions.

If you have a very small WVD deployment, with 3 or fewer hosts, you can most likely install SQL Server Express on the VM you created in Step 1 above. The Remote Desktop Commander Suite installer will prompt to do this for you automatically.

If you have a larger WVD deployment, you should leverage an Azure SQL database to store the WVD monitoring data instead. We find the most cost effective way to utilize Azure SQL is to opt for a single database, per-DTU model (as opposed to vCore). Using this approach, Azure SQL database costs for 90% of our customers will run somewhere between $30 and $150 USD per month, depending on the number of WVD hosts they are monitoring. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to provision Azure SQL for our solutions.

To help defray these infrastructure costs for our WVD customers, we have introduced a special discount of $2 off per WVD host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $3 off per WVD host per month if you opt for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle. Even if you only have 3 WVD hosts, your cost would only be $7.99 per host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $13.99 per host per month for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle! Click here for the details about this promotion that is valid through the end of this year.

Step 3 – Define a service account in your domain that will monitor your WVD hosts, and make the necessary Windows firewall and registry adjustments on those hosts.

This knowledge base article covers the few adjustments you need to make on your Windows Virtual Desktop hosts to allow them to be monitored correctly, especially if they are running Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session. You may wish to define a GPO in your Active Directory that adjusts these settings for you.

Step 4 – Install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite and Remote Desktop Canary to your VM you created in Step 1, and optionally install the Remote Desktop Commander agents on your WVD hosts.

Install the Remote Desktop Commander Suite on the VM you created in Step 1. Link it to SQL Server Express or Azure SQL, and set its service account. Then, add the WVD hosts via the Remote Desktop Commander Configuration Tool, using the Import From WVD Broker wizard. If you would like to collect rich, detailed information on performance per user session and per application, install the agent service on each WVD host.

Importing WVD hosts
Importing WVD hosts into RDPSoft solutions is a snap.

Then, install our Remote Desktop Canary solution on the same VM. Set up a synthetic login test workflow against one of your WVD hosts, then clone that workflow against the rest of your WVD hosts. Now, Remote Desktop Canary can begin to continuously monitor your WVD hosts, verifying their responsiveness all the way through the login sequence into the desktop presentation. In WVD (as compared to RDS), Microsoft now handles the infrastructure roles of the Gateway and Broker, so determining login problems, slow login times, and user profile/black screen issues requires a close eye on the WVD hosts themselves.

Step 5 – Launch your WVD client, connect to the VM you created in Step 1, and marvel at the rich analytics and WVD monitoring tools now available at your fingertips!

Track user productivity in WVD
Test RDP Connectivity on Multiple WVD Hosts At Once
Remote Desktop Canary can perform a routine RDP connectivity check on multiple WVD hosts at once.

Filed Under: Windows Virtual Desktop Tagged With: windows virtual desktop, windows virtual desktop monitoring, windows virtual desktop reporting, WVD, wvd analytics, wvd arm, wvd azure resource manager, wvd monitoring, wvd reporting, wvd spring update

Need Better Windows Virtual Desktop Monitoring and Management? Take Advantage Of This Special Offer!

August 24, 2020 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Hi there!

Are you in the process of deploying, or have you already deployed Windows Virtual Desktop?

Are you struggling with the lack of native WVD monitoring and WVD management tools? For example, do you need:

  • Shadowing/remote assistance tools, and a way to delegate out management tasks to non-admin help desk staff?
  • Synthetic login monitoring of your WVD hosts, to see if they become slow to respond or stop responding? Or to be alerted if black screens or user profile problems start appearing?
  • Rich analytics, dashboards, and reports, that track things like user activity (idle/active time), per user consumption of resources, network connection quality and latency, and so much more?

Say no more. We’ve got you covered. If you start a monthly subscription to our WVD monitoring and WVD management solutions on or before December 31st, 2020, we’ll give you an extra per-host VM per-month discount.

Specifically, you’re entitled to a special discount of $2 off per WVD host per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $3 off per WVD host per month if you opt for our Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle.

That means that even in the smallest environments (e.g. only 3 WVD hosts), your costs will only be $7.99 per host VM per month for the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and $13.99 per host VM per month for the full Complete WVD Monitoring and Management Bundle! And if you have more than a handful of hosts, we offer volume discounts that will make it even more affordable. Note – the pricing above is per host VM per month, not per user!

You simply will not find a better deal in the market in terms of price per features for comprehensive monitoring and management of your WVD infrastructure. And we keep adding more and more WVD specific features to our solutions, month after month.

Here’s what you need to do to get started.

