I'm trying to setup a collection of Azure workstation VMs for a small organisation (3 staff and increasing).
My prior experience with Azure is focused on web servers. I'm familiar and comfortable with the resources required for discrete VMs (VM, managed disk, network interface, public IP, DNS).
On the face of it, Azure Virtual Desktop looks like a potentially attractive option for scalability. But I've just followed the Getting Started process, and I have ended up with around 25 new resources spread across three new resource groups.
It is not clear what each of them do or what each of them cost. I am experiencing difficulties with trying to connect with the test user created as part of this process.
I understand that AVD is probably targeted at large organisations where this complexity may be warranted and navigable.
But with limited time to pursue this, I'm suspecting that the best option for constructing this small network may be to stay with the resources that I am familiar with.
Would appreciate feedback on the following:
It seems that discrete VMs can only be provisioned with a flavor of Windows Server, and desktop versions of Windows (ie, 10, 11) are only available via AVD. Is there any downside to using Windows Server (compared to a desktop version) as the platform for a workstation? The workload apps here are primarily development-focused: Office, Visual Studio, SSMS etc.
A copy of Office will be needed on each VM. AVD has a bundled option for this, but I believe it can also be provisioned separately per VM via the Microsoft Account/Office 365 pathway. Any licensing pitfalls there that I should be aware of?
If each staff member is to be allocated their own separate VM, we would want them to call that VM up and shut it down as needed, to avoid wasted compute expense for the majority of the daily cycle. But without granting them access to the Azure portal account. Is there a mechanism than can help with this?
Yes you can, but we do have multiple advantages and disadvantages.
It depends on operating system of the server but it is not that good idea.
Performance Degradation - Server should works as SERVICE PROVIDER and use it as workstation can consume its resources and cause degradation of its performance.
In some of the Windows server OS case it may be a good idea because of Windows Workstation OS versions supports only a limited number of processors (less then server version).
One is needed to disable IE enhanced security and few other available in the below link
Add windows features once the OS is installed etc.
Reference: https://www.quora.com/Can-I-use-Windows-Server-as-I-would-use-Windows-Desktop-i-e-Win-10-7-8
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_possible_to_use_a_server_as_a_workstation
Options: Enable Hyper V on server and add multiple Workstation.
https://support.auvik.com/hc/en-us/articles/212801986-How-to-enable-Microsoft-Hyper-V-on-Windows-Servers-and-Workstations
A copy of Office will be needed on each VM. AVD has a bundled option for this, but I believe it can also be provisioned separately per VM via the Microsoft Account/Office 365 pathway. Any licensing pitfalls there that I should be aware of?
Office version with license can be installed manually and via application packaging. There will not be any challenges.
If each staff member is to be allocated their own separate VM, we would want them to call that VM up and shut it down as needed, to avoid wasted compute expense for the majority of the daily cycle. But without granting them access to the Azure portal account. Is there a mechanism than can help with this?
Automation is available to stop vm if not running in azure
Reference : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/automation/automation-solution-vm-management-config
Related
My VM is described in Azure variously as "A Series Basic Windows" and "A0" and "Windows (Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter)". It costs about $13/month.
Awhile back, Azure said I'd have to migrate to a newer OS. Haven't heard anything about it since. My needs are quite basic. Scarcely any activity. Wonder if/when I'll be forced to upgrade, and what the cost will be, and how to contain the cost?
The size of the VM that you use is determined by the workload that you want to run. Azure offers a wide variety of sizes to support many types of uses.
Azure charges an hourly price based on the VM’s size and operating system type.
For pricing estimations of the VM, I recommend to use Azure Calculator. Here's the link for it. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/
Good Afternoon,
Here is the scenario, our company manages multiple computers/pcs (about 50 or so) that are located in different geographic locations. These 50 computers run the same software locally. They all connect to a Apache Linux Box that is housed on premises. They are all in a workgroup locally. Something like this:
Location 1 (Term1, Term2, Term3, Term4, etc.)
Location 2 (Term1, Term2, Term3, etc.)
Location 3 (Term1, Term2, etc.)
Location 4 (Term1, Term2, Term3, Term4, Term5, etc.)
As mentioned, all the computers run in a workgroup. A local user is defined for each computer. Say user1/user2/user3/etc. We have to maintain a list of users since user management has become a bear as we have grown. In addition, patch management has become very time consuming as well. Traditional Active Directory (on-premise) is not an option as the clients at each location are different people with different financial resources and most/none are willing purchase/maintain Windows Server on premise.
