Windows Virtual Desktop is a service hosted on Azure which allows clients to consolidate their workflow like a traditional RDS server, but with a Windows 10 VM instead which is more intuitive to most users. This is a powerful technology for MSP’s which can cut both you and your client’s costs, reduce technical overhead, and increase security. It works out to a large win for everyone involved for most workflows.

Azure has become one of the biggest virtualization and cloud platforms with a medley of offerings and services which meld together into a Windows administrator’s sweetest dream. Let’s see exactly what Windows Virtual Desktop is, what it does well, how to get the most out of the platform if you’re not used to the cloud, and the security and backup features you get as well.

What Is Windows Virtual Desktop?

Windows Virtual Desktop boils down to a solution which allows you to manage a cloud Windows environment without having to manage the tedious parts of infrastructure, maintenance, or the pain of licensing. It is the natural evolution of RDP. We previously wrote about the more technical aspects of what makes a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure work. Let’s look at the features Windows Virtual Desktop offers to get a taste for what it does in practice rather than theory. Microsoft lays their Windows Virtual Desktop offering out with the following features:

• Set up a multi-session Windows 10 deployment that delivers a full Windows 10 with scalability
• Virtualize Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise and optimize it to run in multi-user virtual scenarios
• Provide Windows 7 virtual desktops with free Extended Security Updates
• Bring your existing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Windows Server desktops and apps to any computer
• Virtualize both desktops and apps
• Manage Windows 10, Windows Server, and Windows 7 desktops and apps with a unified management experience

You get the ability to use a multi-user, multi-session version of Windows 10 which means a more simplified changeover and an easier licensing situation. You also have the option for Windows Server or an up-to-date version of Windows 7. Desktops and apps alone can be virtualized with this solution.

Windows Virtual Desktop makes it easy to get users virtualized cheaper and more efficiently than other solutions. You handle the setup, they handle the infrastructure (Azure AD) and maintenance (mostly). Microsoft also makes it easier than RDP, you don’t need a gateway server and RDP setups deployed to each desktop, your users just use a simple native app or an HTML5 webapp.

What Makes Windows Virtual Desktop Amazing?

This solution basically provides you a way to make virtual desktops for clients to work off of (which are especially important with work from home), but that isn’t all it does. It also allows support for Windows 7 which is compliant (i.e. it is patched and up to date from the vendor), and it allows porting over existing RDP setups. You get everything a traditional Windows virtualization solution could provide, plus an easier way to administer it and use it. It offers an easy line for clients to move over as well.

If you have clients with old Windows 7 desktops or Windows Server 2008 R2 boxes, you know how painful they can be to manage. The extended support on its own is far too expensive for most companies to realistically consider, so they take their chances with VM’s or trying to isolate the machine from the rest of the network. No matter how it’s done, it’s either expensive or painful for everyone involved.

The Azure setup streamlines maintaining a domain environment. Domain costs can become especially costly per user in smaller traditional setups. Ease of use is a general feature across the board for Azure. That being said, Azure can be hard to get going with since there are just so many features and options.

Augmenting Azure

We offer project services for migrations to help our partners focus on business while we focus on the boring parts. We partnered with both Crayon and Nerdio to augment our Azure offerings. Azure is complicated and can be difficult to navigate, but solutions like Crayon and Nerdio both have different offerings which fill in the gaps. They help handle translating the client’s need into something which can be cost effective with Windows Virtual Desktop (among many other Azure services).

Transitioning to Azure is easy if you’re somewhat technical and can follow directions, but you can end up with 10 different solutions which do the same thing and vary wildly in cost. The cost all depends on how well you understand the platform and what you need to satisfy the client.

Any MSP can handle the technical side, but the platform requires knowledge and experience to leverage it as efficiently as possible. It can be hard to find the time to maintain your business obligations while staying ahead of the dizzying number of XaaS platforms. Paying for a project to migrate or working with a vendor to simplify Azure and Windows Virtual Desktop setup can ensure your first migrations are a success and stay on track for cost and expectations.

It’s easy once you understand it, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get to the point it all comes together naturally. You can choose to learn on your own slowly, or you can get a jumps jump-start with expertise to immerse you in Azure and learn as you go. Neither solution is the right answer for all MSP’s or businesses, but if it gets overwhelming, there are options to get through the most mundanely challenging parts.

Azure Backup and Security

Azure offers a backup service which makes recovery and backup administration trivial if you’ve already bought into the Azure platform. Azure Backup doesn’t just work for devices hosted on Azure, you can also run it on traditional on-premise setups. It isn’t always the most cost effective solution outside of Azure however.

You also have a simplified network interface which abstracts your networking away from supporting a virtual appliance. Some providers still require you to support virtual firewalls and similar if you want the service to work and be secure. Azure makes it easy in general and keeps it easy enough that some power users can even administer it.

Azure Backups running as a cloud appliance rather than an on-premise machine or similar provides an advantage for security as well. Some crypto and ransomware variants are known to target HyperV machines or certain backup solutions to make recovery more painful. It’s a lot harder to do when it’s a one way transfer into the cloud rather than a machine sharing the same network.

I mentioned compliance earlier with Windows 7 with Windows Virtual Desktop, but this is a huge selling point to some clients. They need a legacy OS and they need to do things right or else have a hugely inconvenient network isolation project. We’ve had vendors suggest clients with applications on Windows Server 2008 R2 literally isolate and spin up a full, separate domain (intentionally using different credentials and user structuring), maintain a jumpbox (or two) which is at least partially isolated, and then suggest users transfer data by moving it from their system to the jumpbox, and then to the secure server to try and remain secure because extended support was too expensive. Or, they could just use Windows Virtual Desktop.

Conclusion

Windows Virtual Desktop won’t fit every client or every workflow, but it is a powerful offering and an efficient tool for many companies. Windows Virtual Desktop expounds on the possibilities in Azure with virtualization and creates the natural evolution to RDP and similar tools and technologies. Understand what it does and how, and you can understand when to use it, or when to not.

Services from Nerdio or Crayon can give you a shortcut to getting the most out of Windows Virtual Desktop and other Azure offerings. Windows Virtual Desktop is powerful, but it can be complicated if you are not familiar with the sheer volume of options. You can make the same basic system a dozen ways with a dozen different prices that all work the same; understanding how the options work and are billed is essential to making the right choices. It’s not hard on its own, but it can be when you’re trying to balance a business and selecting technology.

Sometimes it just works out cheaper long-term to rely on another expert to make the best choices and build the best experience the first few times. It’s important to remember how much your time or obligation is worth. We enable our partners to make use of these technologies to get the most bang for their buck.

Windows Virtual Desktop can provide an easier to manage environment which can be cheaper to operate for many clients. It abstracts away many security and infrastructure concerns, as well as unexpected costs. I’m yet to hear of a client moving to Azure or Windows Virtual Desktop and deciding to move back due to anything other than poor planning. The advantages are too great once you understand them.

by Joseph Landes

Managed service providers (MSPs) in The 20 play a very important role in the adoption of cloud IT environments and the evolution of technology for the small and medium-size businesses they serve. This is particularly true with a powerful, yet complex, cloud environment like Microsoft Azure. SMBs look to MSPs in The 20 to expertly optimize itto fit their needs. But MSPs should also be on the lookout for how Azure can improve their own business needs—namely decreased costs and higher gross profit margins.

Here are five tips from Nerdio for The 20 members to optimize Azure costs and infrastructure to increase margins and make more money offering and reselling Azure.

1. Become a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Reseller

Becoming a CSP reseller makes it easier for MSPs to transact Azure. In addition, CSP resellers receive a discount off Azure list prices via a CSP distributor—typically large providers—and thereby increase margins. CSP resellers are also eligible for various incentives that Microsoft makes available to its CSPs based on growth objectives. These incentives are incremental to the discount received on Azure consumption and can be in the 10% range or more when added up. Reach out to an IT distributor and ask how to become a CSP reseller or visit Microsoft’s website for more detailed information.

2. Leverage Azure Reserved Instances

The cost of virtual machines (VMs) in Azure is the single most expensive component of a typical MSP’s IT environment. Reserved instances (RIs) are reservations of a specific type of compute capacity (i.e., VM family/series) in a specific geographic location (i.e., Azure region) for a predefined period of time (12 or 36 months). Depending on the above specifics, using RIs and reserving compute capacity ahead of time can save you from 20% to 57% relative to the list pay-as-you-go price. They do require some advance planning, budgeting, and structuring of your Azure account the right way, but can significantly increase the profitability of your Azure practice.