Click here to request a quote to monitor your WVD environment. Make sure to include the number of host VMs and the number of admin/help desk users that will be managing the environment. Indicate in the form comments that you want our “WVD Deal.”

We’ll get back in touch with you shortly thereafter to verify your needs, find out more about your WVD deployment, and provide pricing. We will also supply you with a coupon code for the discounts mentioned above.

Act now before year end to secure this special offer. We look forward to bringing you on board as yet another satisfied RDPSoft customer.

Filed Under: Windows Virtual Desktop Tagged With: windows virtual desktop, windows virtual desktop management, windows virtual desktop monitoring, windows virtual desktop shadowing, WVD, wvd monitoring inexpensive, wvd monitoring low cost

WVD Features & More: Key Capabilities In Remote Desktop Commander 4.8+

December 11, 2019 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Expanding on our Windows Virtual Desktop compatibility, Remote Desktop Commander 4.8 introduced a number of robust capabilities. Let’s drill into those features – and some others – in detail . . . 

Import Hosts and Host Pools Automatically Inside Remote Desktop Commander Using the WVD Broker

Manage Windows Virtual Desktop hosts just like your on-premises Remote Desktop Services environment with Remote Desktop Commander Lite

How is this for easy? . . . If you want to manage WVD hosts, you only need to launch a simple dialog, enter in your tenant name and WVD admin credentials, and choose the WVD Management Mode (Internal/External) you want to use.

Remote Desktop Commander will then dynamically query the WVD brokers to auto-generate all your host pools and associated hosts in the left hand tree view for you!

But wait, there’s more . . .

Dual WVD Management Modes – Internal and External

Choose the management mode you want to use with WVD, based on whether you have installed our solution inside or outside of Azure.

When you set up a link to the WVD Broker above, you specify whether or not you want Remote Desktop Commander Lite to operate in Internal or External WVD Management Mode.

Internal Mode

This mode gives you the most feature-rich Windows Virtual Desktop management experience. In this scenario, you have installed Remote Desktop Commander Lite on a VM inside the Azure VNet hosting your WVD host pools, as a WVD RemoteApp or on a management VM you will access securely via Azure Bastion. This mode gives you all of the legacy, on-premises Remote Desktop Services management features, including the ability to shadow sessions and provide remote assistance with our Premium Management Features license, query performance counters related to user experience and connection quality, RDP via admin sessions into WVD hosts to do other management tasks, etc, etc.

External Mode

External mode gives you a less feature-rich WVD management experience, but does not require Remote Desktop Commander Lite to be deployed inside the Azure VNet with your hosts. You can install it on your own local computer, and still do basic session management tasks like logging off, disconnecting, and messaging users.

Similarly, you can import your hosts from host pools directly into the Remote Desktop Commander Suite’s Add/Manage Servers area, which makes adding in your WVD session hosts for monitoring a snap.

Import hosts for monitoring directly from the Windows Virtual Desktop Broker URL in the Remote Desktop Commander Suite

Delegate Out Windows Virtual Desktop Management Tasks To Support Desk Staff Using Our WVD Management Delegation Wizard

With Version 4.8, we expanded our Premium Management Features solution to include a delegation of administration wizard for WVD. This enables you to delegate rights – including shadowing – to support team members who need to manage your WVD deployment. Yes, that’s right, with our Premium Management Features tool, you can shadow Windows Virtual Desktop sessions without difficulty, and you can limit what your support desk technicians can do on your WVD hosts.

The WVD Management Delegation Wizard allows you to unify management permissions across all hosts in your WVD host pools, plus allows you to assign specific WVD access rights like “RDS Reader” and “RDS Contributor” to one or more users. It also allows you to set shadowing policies on each host.

Windows Virtual Desktop Management Delegation
Clone WVD management permissions across WVD hosts and host pools. Assign specific rights to users in the WVD tenant.
Unify Management Permissions on Windows Virtual Desktop Hosts
Select the WVD hosts and host pools you wish to unify management permissions on.

Get A Handle On User Experience By Monitoring the User Input Delay Counters Live or Historically

Profile User Experience in RDS and WVD with the User Input Delay Counter
Profile user experience in RDS and WVD with the User Input Delay counter

In Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10, Microsoft introduced the new User Input Delay counter. This performance counter tells you how long user input (e.g. keyboard clicks and mouse clicks) sits in the input queue on a RDS or WVD host, until it is received for processing by an application’s message queue. Latency may look fine, but if User Input Delay starts increasing because a session host is under load, that could be a sign that user experience is degrading to the point where you want to add more hosts or increase the VM instance size of your hosts.

