August 2022

Employee Spotlight: Get to Know Pete Langas

What’s your role here at Nerdio? What do you do on a day-to-day basis and how do you help partners/customers?

My role is enterprise sales for the Northeast region…every day I’m helping customers deploy, manage and optimize Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktops and Windows 365 using Nerdio. I also help partners learn about Nerdio and how to use it to help their customers with virtual desktop initiatives.

What’s a fun fact about you that most people don’t know/couldn’t guess?

I sing and play keyboards and guitar in a dad band called Artificially Hip. We’re been playing at local bars, events and fundraisers for the last 9 years or so. There are 6 of us, 5 dads and one mom. We play a mix of classic rock, pop and a little country.

What’s one technology advancement you hope to see or think we will see in the next ten years?

Flying cars… assuming this can be done without a large carbon footprint, the ability to have a personal vehicle or semi personal vehicle to get from place to place quickly without having to use a road would be amazing.

What are three books you’d bring with you to a deserted island?

Beach Music by Pat Conroy, The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway.

In your opinion, what’s the most rewarding part of working for Nerdio?

The most rewarding part is contributing to our mission of helping customers succeed. We know if our customers are successful, we’ll be successful. Every day is filled with collaboration with coworkers and discussions with partners and customers, all geared towards better virtual desktop experiences

What sitcom family or friend group would you choose to be a part of?

Ted Lasso…I would love to be in the Diamond Dogs, and I think I’d give good advice.

Besides a standard computer, what is the earliest piece of technology you remember owning?

I think I’d have to go with a Walkman. That was a big deal when it came out. I saved my money from my mowing lawns to get one. And then I used it when I mowed which made the work a little more tolerable.

You’ve been with Nerdio for a while now. What’s motivated you to stick around?

We have an amazing group of people and an amazing product. I have worked at places that had one or the other, but rarely both at the same time. When you are able to work together to give customers a solution that impacts real challenges they have, it’s really cool.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned while working in tech?

Tech moves extremely fast. There is a great innovation and everything gets exponentially better, smaller, cheaper, faster very quickly. This means you have to be thinking about the future, and it also opens up many opportunities.

What’s a current technology trend you’re passionate about?

I have been talking about the “year of the virtual desktop” for probably 12 years or so. I think it’s here! Fortunately I’m with a company that believes the same thing and has a product that helps with virtual desktops.

NerdioCon 2023 Registration Is Now Open!

In case you haven’t heard, we’re heading back to gorgeous Cancun, Mexico next year for our annual partner conference — NerdioCon! And, in addition to offering business and technical tracks for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), we are adding a new Enterprise track for our partners and system integrators (SIs) serving mid-size and large enterprises using Nerdio Manager for Enterprise.

With dates confirmed for February 27 – March 2, 2023, at the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach, we are pleased to open registration to the general public today.

As first dibs to NerdioCon and NerdioCon tickets and discounts are benefits of our new partner program, Partnerd – registration has been open for existing partners for the next two weeks. Parnerds receive NerdioCon tickets, ticket discounts and lodging codes based off their program tier.

To register for NerdioCon or to sign up for updates when general registration opens, please visit our event site www.nerdiocon.com. You’ll also want to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook to stay apprised of newly added speakers, sponsors and sessions this Fall.

We recommend attendees register as early as possible. Space is limited and NerdioCon conference tickets and lodging will be booked separately this year. Guests may extend the NerdioCon group rate to book up to three additional days onto their stay, incurred at their own expense. Once lodging capacity is reached at the Grand Fiesta, guests will be referred by Nerdio to an adjacent resort to book their stay.

Missed NerdioCon 2022 and not sure what the hype is about? Check out the video below.

How Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) & Nerdio Can Help MSPs Build a Successful Cloud Practice

How-AVD-and-Nerdio-Can-Help-MSPs-Build-a-Successful-Cloud-Practice-300x169

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) has been the go-to (remote working) virtual desktop solution throughout 2020 and will grow even bigger in 2021 and beyond. I am not telling you anything new here. However, being able to successfully leverage AVD as part of your Azure Cloud practice, keeping costs low and the user experience high is a challenge many MSPs are dealing with.