3. Capitalize on Azure Hybrid Usage

Microsoft has created a special entitlement called Azure Hybrid Usage (AHU) that allows MSPs to pay for Windows Server via another licensing program and not through Azure. Essentially, you can bring the Windows Server licenses you already paid for to the cloud for free. As a result, the Windows Server OS meter stops spinning. AHU is a benefit unique to Azure; you can’t bring your own Windows server license to other major cloud providers. Combining RIs with AHU and CSP software subscriptions can reduce the cost of VMs by up to 80%. It goes without saying that the margin impact to an MSP from such significant cost reductions cannot be overlooked.

4. Auto-scaling for Cost Optimization

The value proposition of Azure as a public cloud is its utility-like consumption billing model: Pay only for what you use. To do this, MSPs need a mechanism to know what compute is needed and when, and a system that automatically resizes workloads to fit the demand at any given time. This means that if a VM doesn’t need to be on, a system

needs to be in place to know it and act on it by shutting down the VM at the appropriate time and then turning it back on when it’s needed again.

Azure automation platforms do exactly this, as MSPs can set business hours for each VM and tell the system what to do with the VM outside of those hours: leave it alone, shut it down, or change it to something smaller. The system will then automatically execute these instructions, resizing the VM after the end of business hours and then prior to the start of the next business day.

5. Burstable VM Instances

B-series Azure VMs are known as “burstable” VMs. They are used for non-CPU-intensive workloads (for example, domain controllers and file servers) and cost about 50% of an equivalently sized D-series VM. Burstable VMs are cheaper because Azure imposes a quota on how much of the total CPU cores can be used. Every second that the VM is using less than its quota it is “banking credits” that can be used to burst up to the total available CPUs when needed. While bursting, the VM is consuming its banked credits. Once the credits run out, the VM’s CPU utilization is throttled down to a lower utilization quota.

As you can see, these tips provide multiple ways for MSPs in The 20 to optimize their Azure consumption and increase their profitability. Understanding these tips will help you reconfigure their Azure architecture, determine how much margin they can achieve, and recognize how to build a successful and profitable cloud practice in Azure. Nerdio’s automation platform allows the members of The 20 to achieve all of this and much more. Check us out at the upcoming VISION event or on our website at www.getnerdio.com.

Interested in learning more? Don’t miss Nerdio at The 20’s upcoming VISION Conference!

Joseph Landes is the Chief Revenue Officer at Nerdio—a cloud company whose mission is to enable MSPs to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure.  He previous worked at Microsoft for 23 years leading high performing international sales and marketing teams.  When not visiting MSPs you can find him trying to visit every country in the world or reading great literary fiction.

Microsoft re-released its Windows 10 October 2018 Update yesterday, following the company pulling it offline due to data deletion issues over the weekend.

Partner of The 20, and CEO of Cole Informatics, LLC out of Parsons, Tennessee, Terry Cole, made note of these issues on his late last week.

The software giant says there were only a few reports of data loss, at a rate of one one-hundredth of one percent. “We have fully investigated all reports of data loss, identified and fixed all known issues in the update, and conducted internal validation,” says Microsoft’s John Cable, Director of Program Management for Windows Servicing and Delivery.

Microsoft is now re-releasing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update to Windows Insiders, before rolling it out more broadly to consumers. “We will carefully study the results, feedback, and diagnostic data from our Insiders before taking additional steps towards re-releasing more broadly,” explains Cable.

It appears the bug that caused file deletion was related to Windows 10 users who had enabled Known Folder Redirection to redirect folders like desktop, documents, pictures, and screenshots from the default location. Microsoft introduced code in its latest update to delete the empty and duplicate known folders, but it appears they weren’t always empty. Microsoft has developed fixes to address a variety of problems related to these folder moves, and these fixes are now being tested with Windows Insiders.

Speaking of Windows Insiders, Microsoft’s testing community did flag some of these issues ahead of the release. Microsoft appears to acknowledge this as the company is making some changes to the feedback tool for Windows 10 to ensure testers can flag the severity of bug reports. “We have added an ability for users to also provide an indication of impact and severity when filing User Initiated Feedback,” explains Cable. “We expect this will allow us to better monitor the most impactful issues even when feedback volume is low.”

Microsoft will now monitor feedback related to this re-released build of Windows 10 October 2018 Update and will officially launch it to consumers once the company is confident “that there is no further impact” to Windows 10 users. “We are committed to learning from this experience and improving our processes and notification systems to help ensure our customers have a positive experience with our update process,” says Cable.

While we all hope this re-release is a positive one, Microsoft has certain come under fire with its frequent update process. I made note of this in a blog last month that discussed IT admins who are campaigning hard for Microsoft to slow their roll when it comes to their Windows 10 upgrade schedule.

Approximately 78% of more than 1,100 business professionals charged with servicing Windows for their firms said that Windows 10’s feature upgrades — now released twice annually — should be issued no more than once a year.

It would appear that IT administrators are campaigning hard for Microsoft to slow their roll when it comes to their Windows 10 upgrade schedule.

Approximately 78% of more than 1,100 business professionals charged with servicing Windows for their firms said that Windows 10’s feature upgrades — now released twice annually — should be issued no more than once a year. The 78% was split almost evenly, with 39.2% arguing for one upgrade per year while 39.3% picked one every two years from a questionnaire on Windows patching, updating and upgrading.

Only 11% agreed that the current twice-a-year release is their preference, and a very small 1% wanted an even quicker tempo than that.

The questionnaire, created by Susan Bradley, who moderates the PatchManagement.org mailing list, asked administrators about whether feature upgrades are useful to their businesses and if Windows 10 has met company needs. Bradley used the responses to support her plea that Microsoft’s top executives address what she and her colleagues believe is an ongoing deterioration in the quality of Microsoft’s monthly patch updates.

But she also raised the issue of the Windows 10 feature upgrades’ release calendar. “If Microsoft is not realizing that [their] enterprise customers are having issues with the timing of the feature updates, then Microsoft is not listening to their enterprise customers.”

And questionnaire commentary by IT administrators vividly paint the frustration felt from the feature upgrades’ frequency.

“Most feature updates introduce so many bugs and problems,” said one respondent. “With the current pace of releases of new feature updates, the entire IT department is busy constantly dealing with all the problems that follow, instead of spending time on activities that actually create value for users.”

“At twice per year, you’ve barely got over one before you need to do it all again, leading to the temptation to skip every other update,” asserted another.

“This may come as a shock to Microsoft management, but our bonuses aren’t geared to the matrices that their bonuses are geared to,” said another participant. “We have better things to do with our time than run on the treadmill that is their business cycle.”

Windows 10’s upgrade tempo has gone through several iterations since mid-2015, when the OS debuted. Initially, Microsoft envisioned four upgrades annually. In 2015, it released the first upgrade, labeled 1511 using the company’s now standard yymm format, about three and a half months after the original 1507. But then Microsoft issued just one upgrade in 2016, the mid-year 1607.

Shortly after that, Microsoft announced that it was formalizing a two-times-each-year schedule, with March and September as release targets. Since then, it’s delivered 1703 (April 2017), 1709 (October 2017) and 1803 (April 2018); it appears to be on track to release 1809 next month.

To complicate matters, for a time Microsoft extended support from the usual 18 months to 24 months for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education. Microsoft justified the extension – which ended with version 1803 – as necessary because “some customers” asked for more time to migrate from one feature upgrade to another.

With 24 months of support, it was feasible for IT to skip one feature upgrade in any given year. But with the return of 18 months of support, it will again be tough for companies to move all PCs to a supported version before the one currently powering the machines stops receiving patches. That was one reason Gartner Research urged enterprises to pressure Microsoft into making permanent the 24-month support period.

Gartner has assumed that Microsoft will not retreat from its two-times-a-year cadence but that it will be pressured, likely by or before the end of 2020, into making the 24 months of support permanent. While that won’t change the release frequency, it will, Gartner has said, allow adopting just one upgrade each year.

We’ll see what happens.

I’ll end with what Michael Wayland, Managing Director of Byte-Werx in Houston (Elite member of The 20) told me:

With the major releases there are often several unforeseen issues that can crop up. This can cause several hours of downtime for endpoints and cost small businesses money. It’s one reason you want a managed IT department to follow the releases, the issues, and release in a methodical and planned way after lab testing. They’re also available to quickly backstop, remediate, or walk through end-users for issues that arise.