An easy way to approach this? Profile User Input Delay in real time using our free Remote Desktop Commander Lite client, and if you are a Remote Desktop Commander Suite customer, leverage the “User Experience” reports that show you how User Input Delay looked over time in their sessions. (Just remember: In order to use this counter, your RDS or WVD hosts must be running Windows Server 2019 or Windows 10.)

User Input Delay Counter Summary Report
Use the Remote Desktop Commander Suite to determine the average User Input Delay for each user across all of their RDS or WVD sessions.
User Input Delay Counter Per Session Report
Zoom in to see how User Input Delay fluctuated in each individual RDS or WVD user session.

Where To Next?

If you’re interested in any of the above capabilities, we’re happy to help steer you in the right direction: Request a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert to explore these features in depth.

Updated: December 2020.

Filed Under: Windows Virtual Desktop Tagged With: user input delay counter, windows virtual desktop, windows virtual desktop permissions, windows virtual desktop shadowing, WVD, wvd bandwidth, wvd broker, wvd permissions, wvd shadowing

How Not To Lose Your A$$ When Deploying Windows Virtual Desktop

July 10, 2019 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Hello my friends.  It’s now July, and Microsoft continues to lurch ever closer to a full, generally available, release of Windows Virtual Desktop in this back half of the year.  Lots of MSPs and hosters are extremely interested in it, with great uptake in the public preview, because ostensibly WVD is a lower cost way to deploy session-based desktops in the public cloud.  But is it really?  In my opinion, Windows Virtual Desktop is only affordable if you are extremely cautious about any extra Azure services you choose to deploy with it.  And, in all cases, stay the hell away from WVD overlays like Citrix Managed Desktop… unless you are an unrepentant spendthrift with money to burn! Let’s dive a little deeper and see why:

Why WVD Is Potentially Cheaper Than Hosting Regular Remote Desktop Services In Azure

In classic RDS deployments inside Azure, you need to allocate additional virtual machine resources to host the supporting Remote Desktop roles (such as the Remote Desktop Gateway server, the Connection Broker, RD Web Access, and Licensing). In some non-highly available deployment scenarios, it’s possible to combine some of these roles onto a single VM but, no matter how you slice it, you will be paying monthly compute costs for these additional VMs.

In Windows Virtual Desktop, Microsoft handles all of the infrastructure roles (Gateway, Broker, Web Access, etc) for you, encapsulating them into highly available Azure PaaS services that serve your tenants alongside all others. This theoretically saves you money, because you are now only paying for the compute costs associated with the session host VMs (e.g. Windows Server or Windows 10 Multisession), plus your RDS CAL or Windows/Office 365 licensing that allows access to the service..

Why WVD Is Not Necessarily Cheaper Than Hosting Classic RDS in Azure

Put simply, what you save by avoiding the compute costs associated with VMs running infrastructure roles, you can easily add back by deploying other “recommended” Azure services.

Hidden Azure Service Costs

For example:

  • Starting an Azure Security Center subscription for Just-In-Time VM Access (approximately $15 per VM per month)
  • Deploying Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor to do performance and health monitoring (variable pricing based on data volumes and logs monitored but easily $5 or more per VM per month)
  • Using Azure Active Directory Premium P1 or P2 OR the Enterprise Mobility Suite to provide multi-factor authentication, identity and access management, etc (approximately $3 to $9 per user extra per month)
Extra VMs Needed For Geographically Diverse Clients

There are other factors to consider as well.  As discussed in my purerds.org blog article, Windows Virtual Desktop does not currently support dual transport protocols for RDP – it is TCP only.  This makes distance between WVD clients and the WVD host pool in a specific Azure region highly relevant.  As I’ve written about at length, one of the greatest improvements ever made to the Remote Desktop Protocol was when Microsoft joined UDP with TCP for more responsive transfer of data, video streams, etc over lossy networks or higher latency/longer distance network links.  If WVD did support UDP transport in RDP to clients, Azure region choice would become less relevant because of the ability of UDP to adapt to those higher latencies caused by geographic distance.

What does this mean?  It means a greater likelihood of an MSP or hoster needing to establish multiple WVD host pools, in different Azure data centers, to serve the needs of geographically disparate clients/companies with worldwide offices.  True, the WVD internals may be able to use intelligent routing via Azure Traffic Manager, especially as Microsoft builds out the WVD control plane into all Azure regions but, until UDP dual transport is added back IMO, performance will suffer.  More host pools equal more money spent on VM compute.

Extra VMs Needed for Validation Host Pools

Update cadences are much faster when you leverage the Windows 10 Multisession OS in your WVD host pools, as compared to server operating systems like 2012, 2016, and 2019.  This means that there is a greater likelihood that a Windows Update might break an existing deployed app.  Microsoft’s answer to this problem is to deploy a validation host pool, which is a special set of VMs that get the Windows 10 updates applied to them first.  These effectively become the “canary in the coal mine”, to alert you to application incompatibilities post update- before all of your users call you up to air their grievances.  However, an additional host pool of VMs is an additional cost to you.

Deploy Citrix Managed Desktop For WVD If You Really Want To Hemorrhage Money Fast

Say No To Citrix Managed Desktop
Want to Lose Money? Deploy Citrix Managed Desktop.

As mentioned in my PureRDS.org article on the subject, Citrix Managed Desktop adds another $21 per user per month on top of your Windows Virtual Desktop costs.  That’s an insane level of extra overhead for an MSP, hoster, or SMB company to bear.  Frankly, there’s no need for it- especially if you are smart about what third-party software and services you choose to add to your WVD deployment.  Which leads me to…

Smart Ways To Keep Your WVD Deployment Within Budget

Here are some tips and tricks that you can use to keep WVD costs to the bare minimum, as you host your apps and desktops.

Managing Windows Virtual Desktop On a Budget

The web interface and PowerShell cmdlets for managing WVD are extremely basic and rather feature limited.  On top of that, attempting to monitor WVD by building your own queries with Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics gets expensive fast- especially when you factor in staff time to design everything.

Instead, you can publish our Remote Desktop Commander Client as a RemoteApp within one of your WVD host pools, and instantly have a robust management platform for WVD– including shadowing and remote support.  Or, if you don’t want to leverage RemoteApp, you can elect to deploy the new Azure Bastion service– which gives you secure access to all of the WVD VMs in your host pools, and connect to a VM with our Remote Desktop Commander Client installed.  Azure Bastion only costs a flat $68 per month plus data transfer, regardless of how many VMs you need to access from it, and our Remote Desktop Commander Client is free, with optional enhancements via Premium Management Features.  This is certainly much cheaper than paying $15 per VM per month for Just-In-Time access to VMs via raw RDP.

Monitoring Windows Virtual Desktop On a Budget

Of course, if you need to actively monitor your Windows Virtual Desktop deployments, you can leverage our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution, and pair it with an Azure SQL Database (for data collection and storage).  As opposed to paying hefty data ingestion rates (plus per performance counter and per log monitoring costs via Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics), you can rapidly deploy our solution that: a.) already knows what items to monitor out of the box, b.) can monitor performance much more granularly than Azure Monitor, c.) has a built in reporting engine with scheduler, and d.) is priced at a flat $9.99 per WVD VM per month, with volume discounts.  Azure SQL costs for most deployments typically only run $30 to $60 per month, with up to 250 GBs of storage provided.  This is a much more economical way to monitor your infrastructure.  Moreover, if you’re a hoster/MSP/CSP, we offer a special multi-tenant version of our solution that allows you to keep tabs on all of your WVD deployments from a single access point.

Remote Desktop Commander Core Architecture
Remote Desktop Commander Core Deployments Allow You To Centrally Monitor and Report On Multi-Tenant Environments (e.g. MSP Private Clouds and WVD in Azure)

Consider Running Classic RDS in Azure Instead of WVD

Even with the launch of WVD, you can still deploy traditional RDS inside Windows Azure using Server 2012, 2016, or 2019; including the ability to run Office 365 on those server operating systems.  Doing so gives you complete control over the RDS architecture, and allows you to utilize RDP with UDP and TCP to provide a better experience to geographically diverse clients.

Partner With an Azure Expert

The sheer number of Azure services and pricing I covered in this article probably has left you feeling dizzy.  Given the speed at which new Azure services are offered, one of the smartest things you can do is to partner with an Azure services expert like MyCloudIT.
mycloudStacked_color

The folks at MyCloudIT constantly stay on top of the different Azure service offerings, and are experts at provisioning only the services you need.  They work hard to keep you within budget and on top of Azure service costs.  They’re also experts at deploying our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution into RDS and WVD deployments, which they’ve already done for a number of their “RDS in Azure” clients.  Partnering with them is a much smarter option than going with an WVD overlay like Citrix Managed Desktop- at a fraction of the cost.

If you’ll be attending Microsoft Inpire next week, come visit them at Booth 3106 to see both their approach to hosting Remote Desktop Services in Azure AND how our Remote Desktop Commander Suite enhances their management and monitoring offerings. And please tell them Andy from RDPSoft sent you!

Filed Under: Windows Virtual Desktop Tagged With: azure bastion, azure log analytics, azure monitor, managing wvd, Monitoring WVD, remote desktop, remote desktop commander, windows virtual desktop cost, WVD, wvd cost

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