In general terms, building a cloud practice comes down to a few key pillars: standardization, simplification, and cost control. However, many MSPs think the cloud is risky. Risky because they are not familiar with the (hourly/monthly) consumption model and they have trouble packaging and pricing their Azure services. They’ve always done it the traditional way and don’t feel comfortable with changing their pricing and/or billing model.

Secondly, often MSPs do not know where to start. I mean, Azure offers 1000+ services; how do you know which ones to use and which ones to leave alone? In fact, 95% of all services offered, perhaps more, are irrelevant for an MSP to start out with. Sure, some of these services might become more relevant going forward, but to start building your cloud practice on Azure there are only a few you need to focus on.

What about cost control? It’s one thing that your billing model changes, but how do you make sure to keep your Azure resources from spinning out of control? What about daily management tasks, automation, or shutting down machines when they are no longer needed or utilized by your users — those types of things? The cloud can be expensive if you do not know what to look out for or lack the proper tooling to help with that.

Enter Azure Virtual Desktop.

Simplicity and Standardization

Traditionally, MSPs would build up a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environment based on Microsoft Server technology; mostly on-premises. They would try to keep costs low by cramming as many users as possible onto a single machine. While the user experience might not be optimal, it proved to be a relatively successful model. At least until now. I say “relative” because there is still a lot of manual labor and guessing involved. So, you could say it worked OK, but not great.

Moving these types of deployments into Azure, based on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) virtual machines, for example, also works but requires knowledge of Azure, automation, separate machines that need to be managed, optimized, and so on. Not ideal.

AVD greatly simplifies all of this. AVD is a managed service offered by Microsoft. In short, this means that all the infrastructure and management components (i.e., the backend) needed to run a AVD environment like a database, the broker and load balance service, web interface, etc. which used to be separate virtual machines are now turned into a service for you the MSP to consume.

You no longer must deploy and maintain these machines and services separately; this is all done by Microsoft. They will update, patch, and make sure all components are redundant, resilient, and more. In other words, it’s simple, consistent, and your (customer) deployments – at least from a backend perspective – will always be the same.

In short, you will be up and running quickly and won’t have to worry about ongoing maintenance. All that’s left for you to worry about are your users, data, and applications.

Free Trial of Nerdio Manager for MSP

Azure Virtual Desktop Flexibility

One of the big advantages of leveraging cloud services is that you only consume what you need, and that’s what you’ll pay for. Need a few more machines because user demand increases? No problem. No longer need them a few hours later? Fine. Turn them off and you will no longer be billed for consumption.

As you can imagine, this applies to AVD as well. While all the backend components are taken care of, you will still need to spin up multiple virtual machines as part of your AVD deployment for your users/clients to work on – a published desktop environment, for example, or published applications, a VDI type one-to-one scenario, etc.

From a cost control perspective, this is exactly the flexibility you are looking for. It’s also something that we at Nerdio specialize in. How do you make sure VMs are only running when needed, saving on costs? It’s something we take care of fully automated in the background without your users/clients noticing a thing.

AVD supports different kinds of Operating Systems; from single to multi-user, Windows 10 to Windows Server 2019 and upwards. Even Windows 7 is still supported with free security updates included. This enables you to serve different use-cases with ease and to deliver all types of applications and virtual desktop scenarios to your users/clients.

In fact, Windows 10 multi-session offered as part of AVD is optimized for Office 365 usage offering one of the best Cloud based user experiences up to date.

All this is backed by an enhanced RDP protocol and AVD client allowing you to use any type of end-user device you can think of (Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS, iOS etc.) or to consume AVD applications and/or virtual desktops no matter where you are – another added advantage of cloud based services.

