Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) offers a powerful, flexible platform for delivering virtualized Windows desktops and applications. However, to truly optimize Azure Virtual Desktop performance, organizations must streamline desktop images, reduce host pool sprawl, leverage modern storage solutions, and standardize on practices that balance performance with cost.
In this blog post, we will explore five key strategies for tuning AVD deployments to achieve superior performance, an enhanced digital employee experience while considering the cost.
1. Reduce the Number of Desktop Images
Maintaining multiple desktop images introduces unnecessary complexity. Each additional image requires its own updates, patching, and oversight, which can quickly become a management nightmare. Image bloat and image skew (where base configurations in each image start to differ over time) can lead to inconsistent employee experiences and higher operational costs.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Simplify Image Management: By consolidating your virtual desktop images, you reduce the time and effort spent on monthly patching and updates. Fewer images also mean a more predictable and controlled environment.
- Use a Golden Image Approach: Employ a single, master image (or as few as possible) that contains the necessary applications and configurations. This approach streamlines the deployment process and helps ensure a consistent experience across all desktops.
- Enable Dynamic Application Delivery: Instead of embedding every application into the image, implement application containers – such as Cloudpaging – which can be dynamically provisioned with Numecent’s Cloudpager platform. This unlocks the ability dynamically deliver apps outside your desktop images, reducing the number of images you need with minimal configurations required to efficiently scale desktop provisioning.
Key Takeaway: Fewer, well-managed images translate to better virtual desktop and application performance, easier maintenance, and improved consistency for end users. Dynamic delivery of applications is what you need to most effectively reduce your images.
2. Reduce the Number of AVD Host Pools
Host pools are fundamental to how AVD organizes and scales virtual desktops. While multiple host pools can be beneficial for different departments, workloads, and regional requirements, having too many can lead to unnecessary administrative overhead and resource sprawl.
- Determine Why You Have So Many Host Pools: In some cases, multiple host pools are required. However, its often organizations have multiple host pools simply due to inefficiencies. Common examples include leveraging host pools to support legacy applications on old Operating Systems, host pools to silo applications that require sensitive license controls, etc.
- Consolidate When Possible: Evaluate whether certain user groups can share a host pool rather than having separate pools for each function or department. By modernizing application management, you remove additional host pools in use for application challenges.
- Optimize Resource Utilization: Excessive host pools can create islands of resources, where some remain underutilized while others become overstretched. By reducing the number of pools, you can better distribute compute and storage resources.
- Streamline Management: Fewer pools make it easier to apply policies, monitor performance, and quickly troubleshoot issues, leading to better employee satisfaction.
Key Takeaway: Host pool consolidation can reduce complexity, enhance performance, and improve resource utilization. Determining why you have a sprawl of host pools and then modernizing your application management can help reduce the number of host pools you have today and help you avoid adding some additional host pools in the future.
3. Leverage Shares Such as NetApp Files
Storage choices have a direct impact on AVD performance and operational costs. In many scenarios, leveraging shared storage like NetApp Files can simplify application management, reduce dependency on individual OS disks, and enable cost-effective deployments.
- Centralize Application Storage: Containerize your applications with Cloudpaging application containers and place frequently used applications on a shared network location like NetApp Files. This allows all host pool VMs to access the same application binaries without duplicating storage across individual machines.
- Cheaper OS Disks: Because core applications can be stored externally, you can potentially use smaller and more cost-effective OS disks on your virtual machines. This reduces VM related storage costs while maintaining reliability.
- Enhanced Performance: NetApp Files (and similar services) offer high-performance shared storage with robust features like snapshots and backups, which can further protect data and improve recovery times.
Key Takeaway: Shared storage solutions reduce overhead, centralizes application storage, allow for cheaper OS disks, and can ensure faster access to applications when leveraged in tandem with Numecent container technologies.
4. Standardize on Non-Persistent Multi-Session
Non-persistent multi-session environments are a core design principle for modern virtual desktop deployments. They allow multiple users to share the same virtual machine instance without retaining session data locally, improving both efficiency and manageability. Organizations who utilized non-persistent machines when the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor Update incident occurred were among the first to restore operations, as they could simply revert the machines when the update issue was addressed by CrowdStrike.
- Simplify Maintenance: Non-persistent sessions mean that any configuration changes or patches to the master image automatically apply for every user at next logon, eliminating the need to update individual VMs.
- Session Density and Cost Efficiency: By running multiple user sessions on a single virtual machine, you optimize Azure consumption. This approach generally provides a better cost-to-performance ratio for standard knowledge-worker use cases.
- Secure and Compliant: Non-persistent configurations reset back to a known good state at each session logoff, reducing the risk of lingering malware, user-specific configuration issues or erroneous vendor auto-updates.
- Standardize on Multi-Session: Not all enterprise applications are designed to work in multi-session environments. Legacy applications and in-house custom-built applications in particular present challenges which can derail efforts to standardize on the cheaper multi-session desktops. Containerizing applications with Cloudpaging containers ensures even your most stubborn applications can run on multi-session desktops without sacrificing functionality or performance, even if they were not designed to.
Key Takeaway: Multi-session configurations offer scalable, secure, and cost-effective desktop experiences while minimizing administrative overhead. Applications can be a blocker to standardizing on multi-session when using traditional installation methods, application containers are required to move past these blockers.
5. Leverage AVD Ephemeral OS Disks
Ephemeral OS Disks are a powerful feature for AVD deployments seeking to minimize latency and reduce costs associated with persistent storage.
- Lower Storage Overhead: Ephemeral disks are stored in the host’s cache or temporary storage rather than in Azure Storage accounts. This can reduce storage charges and improve read/write performance for OS-level operations.
- Faster Provisioning: Ephemeral OS disks can speed up the creation of new VMs and the refresh or reimage process, making it easier to scale up and down quickly.
- Good Fit for Stateless Scenarios: In non-persistent environments (multi-session or single-session), ephemeral disks are especially advantageous, as users don’t require long-term data retention on the OS volume.
- Dynamically Deliver Apps to These Desktops: Dynamically delivering applications to desktops using ephemeral OS disks ensures consistency when the desktops are torn down and rebuilt. The ability to host application cache on external storage such as NetApp Files can also reduce reliance on the OS disk making the move to ephemeral OS disks a less risky venture.
Key Takeaway: Leveraging ephemeral OS disks can improve performance and cost efficiency, especially in non-persistent, high-scale AVD environments. However, traditional approaches to application management – such as installing apps into desktop images – won’t suffice. You need a truly modern, cloud-native application container management solution to maximize the utility of these free disks while reducing risk and complexity. Read our blog How to Improve Azure Virtual Desktop Performance with Free Ephemeral Disks and Cloudpager to learn more >>
Containerize Everything to Optimize Azure Virtual Desktop Performance
Optimizing Azure Virtual Desktop for maximum performance involves careful planning and a willingness to standardize on modern best practices. More specifically, there is an emphasis on modernizing and streamlining application management.
Virtualizing your applications with Cloudpaging application containers and implementing our Cloudpager platform to extend DevOps capabilities to the management of Windows desktop applications, you can dynamically orchestrate application provisioning to provides the power and flexibility required for enterprises to also modernize their Azure Virtual Desktops.
By adopting these five strategies, your Azure Virtual Desktop deployment will be well-positioned to deliver a seamless, high-performance experience for end users, all while reducing operational complexity and costs over time. Now, IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than day-to-day maintenance.