Tag: VDI

Microsoft Ignite 2018: Office in Virtual Desktop Environments

Speakers: Gama Aguilar-Gamez & Sandeep Patnik

Goal: Make Office 365 Pro Plus a first class experience in virtualized environments.

Windows Virtual Desktop

  • The only mutli-user Windows 10 experience – note that this is RDmi and it also supports session hosts.
  • Optimized for Office 365 Pro Plus
  • Deploy and scale in minutes

Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-User

  • Scalable multi-user modern Windows user experience with Windows 10 Enterprise security
  • Windows 10
  • Multiple users
  • Win32, UWP
  • Office 365 Po Plus
  • Semi-Annual Channel

This is a middle ground between RDSH on Windows Server and VDI on Windows 10.

Demo

The presentation is actually being run from a WVD VM in the cloud. PowerPoint is a published application – we can see the little glyph in the taskbar icon.

User Profile Disks

High performance persistence of cached user profile data across all Office 365 apps and services.

  • Outlook OST/PST files – will be improved for GA of WVD. Support for UNC paths
  • OneDrive sync roots
  • OneNote notebook cache

Improving Outlook Start Up

  • Virtual environment friendly default settings
  • Sync Inbox before calendar for faster startup experience
  • Admin option to reduce calendar sync window
  • Reduce the number of folders that are synced by default
  • Windows Desktop Search is no per-user

See Exchange Account Settings to configure how much past email should be synced

Windows Desktop Search

  • Enables the full Outlook search experience that users expect
  • Per user index files are stored in the user profile for each roaming
  • No impact to CPU usage at steady state, minimal impact at sign in

With 100 users in a machine signing in simultaneously, enabling Windows Search has a 0.02% impact on the CPU.

Demo

Desktop of the remote machine is stretched across multiple displays – this demo is with a published desktop hosted in Windows 10 multi-user. Windows Desktop search is enabled. Instant search results in Outlook. OneDrive sync is working in a non-persistent machine – fully functional enabling the full collaboration experience in O365. Selective Sync works here too. Sync is cloud-cloud so the performance is awesome. In Task Manager, we see 3 users signed into a single Windows 10 VM via RDS.

OneDrive

  • Co-authoring and collaborative capabilities in wXP, powered by OneDrive.
  • OneDrive sync will run in non-persistent environments
  • Files on-demand capabilities
  • Automatically populate something

Support

  • Search products stay in sync with each other
  • Office 365 Pro Plus will always be supported with Win 10 SAC
  • Office 365 Pro Plus won Windows Server 2016 will be supported through October 2025

Best Practices

Outlook:

  • The OST file should be stored on local storage.
  • Outlook deployed with the primary mailbox in cached echange mode with the OST file stored on network storage, and an aggressive archiving strategy to an online archive mailbox
  • Outlook deploy in cached exchange mode with slider set to one month.

Office 365:

  • Licensing token roaming: Office 365 Pro-Plus 1704 or newer. You can configure the licensing token to roam with the users profile or be location on a shared folder on the network. This especially helpful  for non persistent VDI scenarios.
  • SSO recommended. We recommend using SSO for good and consistent user experience. SSO reduces how often the users are prompted to sign in for activation. With SSO configured, Office activates with the credentials the user uses to sign into Windows if the user is also licensed for O365 Pro Plus.
  • If you don’t use SSO, consider using roaming profiles.

Preview

Sign up: https://aka.ms/wvdpreview

Public preview later 2018.

GA early 2019.

Q&A

If you want to use RDSH on Windows Server 2019 then Office 365 Pro Plus is not supported. You would have to use persistent Office 2019 so you get a lesser product. The alternatives are RDSH on Windows Server 2016 or Windows 10 Multi User (Azure). 

Widows 10 Multi User is only available in Azure via Windows Virtual Desktop.

A lot of the above optimization, such as search indexing, rely on the user having a persistent profile on the latest version of Windows 10. So if that profile is a roaming profile or a UPD, then this works, in RDS or on physical,

Ignite 2016 – Extend the Microsoft RDS platform in Azure through Citrix solutions

This post is my set of notes from the session that shows us how Citrix are extending Azure functionality, including the 1st public demo of Citrix Express, which will replace Azure RemoteApp in 2017.

The speakers are:

  • Scott Manchester (main presenter), Principal Group Program Manager, Microsoft
  • Jitendra Deshpande, Citrix
  • Kireeti Valicherla, Citrix

RDS

A MSFT-only solution with multiple goals:

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Two on-prem solutions:

  • Session-based computing
  • VDI

In the cloud:

  • Session-based computing: RDS in VMs or the deprecated Azure RemoteApp
  • VDI “on Windows 10” … Manchester alludes to some licensing change to allow Enterprise edition of the desktop to be used in cloud-based VDI, which is not possible in any way with a desktop OS right now (plenty do it, breaking licensing rules, and some “do it” using a Server OS with GUI).

RDS Improvements in WS2016

  • Increased performance
  • Enhanced scale in the broker
  • Optimized for the cloud – make it easier to deploy it – some is Azure, some RDS, some licensing.

Azure N-Series

There are a set of VMs that are ideal for graphics intensive RDS/Citrix workloads. They use physical NVIDIA GPUs that are presented to the VM directly using Hyper-V DDA (as in WS2016 Hyper-V).

I skip some of the other stuff that is covered in other sessions.

Citrix

Kiritee from Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop takes the stage. He’s focused on XenApp Express, a new from-Azure service that will be out in 2017.

XenApp 7.11 has Day 1 support for WS2016:

  • Host WS2016 workloads
  • Host XenApp and XenDesktop infrastructure
  • Workload provisioning on ARM
  • Deliver new universal apps to any device
  • Accelerate app migration with AppDNA

XenApp/XenDesktop For N-Series VMs

HDX can be used with N-Series Azure VMs. This includes graphics professionals and designers on “single user Windows 10 CBB VMs” with multi-monitor NVENC H.264 hardware encoding.

Options for Azure Migration

Jitendra of Citrix takes over. He works on XenApp cloud and XenApp Express.

image

You can extend workloads to Azure, host workloads in Azure, or  run on a Citrix-managed service in Azure. In the latter, the management is in Citrix, and your workload runs in Azure. Citrix seamlessly update the management pieces and you just use them without doing upgrades.

These are the Citrix/Azure offerings today and in the future:

image

Back to Kireeti.

Next Generation Service for Remoting Apps

XenApp Express, out of the Azure Marketplace, will be the successor to Azure RemoteApp.

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Citrix Cloud will provide the management – it’s actually hosted on Azure. You bring your own Windows Server Images into XenApp Express, much like we do with Azure RemoteApp – it an image with the apps pre-installed.

Bad news: The customer must have RDS CALs with Software Assurance (Volume Licensing, and yes, SA is required for cloud usage) or RDS SALs (SPLA). The cost of Azure Remote included the monthly cost of RDS licensing.

The VMs that are deployed are run in your Azure subscription and consume credit/billing there.

Management is done via another portal in Citrix Cloud. Yes, you’ll need to use Azure Portal and the Citrix Cloud portal.

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Here is the release timeline. A technical preview will be some time in Q4 of this year.

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Next up, a demo, by Jitendra (I think – we cannot see the presenters in the video). The demo is with a dev build, which will likely change before the tech preview is launched.

  1. You “buy” Citrix XenApp Express in the Azure Marketplace – this limits transactions to certain kinds of subscriptions, e.g. EA but not CSP.
  2. You start by creating an App Collection – similar to Azure RemoteApp. You can make it domain-joined or not-domain joined. A domain should be available from your Azure VNet.
  3. Add your Azure subscription details – subscription, resource group (region), VNET, subnet.
  4. Enter your domain join details – very similar to Azure RemoteApp – domain, OU, computer account domain-join account name/password.
  5. You can use a Citrix image or upload your own image. Here you also select a VM series/size, configure power settings, etc, to control performance/scale/pricing.
  6. You can set your expected max number of simultaneous users.
  7. The end of the wizard shows an estimated cost calculator for your Azure subscription.
  8. You click Start Deployment
  9. Citrix reaches into your subscription and creates the VMs.
  10. Afterwards, you’ll need to publish apps in your app collection.
  11. Then you assign users from your domain – no mention if this is from a DC or from Azure AD.
  12. The user uses Citrix Receiver or the HTML 5 client to sign into the app collection and use the published apps.

The Best Way To Deliver Windows 10 Desktop From The Cloud

Cloud-based VDI using a desktop OS – not allowed up to now under Windows desktop OS (DESKTOP OS) licensing.

There are “new licensing changes” to move Windows 10 workloads to Azure. Citrix XenDesktop will be based on this.

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  • XenDesktop for Windows 10 on Azure is managed from Citrix Cloud (as above). You manage and provision the service from here, managing what is hosted in Azure.
  • Windows 10 Enterprise CBB licensing is brought by the customer. The customer’s Azure subscription hosts the VDI VMs and your credit is consumed or you pay the Azure bill. They say it must be EA/SA, but that’s unclear. Is that EA with SA only? Can an Open customer with SA do this? Can a customer getting the Windows 10 E3 license via CSP do this? We do not know.