Azure Virtual Desktop Security

From a security point of view, all user sessions run in an isolated state. You can leverage Role Based Access so granular access control can be applied. Also, the overall attack surface has been greatly reduced by introducing a technology named Reverse Connect. Finally, Azure Active Directory helps to secure your AVD environment even more by applying Multi-Factor Authentication and Conditional Access.

So, what is the catch? I read your mind, right?

Azure Virtual Desktop Management and Cost Control

Well, I wouldn’t call it a catch, per se. AVD offers a ton of flexibility, from a management perspective, cost savings, adding simplicity, and so on. However, AVD has also been developed as a platform, or framework for others to build on top of. Like Nerdio Manager for MSP.

In other words, if you use the native AVD service directly from the Azure portal, you will still get all of the above, though from an ongoing (user, VM, image, etc.) management perspective you will still run into a couple of surprises and challenges from time to time.

That’s exactly why Microsoft and Nerdio have partnered together on the development of products that enhance the AVD environment for MSPs. To enable you, the MSP, to leverage all of the added advantages that AVD and Azure offer together with the pricing, deployment, management, and optimization capabilities of Nerdio Manager for MSP.

While AVD makes virtual desktop environments simpler and more efficient, adding Nerdio Manager for MSP to the equation takes it to a whole new level.

Nerdio Manager for MSP

Nerdio Manager for MSP (a brand-new solution build from the ground-up) offers a unique mix of extreme power, unique AVD management, and autoscale capabilities (for AVD as well as IaaS), combined with different forms of automation, auto-deployment options, native Azure integrations, and a pallet of the user, IaaS virtual machine, security, and Microsoft 365 management options. The best thing is NMM is multi-tenant so you can manage all of your customers from a single pane of glass console. You can onboard as many customers as you want while still being able to get to all of them through a single mouse-click once logged in (you only need to log in once) to the main management console.

Nerdio specifically focuses on the Azure services that you, the MSP, needs to efficiently manage and optimize your customer virtual desktop environments. You will save time, money, and we’ll enable over 80% of your IT workforce to work with, manage, and optimize AVD and Azure virtual desktop environments on a daily basis.

We also offer an extensive Cost Estimator that will help you price your virtual desktops, per user, per month. Just about everything you can think of will be taken into consideration.

It includes licensing options, the types of VMs used, user roles, profiles and density, additional IaaS based machines, backup, plus a whole lot more. You will be able to include Reserved Instances, CSP discounts, AHB, etc. and if you are not familiar with these concepts, we’ll be happy to explain them to you to help you on your way towards building a successful cloud practice with AVD.

Our roadmap for 2021 is ambitious, to say the least. Networking, backups, disk management, shadowing users, Azure Files, Role Based Access, MSIX App Attach, and more is all in there, or will be there shortly.

In summary, you will not find a more complete, efficient, and easier to use AVD and IaaS based management platform out there. Brought to you by the power of the Microsoft Azure cloud combined with AVD and Nerdio.

Bas van Kaam

Nerdio Field CTO, EMEA

Free White Paper Download!

How-Azure-Virtual-Desktop-Can-Help-Managed-Service-Providers-Build-a-Successful-Cloud-Practice Download

6 Ways to Make Your Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Environment Highly Secure

Security is an important factor in many organization’s cloud strategies and a reason why many choose Microsoft’s public cloud. Inheriting its security posture from Azure itself, Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) offers excellent foundations for a highly secure IT environment and incorporates the full set of security services. When a user logs into AVD, Azure creates a secure reverse connection, from Azure to the endpoint device. Additionally, all data transferred within Azure and is encrypted in flight and at rest.

But the inherent security positives of Azure and services like AVD aside, organizations can and should take extra steps to harden their security environment. IT teams can architect an AVD environment that is highly secure by leveraging native Azure technologies along with Nerdio Manager to complete the six steps below in this article.

Properly Configuring Nerdio Manager for Enterprise for a Highly Secure Environment

But wait…some of you may undoubtedly be asking, “but isn’t Nerdio Manager secure out-of-the-box?”

