When using a public cloud platform such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS), you need to be keenly aware of what resources you create in those platforms and how they are consumed. This certainly applies to End User Computing workloads in the cloud, such as Desktop as a Service.
Working in the Cloud Requires Agile IT Operations
A good example of this is virtual machines you build in the cloud. These virtual machines tend to be strictly power managed to ensure when user loads decrease, underutilised virtual machines are powered down. Using Azure as an example, Administrators will ensure any stopped virtual machines are also deallocated to ensure the organization is not incurring costs for the computer of those virtual machines when they are in an idle powered down state.
Alternatively, organizations may run virtual desktops with ephemeral OS disks because they are free to use. However, these can also present challenges for managing enterprise applications due to the desktops non-persistent nature. You need to account for consistently delivering all applications and update to each virtual desktop with an ephemeral OS disk regardless of what desktop a user logs into, even if these desktops are reimaged or re-created.
Today, you may use MSIX App Attach and store those package files on cloud storage in Azure Resource Groups (e.g., using Azure Files). If you start packaging your applications into MSIX App Attach packages and storing them in Azure Files without considering what kind of storage is being used you could end up with a surprisingly large bill, depending on the size of the packages and their respective storage costs.
Over the years, storage became increasingly cheaper for on-premises data centres. Some in IT started using storage with less regard for efficiency, as it did not impact the budget in the same way it used to. Approaching IT operations without regard for the cost-efficiency of storages resources can lead to surprising and costly results when you move to the cloud.
As you continue to modernize your IT strategy, ensure your operations provide the agility to utilise the cloud in the most cost-effective manner possible.
Desktop Image Bloat is a Costly Problem
For many years, enterprise IT Administrators have been installing applications directly into their virtual desktop images. This is understandable. VDI Administrators are not necessarily trained as Application Packagers. Not only is installing the applications directly into the images an effective way to avoid repackaging applications, but it also ensures a fairly good end user experience when everything goes well. With this approach, when a user logs into a desktop with that image applications are already installed and ready to be used immediately. No delay waiting for the applications to appear.
Unfortunately, installing applications directly into images is fraught with problems such as application conflicts, failed application updates caused by corrupted uninstalls, and more. To reduce these problems and to modernize application management, many enterprises attempted to virtualize their application estates. Sadly, many faced challenges such as slow application delivery to users on log-in, increased complexity for Admins when troubleshooting, and many applications simply not working when virtualized. To solve these issues organizations stopped virtualizing applications and reverted back to installing them into virtual desktop images again. It is completely understandable that application packaging processes cannot become a bottleneck within your IT operations. The truth is the practice of installing applications into your VDI images becomes an even more costly problem when you attempt to move your virtual desktops from on-premises to the cloud.
Legacy Problems on Modern Platforms
Let’s apply the concept of installing applications directly into Windows 365 Cloud PC custom images. Perhaps today, you have a 100GB desktop image that contains most of your enterprise’s applications. If you try to migrate that to Windows 365 and try provision the 128GB sized desktop to your users, they will only have 28GB free. Windows 365 Cloud PCs are persistent 1:1 PCs. Your users will run out of space on their Cloud PCs within months. The next size up that is offered is 256GB but it costs more. Does everyone in the organization require every single application? The answer is usually no. So, the inefficient practice of installing all applications into the image that we could get away it in the past because storage had become cheaper is exposed as wasteful and expensive in the future.
Discover how to transform Windows 365 Cloud PCs into enterprise-ready desktops here >>
Reducing Storage Consumption with Cloudpager
Reducing storage consumption and other DaaS-related expenses is where Cloudpager can really shine. With Cloudpager, you can remove all applications from your desktop images and achieve a single lightweight golden image for your entire enterprise (read how a global bank achieved a single golden image for more than 100,000 VDI users). You may be rolling your eyes reading this as other vendors have tried to sell you on the same promise. Numecent is uniquely positioned to deliver on this promise thanks to our Cloudpaging containers, which have an unparalleled application compatibility rate. Where you may have failed to virtualize your applications in the past, Cloudpaging containers can get you to 100% virtualization coverage and dynamically provision them to your users within seconds.
When deploying application containers using Cloudpaging containers you can reduce your application payload with our compression feature and reap the benefits of our patented prefetch feature, which allows you to optimize application launch times and reduce application delivery related traffic and storage.
| Sample Applications | Traditional Install Size (MB) | Cloudpaging Prefetch Payload (MB) | Reduced Traffic and Storage (MB) | Annual Cost Savings for 100,000 Desktops ($0.10/GB)* |
| Act! Pro | 304 | 124 | 180 | $21,552 |
| Anime Studio Pro | 284 | 37 | 247 | $29,688 |
| Autodesk Revit | 10,291 | 748 | 9,543 | $1,145,160 |
| Corel Draw | 428 | 161 | 267 | $32,088 |
| Microsoft Visio Professional | 1,114 | 41 | 1,073 | $128,712 |
| SolidWorks | 2,703 | 438 | 2,265 | $271,800 |
| Sophos Endpoint Security | 467 | 4 | 463 | $55,536 |
| Turbo CAD | 667 | 60 | 607 | $72,864 |
| Visual Studio Ultimate | 4,560 | 247 | 4,313 | $517,560 |
| WordPerfect Office | 983 | 84 | 899 | $107,856 |
By using prefetch, you optimize the launch times and user experience by ensuring the needed parts of an application are available on launch. The remainder of Cloudpaging applications will be fetched as needed or can be configured to download the entire application using application policies. You can also implement cache limits within Cloudpaging Player so that the it purges the least recently used parts out of the application cache. The beauty of this you are able to minimize the storage typically required for installing the application when compared to native installs. For an even larger reduction in storage consumption and cost, our best practice is to create a central pre-cache, which eliminates the need to consume application storage on every VM in DaaS environments.
Above you can see an example of some applications delivered as Cloudpaging application containers with prefetch configured and the amazing reduction in size and cost! These types of savings can help your investment in Cloudpager pay for itself.
Provide a Consistent Application Experience on Non-Persistent Desktops
As mentioned earlier, ephemeral OS Disks are free to use in Azure but they can be less than ideal when it comes to application management. Changes made to virtual desktops do persist on reboot, however, all changes are lost when the virtual desktops are re-imaged or re-created. Cloudpager can help you manage application on your Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) that use the free ephemeral OS Disks. You can read more about this in our blog here and watch the video below:
Conclusion
The biggest blocker to agility in End User Computing has been applications. Cloudpager provides a modern, cloud-native SaaS platform to seamlessly manage applications across your enterprise. Not only can you package and deliver all your applications outside your base image, but you have the flexibility to choose the best public cloud platforms and storage combinations for your enterprise without worrying about the complexity and costs related to supporting your applications. Cloudpaging Containers compound the benefits of the platform, improving application launch times and reducing traffic and storage-related costs. Best of all, Cloudpager instantly modernizes your IT operations, enabling you to dynamically manage your entire application estate from the cloud.
Speak to one of our experts to see how Numecent technologies can help you tackle application management inefficiency and reduce storage consumption with the power of application containers and cloud-native container management: