“Are we able, or when will we be able, to run Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) on-premises?”

Ever since Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD; still named Windows Virtual Desktop/WVD back then) went GA this has been the hot question, and one top of mind for companies regardless of industry or location.

AVD enables companies to leverage the scalability and flexibility of the Microsoft Azure cloud delivering (virtual) desktops and applications with just a few clicks in a secure and effective manner. Furthermore, AVD provides a central management for administrators to manage desktops and applications across their organization, whether it be for a handful of users or thousands spread across the globe.

On-premises Azure Virtual Desktop

While running your workloads in the cloud has many advantages, sometimes companies prefer to keep their apps and desktops close to their users. Why? Minimizing latency, for example, is toward the top of the list. Being in control (or the feeling of) over the back-end infrastructure is another one. Cost optimization and moving part of the (infrastructure) costs to a CapEx model, also comes to mind. And of course, there are more.

Historically running workloads on-premises has not been possible when using AVD, for reasons well known. Well, that is no longer the case. Microsoft has been hard at work to finalize their own hyper converged infrastructure solution or ‘HCI’, named Azure Stack HCI, that integrates with AVD.

Azure Stack HCI

With Azure Stack HCI, Microsoft allows organizations to deploy and run their virtualized workloads on-premises while integrating with Azure cloud services, AVD being one of them. It combines storage, compute, and networking in a single certified hardware appliance. Today, almost all well-known hardware vendors are part of their program and companies have a variety of choice when it comes to choosing their preferred hardware vendor. Some of which they might already be or have been using throughout the years.

This also means that overall management has the same look and feel as they are used to when working with Microsoft Azure. Think of it as an extension.

Over the years, Nerdio has been helping thousands of companies globally to build out their cloud practice, manage, and optimize their AVD workloads. Using Nerdio, deployments and daily management tasks are greatly simplified, bringing down times from days / weeks to hours, or minutes even. We’ve seen cost reductions as high as 80% + when compared to using AVD natively, all due to our famous auto-scaling engines and other types of automation applied to both compute and storge. Well, I’m excited to say we are taking our work with Azure Stack HCI a step further.

Nerdio and Azure Stack HCI

Ever since we announced that Nerdio Manager for Enterprise would integrate with Azure Stack HCI our phones haven’t stopped ringing. The interest is huge and today we have many customers already working with Nerdio combined with Azure Stack HCI and dozens more kicking the tires, as they say. And we don’t expect interest will slow down any time soon.

Needless to say, our team has been working non-stop to provide IT teams with the best of Nerdio combined with all the advantages that come with Microsoft’s latest Azure Stack HCI release. Our roadmap is quite impressive, if I do say so myself.

Using Azure Stack HCI combined with Nerdio, organizations create a hybrid cloud infrastructure that provides the scalability and flexibility of the cloud while keeping their data and applications on-premises and are still getting all the advantages of our powerful platform. Some of which include:

• Simplified deployment and management of AVD and related services like FSLogix, monitoring, identity services, applications, and much more. Nerdio automates the deployment and management of your AVD infrastructure, while Azure Stack HCI simplifies on-premises infrastructure management.
• Scale AVD workloads efficiently: With Azure Stack HCI, organizations can scale their VDI workloads to meet their business needs without having to rely on expensive hardware upgrades – easy and flexible.
• Provide a consistent user experience: Nerdio ensures a consistent user experience across on-premises and cloud environments, allowing organizations to deliver AVD workloads from any location.
• Reduce costs: By using a hybrid cloud infrastructure, organizations can take advantage of the cost savings of on-premises infrastructure while leveraging the scalability and flexibility of the cloud. Combine this with Nerdio’s powerful automation and scaling capabilities and you have a winning formula not found elsewhere.

We are excited about Azure Stack HCI’s capabilities, as are many of our customers, and we can’t wait to share what we have in store moving forward!

In our next post on Azure Stack HCI, you can check out exact details of what an average Nerdio / Azure Stack HCI setup might look like and explore use cases.

To learn more about Nerdio Manager for Enterprise, click here.