The basic thought being, if it is not broke, don't fix it. As far as the user is concerned, they are not seeing a problem because most only have to deal with 4/5 computers in each location.
I noticed that in Windows 10, there is a an Azure AD service support. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light as to how that would work and how many users I would have to setup as to control costs. Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks....
You will want to look at Microsoft Intune for client management: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/microsoft-intune/Features.aspx
And more specifically: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn646959.aspx
With Windows 10 you are able to manage the user identities in Azure AD and the computers can to a domain join into Azure. At the same time you can set this up so that the devices also is auto-enrolled into Microsoft Intune for management when they join AzureAD.
This will allow you to manage settings and policies on the Windows 10 machines and control Windows Updates and Windows Defender.
This is just a very short description of the possibilities within Azure AD with Windows 10, and even more is coming this summer with the Aniversary Release of Windows 10.
We have got an application running fine on On premises and plan to move it to IaaS on Ms Azure, do we need to make any changes to it or will it work as is?
I agree with the above post. You have not detailed if you are using Virtual Machines (Sql server or going to use Azure SQL). You will have to make choices about fail-over and geo redundancy, cloud services, etc. There are IP restrictions that may affect you (I don't know since I am not sure what you are moving). More than anything, I always warn people about the cost, it is difficult to understand. Here is an article series I wrote on Azure & SharePoint, you can skip the SharePoint stuff but the cost/limitation/VMs and such would still apply.
http://www.matthewjbailey.com/sharepoint-azure-guide/
We've managed a lift-and-shift of an on-premise Windows app into Azure, but I wouldn't say it's been without its pain. The above comments definitely ring true; you need to provide a bit more of an overview of what the current application does so that people can help answer your question.
In my experience, the only stumbling blocks to moving on-premise into Azure are:
Hardware requirements; i.e. if your application requires some specific hardware
Cost: It's not always cheaper to move large systems into Azure
Licensing: Make sure that your existing licensing is compatible with a cloud system which you don't control
Looking into it I came to find out that a 1 role of 1 small compute Cloud Service is almost 60% more expensive as the same 1 small "vitual machine"...
So why should i choose to use cloud service over virtual machine?
Searching the web I came across a lot articles about this including this article but none were clear enough for me... the comparison in the last one is plain useless in my opnion...
Is there a "perk" that i don't know about or is not being considered? something to justify the "extra-charge" for cloud service... Does a code running on cloud service perform better than running on a virtual machine (maybe because there's less overhead)? anything?
I think virtual machine would be used when we need to migrate our application to the cloud and make it 'just work'. We don't need many additional effort to move our legacy code to azure if using virtual machine. But it doesn't provide the rich PaaS features comparing with cloud service such as automatically deployment, automatically update, load balance, etc.
So if we have a legacy system and we wanted to quick move to azure, then we can choose virtual machine. But if we need to manage bunch of machines, cloud service would helps us a lot and make us focus on the business logic.
I am totally new to cloud services, and using Windows Azure, I need a web server and a database server, each with 16gb of RAM. However, the extra large windows virtual machines only have 14gb of RAM. How would I go about adding 2gb of RAM to each of these servers, or do I need to do something else, such as incorporate a SQL database? I don't need to know the specifics of installation, all I need to know right now is what needs to be paid for, as I am just trying to figure out the price for everything. Thank you.
The Extra Large (XL) VM size provides 14GB available RAM. This applies to both Virtual Machines (IaaS) and web/worker roles (PaaS). There are no other VM sizes that provide more RAM than that. There's nothing you can do to add 2 extra GB.
UPDATE April 16, 2013: There are now two new sizes: 28GB/4-core and 56GB-8-core, available to Virtual Machines (not for Cloud Services e.g. web & worker roles). Announcement here. There's also a new SharePoint template in the Virtual Machine image gallery (since you mentioned using SharePoint) as well as a SQL Server template.
UPDATE APRIL 30, 2013: The new 28GB/56GB sizes are now available with Cloud Services, coincident with the release of Azure SDK 2.0 for .NET. Details here.
Just to add a bit, regarding web servers: Unlike on-premises servers where it's typically economical to buy the largest machine possible, it's better in Windows Azure to go with smaller VMs and have more of them. So, for a web server, go with the smallest VM size that would still run your software. Then, to handle additional traffic, scale to more web instances. As traffic ebbs, reduce the instance count. Load will be distributed amongst all of of the web servers (which are stateless - no user affinity to a specific instance).