Summary:

Across the VDI community the release of Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) has been seen as a quick card for CIOs to play at the time of some rapid proof of concepts for remote access and such. In this Article we will review as to just what does it take to deliver a WVD solution for your users!

If you are a Citrix Administrator and have not viewed our previous blog on “A Citrix Admin’s Guide to WVD“, We recommend you view it before proceeding.

We believe that there are 6 key factors to be available and set for WVD to be deployed seamlessly.

1. Azure Subscription
2. Azure Active Directory
3. Active Directory Infrastructure
4. Connectivity to On-Prem / Hybrid Cloud Resources
5. Azure Virtual Network configured with DNS Server Configured
6. O365 / M365 / Windows 10 Licenses

Now let us get into a bit as to why we need all of these.

Also, Side note: If you have all of these requirements met, you may essentially deploy WVD in less than 30 Minutes .. (Not Kidding). We will prove this to you in our next blog 🙂 (WVD deployment is indeed faster than the Pizza delivery services 😀 )

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Azure Subscription:

Azure subscription is required so that you will be able to create all your resources and manage your organization structure within the Azure portal. All of your billing, budgeting, cost forecast would be done through this subscription

Azure Active Directory:

An Azure Active directory is required for the WVD Enterprise application to be able to authenticate your users. Yes! the WVD users Azure AD as the primary authentication methods. However, one good aspect that it brings along with it is that since it supports only Azure AD, any 3rd party IDP methods that you might have configured on Azure AD will be respected on Windows Virtual Desktop RDWeb access.

Note that if you have not configured a single sign on mechanism using any 3rd party IDPs and such, the end users will end up providing their credentials 2 times.
– During the RDWeb Access prompt-> Azure AD Authentication
– During the application / desktop launch -> User’s Active Directory Authentication

Active Directory Infrastructure:

Active Directory infrastructure is required for Syncing your Domain User IDs with Azure-AD so that your users may use the LAN ID passwords for their logon to the RDweb Access.

Active Directory is also required for your Windows Session Host machines to be joined to the domain to provide access to the organization’s resources (Example: File Shares)

Connectivity to On-Premises / Hybrid Cloud Resources:

For Any VDI infrastructure it is not just about connecting to a virtual app or virtual desktop remotely!! But the whole point of it is User productivity. For achieving this the applications and Corporate resources should be accessible from your VDI (WVD).

Hence .. Unless your organization is fully cloud and resides completely on Azure.. you would need connectivity between your Azure Resource (WVD) to wherever the resources are held up (On-Premises or another cloud provider).

Azure Virtual Network configured with DNS Server Configured

This is a key factor! It is quite an obvious one actually. Just like you would setup your on-prem infrastructure with a DNS Server on your network.. you would need to setup a DNS server on your Virtual network that you are deploying WVD into. This will help the VDIs / Session Hosts understand where to reach out to for resources.

Example: when the WVD machines need to join the domain, they would need to understand where / which server to connect to for domain controller communication.

O365 / M365 / Windows 10 Licenses

This is where the Microsoft’s WVD standsout!! Majority of the organizations today have onboarded to O365 platforms. Considering this, If your organization has any of the below licenses, you are eligible to deploy and use WVD for free on Microsoft. Well.. you would still need to pay for the Compute Cost, Network Cost, Storage Cost of course.

If you need more information on this or would like to experience the WVD first hand.. feel free to Connect with us

• vdesktops@gmail.com.