Yes. By default, Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is protected with Azure AD (Active Directory) authentication, including multifactor authentication (MFA) and conditional access. It is accessible from any internet location and is an Azure-managed application installed into a customer’s own tenant.

That all in mind, when deploying Nerdio, it is important to implement full security across the board and properly configure it to avoid any security vulnerabilities.

When Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is installed for the first time, the solution does not configure the detailed security configuration because each environment has different requirements and configurations. Additionally, a number of the security configurations require a “New” empty subnet. Many companies have restrictions or policies in place to require approval for network/subnet additions.

Enterprises can easily configure these post-installation and take the actions below to make their AVD environments highly secure. These actions all seek to eliminate unauthorized individuals from accessing sensitive databases, networks, access keys, etc.

6 Actions to Make Your AVD Environment Highly Secure

1. Restrict Access to the Nerdio App Service

Access Restrictions

Locate Nerdio app (similar to nmw-app-xxxxxxx)

Settings -> Configuration -> General Settings -> Networking -> Inbound Traffic -> Access Restrictions

Private Endpoint

Locate Nerdio app (similar to nmw-app-xxxxxxx)

Settings -> Configuration -> General Settings -> Networking -> Inbound Traffic -> Private Endpoints

2. Remove FTP Services from Nerdio App Service

Azure app services

Locate Nerdio app (similar to nmw-app-xxxxxxx)

Settings -> Configuration -> General Settings ->

On the FTP state selector, change the option from All allowed (default) to Disabled.

3. Set Up Storage Account Private Link

The most common misconfiguration we see today is setting up a Private Link for a storage account and not configuring App Service for vNet integration on the web app. Without setting up vNet integration on the web app, Nerdio cannot manage the MSIX and FSLogix storage, so it is required to complete this step.

4. Set Up Key Vault Private Link

5. Automate Hybrid Runbook Worker to Access Key Vault

Done via Nerdio Scripted Action

6. Restrict Azure SQL Access

Add the App Service’s outbound IP addresses to the Azure SQL Server’s firewall.

Route traffic from the App Service using a vNet.

AVD Security Maintenance and Management Considerations

It is very important that AVD deployments are reviewed every six months for changes in security posture. Organizations should verify their current security and have it well documented and logs in place. It is also essential to review our Enterprise (Nerdio Manager for Enterprise) Release Notes, on a regular basis, for any new security updates or resolved security issues.

What are Microsoft Azure VMS Series? B, D, E, and N Azure VM Series Explained

Virtual machines (VMs) in Azure come in predefined sizes that are called families or  series.  An individual VM is often referred to as an instance. 

Different VM families are designed for common use –cases and are comprised of certain amounts of CPU cores and GB of RAM.  It’s not possible to arbitrarily mix and match CPU cores and GB of RAM as can be done with Hyper-V and VMware.  Therefore, it is important to understand the specific VM series you wish to deploy when thinking through the IT environment you are deploying in Microsoft Azure.

Additionally, selecting the right VM for your host pools and user needs is one of the biggest ways to control and bring down costs in Azure. If you want to investigate other ways to bring down costs in Azure, check out this blog.

Here, we will focus on four of the most common Azure VM series, how they compare to each other, and when to use each.

Microsoft Azure VMs: B Series

Economical burstable VMs *

B-series are economical VMs that provide a low-cost option for workloads that typically run at a low-to-moderate baseline CPU utilization, but sometimes need to burst to significantly higher CPU utilization when the demand rises. 

We like B series for servers that are 24×7 and non-customer facing servers. 

When idle, the B series will bank credits and use those credits later when CPU utilization needs to burst past the baseline.  When rebooted, B series will lose their credits which can take hours to rebuild without too much impact.  When booted without any banked credits, the B series will only have access to allow for a small fraction of total CPU utilization until a bank of credits can be built up. 

Microsoft Azure VMs: D Series

General purpose compute *

D-series VMs feature fast CPUs and optimal CPU-to-memory configuration, making them suitable for most production workloads. DSv5-series instances carry more powerful CPUs and the same memory and disk configurations as the D-series. However, these CPU cores are hyper-threaded, meaning that a single physical CPU core is behind each two CPU cores in a Dsv5 VM. 

Dsv5 instances (ie. Ds4v_5 – 4 core x 16GB RAM) are the 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake) processor in a hyper threaded configuration, providing a better value proposition for most general-purpose workloads. This new processor features an all-core turbo clock speed of 3.5 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, Intel® Advanced-Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512) and Intel® Deep Learning Boost. The Ds-series supports Standard and Premium SSD storage. 

We like D series for performance as they pair well with premium SSD – a must for solutions or presentation layers that are customer-facing.  There is not a lot of difference in price with v5 instances (as opposed to v4 or v3), which makes them ideal. 

Example use-cases include many LOB applications, SQL databases, in-memory caching, and analytics. The latest generations are ideal for applications that demand faster CPUs, better local disk performance or higher memories. 

Microsoft Azure VMs: E Series

Optimized for in-memory hyper-threaded applications*

The E-series family of Azure VMs are optimized for heavy in-memory applications such as SQL Servers and AVD session hosts. These VMs are set up with high memory-to-core ratios, which makes them well-suited for relational database servers, with medium to large caches, and in-memory analytics. The E-series VMs range from 2 to 64 vCPUs and 16-432 GiB RAM, respectively. The Es-series supports Azure Premium SSDs.

We like the E series for session hosts and collections where the line of business applications consumes a higher-than-normal memory footprint per user.  Software that is optimized for multi-user session hosts can often consume large footprints of memory.

Example use cases include Application Servers, Database Servers, Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts

Microsoft Azure VMs: N Series

GPU enabled virtual machines *

The N-series is a family of Azure VMs with GPU capabilities. GPUs are ideal for compute and graphics-intensive workloads, helping customers to fuel innovation through scenarios like high-end remote visualization, deep learning, and predictive analytics. 

The N-series has three different offerings aimed at specific workloads: 

The NC-series is focused on high-performance computing and machine learning workloads. The latest version— NC A100 v4 —features NVIDIA’s A100 PCIe GPUs. 
The ND-series is focused on training and inference scenarios for deep learning. The latest version – ND A100 v4 – features the NVIDIA Ampere A100 40GB Tensor Core GPUs
The NV-series enables powerful remote visualization workloads and other graphics-intensive applications backed by the NVIDIA A10 GPU.  NVadsA10 v5 – features AMD Gen3 CPU’s and NVIDIA A10 GPUs packing a powerful combination

We like N series for graphic needs related to engineering and 3D modeling.  The footprint is quite large which makes them good shared machines.  Assigning 2-4 users per N series as an AVD Session Host is an ideal for cost distribution and performance requirements.  NV series will be the primary N series instance.  Approach other N series with a very specific need or application requirement as they are not a good fit for GPU enabled virtual desktops.

Example use-cases include running applications like AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Revit, BlueBeam, Photoshop, Lumion.

Learn more about Azure by attending one of our upcoming Training Camps

How Azure Virtual Desktop Can Help Your Organization Be More Sustainable

With increasing awareness of the importance of sustainable practices, it’s no wonder so many businesses are looking to implement and scale new methods of supporting sustainability. Among various culprits of high carbon emissions is end-user computing. However, Azure Virtual Desktop is different – it helps companies reduce their carbon emissions.

Microsoft has reported that Azure has been carbon neutral, emitting as much carbon as it has reduced, since 2012. And in 2018, they conducted a significant study (access it here) on the sustainability of the Microsoft Cloud versus on-site computer systems in 2018. The study showed significant results indicating that switching to cloud products could largely improve how sustainable and energy efficient a company is. Specifically, switching to Microsoft Azure from an on-premises environment could increase energy efficiency by up to 93%, and increase sustainability by decreasing carbon emissions by up to 98%.

But more than just the environmental benefits of Microsoft Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop can help improve energy efficiency through three key factors: IT operational efficiency, IT equipment efficiency and datacenter infrastructure efficiency. These three components all work to reduce the amount of energy needed to deliver Azure Virtual Desktop and related services, which is much lower than the energy needed for traditional on-prem VDI.

IT Operational Efficiency

While an emphasis on application availability can lead to an overprovisioning of computing resources due to predicted demands, Azure is able to calculate the actual anticipated demand and ensure that that is met without allotting more resources than needed and taking more energy to do so. In addition, the cloud infrastructure of Azure can host thousands of companies and millions of users with balancing use patterns that create a predictable fluctuation of use loads. This also helps with the cost efficiency and predictability of Azure as organizations can leverage cost reduction strategies, Azure Reserved Instances (which you can learn more about here), and more to best align with their cloud budgets.

IT Equipment Efficiency

Keeping hardware components exacted to the services that will run ensures that all processes are being run on a leaner amount of energy. In addition, by working to ensure servers are functioning with maximum efficiency, Azure allows for highly advanced scaling. This is extremely important to the energy efficiency of a company, as Microsoft discovered in their study that specialized IT equipment can reduce electricity consumption by at least 10%.

Datacenter Infrastructure Efficiency

The hyperscale datacenters that power the Microsoft cloud are able to monitor every little component of datacenter overhead tasks, such as lighting, cooling and power conditioning. In doing so, they can achieve better power usage effectiveness, thus using less energy than an enterprise would with on-premises infrastructure.

The Nerdio Benefit

While using Microsoft Azure does lead to a lesser carbon footprint, a large part of that is because of the significant carbon offsetting Microsoft partakes in. Reducing carbon emissions through off-setting is a great step in the direction of becoming more sustainable; however, it is only one piece of the puzzle. Another significant component is power consumption. One of the key features of Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is auto-scaling, which can drastically reduce the power consumption of your Azure Virtual Desktop by customizing the power usage exactly to your needs so that you are not consuming (or paying for) more than you will use. You can learn more about what sets Nerdio’s auto-scaling apart from native Microsoft auto-scaling in this blog.

In addition, Microsoft has launched a major initiative for renewable energy that’s helped reduce carbon emissions when using Azure Virtual Desktop. By 2025, they will ensure that Azure is supplied by 100% renewable energy.

More and more companies are beginning to see the benefits of moving to the cloud, such as financial benefits, as well as the benefit of conserving resources. Those benefits are all significant and certainly helpful to your company, but when looking at the overarching, global benefits of Azure, the sustainable backing provided through the service should not be ignored. In a time when all eyes are on technology to begin providing answers to the climate crisis, it’s important to not overlook technology that is creating solutions to help individuals do their part.

2022 Update: Welcome to the Newest Nerdio NVPs!

Over the past year we’ve launched many things – certifications, a new product edition, and our respective Azure Sales and Azure Technical Training Camps to name a few. What’s my personal favorite? The launch of our Nerdio Valued Professional (NVP) program.

This program seeks to support and give back to individuals who consistently and voluntarily work to support Nerdio, our products, initiatives, and vision. We named our three inaugural NVPs back in December of 2021.

And with much excitement, I am pleased to share our newest two new members. Please welcome Dominiek Verham, based in the Netherlands; and Johan Vanneuville, based out of Belgium. Both Dominiek and Johan are active community participants and consistent contributors. And though both have only officially been NVPs for a couple of weeks, they have already been hard at work sharing new product feature requests, educational blogs, and contributing to our business in general.

Below please find more information about our new NVPs, said in their own words. I’ll wrap it up quickly by saying thank you, gentlemen! It’s great to have you on board and we can’t wait to see what you do next.

More Information

If you think you got what it takes to be a Nerdio NVP, please fill out our registration form at the bottom of the NVP landing page.

Thank you all for reading, speak soon!