Plans & Pricing
STANDARD
$3
per user / month
NEW!
PREMIUM
$7
per user / month
*User is defined as an active AVD user that logged in at least once during the month OR a user with provisioned Cloud PC.
AVD COST & PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION
STANDARD
NEW!
PREMIUM
Start VMs when users need them and stop them automatically when no longer in use. VM power management reduces Azure compute costs up to 75%.
Create new session host VMs on-the-fly, as needed, without keeping many VMs created and consuming storage costs by the OS disks. Newly created VMs are always fresh and based on the pristine image state. Add scripted actions to customize the VM provisioning process. When the VMs are now longer needed they can be automatically removed from the environment. A mix of “base capacity” (always created VMs) and “burst capacity” (just-in-time VMs) optimizes costs and user experience.
Start, stop, create, or delete session host VMs based on several auto-scale algorithms that take into account actual usage (e.g. CPU, current active sessions) and/or do so on a schedule to pre-stage capacity in expectation of users logging in.
Balance between cost savings and end-user experience by setting one of three scale in aggressiveness levels that controls the type of hosts can be scaled in (stopped or removed). High aggressiveness provides the highest savings and will forcefully disconnect even active users after end of work hours. Medium will stop host with disconnected sessions. Low aggressiveness will only stop or remove hosts that has no user sessions.
Balance between cost savings and end-user experience by setting one of three scale in aggressiveness levels that controls the type of hosts can be scaled in (stopped or removed). High aggressiveness provides the highest savings and will forcefully disconnect even active users after end of work hours. Medium will stop host with disconnected sessions. Low aggressiveness will only stop or remove hosts that has no user sessions.
Create multiple auto-scale pre-stage settings to ramp up host pool capacity during certain days of week and times of days. In education environments multiple schedules can be used to turn on VMs based on a pre-defined class schedule.
Provide users with non-persistent, single-user pooled desktops that are used exclusively by a single user during the session then returned to the pool, optionally refreshed/re-imaged, and made available to others. This VDI host pool configuration provides significant savings as compared to permanently-assigned personal desktops.
Personal Host Pool Auto-Grow
Dynamically expand the size of a personal desktop host pool by adding new session host VMs when the number of available (not assigned to a user) desktops falls below a pre-defined number or % of total.
Automatically remove desktops from personal host pool when these desktops have not been used for an extended period.
Save up to 90% on Azure VM compute costs while testing an AVD deployment by creating session hosts as Spot VMs. Not to be used in production scenarios as VMs can be unexpectedly “evicted”. Easily convert VMs from spot to pay-as-you-go and back to spot VMs with this scripted action.
Save up to additional 60% on the cost of Azure compute by using Reserved Instances in combination with auto-scaling. Nerdio Manager will analyze prior auto-scale behavior and recommend quantity of CPU core reservations to purchase to take advantage of RI savings.
Host VMs shut down from inside Windows are in a stopped, but not deallocated, state and continue to generate Azure compute costs. Nerdio Manager can automatically detect VMs in this state and deallocate them proactively.
Define “running” OS disk storage type (e.g. Premium or Standard SSD) and “stopped” OS disk storage type (e.g. Standard HDD). Auto-scale will change the OS disk to cheaper storage when it stopped and automatically change it to a more performance storage type when the VM is started. This results in up to 75% in OS disk storage savings when the VM is not running.
Save on OS disk storage costs and increase performance with Ephemeral OS disks that can be used for AVD session host VMs. Ephemeral OS disks are free and are stored on the Azure physical host’s local storage and are therefore faster.
Reduce the size of an image VM’s OS disk from the default 128GB to 64GB (or 32GB). This reduces storage costs for session host VMs by requiring a smaller disk and allows for use of smaller VMs with ephemeral OS disks.
Ensure high performance of Azure Files at the lowest possible cost. The performance characteristics of Azure Files Premium are determined by the provisioned capacity quota. Storage auto-scale increases capacity quota in response to increased storage latency (or on a schedule), and decreases it when the extra performance is no longer needed to save on costs.
Shrink FSLogix VHD(X) by removing the “white space” from inside the profile container. This dramatically reduces FSLogix storage costs.
Automatically run Microsoft’s Windows 10 and Windows 11 virtual desktop optimization tool on session host VMs as they are created. This results in drastically improved performance and increased user-per-CPU density, which reduces total Azure compute costs.
Auto-Scaling In Multi-Tenant And Cross-Cloud AVD Deployments
Reduce Azure compute and storage costs in complex cross-sovereign Cloud and multi-AAD tenant deployments.
Configure host pools to scale in and out based on up to 3 usage criteria. Auto-scale triggers can be CPU+RAM, CPU+RAM+Sessions, CPU+Sessions, or RAM+sessions. Host pool capacity will increase (scale out) when ANY of the scale out triggers are true and will decrease (scale in) when ALL scale in triggers are true.
Ensure high performance of Azure NetApp Files at the lowest possible cost. The performance of an Azure NetApp Files volume is determined by the volume size, regardless of capacity actually used. Storage auto-scale increases the volume size during times of peak demand (e.g. log-on and log-off storms) and decreases it automatically when the extra boost in performance is no longer needed. This is done based on a schedule and/or in response to elevated IO latency. Storage auto-scale also automatically grows volume (and capacity pool) size when capacity reaches a pre-defined threshold ensuring that it never runs out of space.
Log Analytics is used by Azure Monitor AVD Insights (and other monitoring solutions like Sepago) to collect and store diagnostic data. The size and cost of Log Analytics can quickly grow and make up a large component of the overall AVD cost. Azure Log Analytics pricing is complex and depends on ingestion rate, retention period, performance counters collected, and sampling frequency. Nerdio Manager analyzes all these dimensions and makes recommendations on how to best optimize Log Analytics costs.
Overcome Azure compute capacity limits by specifying multiple fallback VM sizes for use if capacity is exhausted for your preferred VM size in the region. Ensure that hosts creation, auto-scale, auto-grow, and auto-heal operations do not fail due to Azure capacity constraints.