Timeline – GA in Q4 of this year:

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Next up, a demo.

  1. They are logged into Citrix Cloud, which is first purchased via the Azure Marketplace – limited to a small set of Azure subscriptions, e.g. EA but not CSP at the moment.
  2. A hosting connection to an Azure subscription is set up already.
  3. They create a “machine catalog” – a bunch of machines.
  4. The wizard allows you to only do a desktop OS (this is a Windows 10 service). The wizard allows pooled/dedicated VMs, and you can configure how user changes are saved (local disk, virtual disk, discarded). You then select the VHD master image, which you supply to Citrix. You can use Standard (HDD) or Premium (SSD) storage in Azure for storing the VM. And then you select the quantity of VMs to create and the series/size (from Azure) to use – this will include the N-Series VMs when they are available. There’s more – like VM networking & domain join that you can do (they don’t show this).
  5. He signs into a Windows 10 Azure VM from a Mac, brokered by Citrix Cloud.

That’s all folks!

Microsoft News – 6 January 2015

A few little nuggets to get you back in the swing of things. And yes, I have completely ignored the US-only version 1.2 Azure Pricing Tool that suffers from “The Curse of Zune”.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

System Center

Windows Client

Azure

Microsoft News – 3 December 2014

It’s been a slow period but there’s some interesting stuff in Azure networking and websites.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Azure

Office 365

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News Summary – 14 August 2014

There’s a new craze out there with famous people called the Ice Bucket Challenge. A person is dared to take a bucket of ice water over the head (and post the video online) or donate to charity, in in of of “raising awareness” of a disease called ALS. Nadella and Zuckerberg have done it. Gates has been challenged.

Microsoft News Summary-2 July 2014

It’s been a long times since I posted one of these! I’ve just trawled my feeds for interesting articles and came up with the following. I’ll be checking news and Twitter for more.

Microsoft News Summary-29 April 2014

There is a lot of reading material this morning.

How Much RAM & CPU Does Window Server Deduplication Optimization Require?

I’ve been asked about resource requirements for the dedupe optimization job before but I did not have the answer before now.

Processor

The CPU side is … not clear.  The dedupe subsystem will schedule one single-threaded job per volume. That means a machine with 8 logical processors is only 1/8th utilized if there is a single data volume. Microsoft says:

To achieve optimal throughput, consider configuring multiple deduplication volumes, up to the number of CPU cores on the file server.

That seems pretty dumb to me. “Go ahead and complicate volume management to optimize the dedupe processing”. Uhhhhh, no thanks.

Memory

Microsoft tells us that 1-2 GB RAM is used per 1 TB of data per volume.  They clarify this with an example:

Volume Volume size Memory used
Volume 1 1 TB 1-2 GB
Volume 2 1 TB 1-2 GB
Volume 3 2 TB 2-4 GB
Total for all volumes 1+1+2 * 1GB up to 2GB 4 – 8 GB RAM

By default a server will limit the RAM used by the optimization job to 50% of total RAM in the server.  So if the above server had just 4 GB RAM, then only 2 GB would be available for the optimization job.  You can manually override this:

Start-Dedupjob <volume> -Type Optmization  -Memory <50 to 80>

There is an additional note from Microsoft:

Machines where very large amount of data change between optimization job is expected may require even up to 3 GB of RAM per 1 TB of diskspace.

So you might see RAM become a bottleneck or increase pressure (in a VM with Dynamic Memory) if the optimization job hasn’t run in a while or if lots of data is dumped into a deduped volume.  Example: you have deployed lots of new personal (dedicated) VMs for new users on a deduped volume.

A Bunch Of WS2012 R2 Storage Posts By Microsoft That You Need To Read

I’m viewing WS2012 R2 as a storage release by Microsoft (WS2012 was a Hyper-V/cloud release).  There’s a lot happening in the storage side of WS2012 R2, and Microsoft has published a bunch of posts to keep you informed.

KB2795531 – You Cannot Log In To A VM Running Windows 8 Or Windows Server 2012 In A VDI Environment

This isn’t exactly a Hyper-V issue (it’s RDS) but Hyper-V is running on the affected WS2012 hosts. 

Consider the following scenario:

  • You deploy a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment in a network.
  • You enable the Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host) role service on the Windows Server 2012-based computers.
  • You try to log on to a virtual machine that is running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 in the VDI environment.

In this scenario, you cannot log on to the virtual machine. The logon screen appears but the logon process cannot be completed.
Notes

  • The previous corresponding remote session to the RD Virtualization Host does not log off.
  • You may receive the following error message when you try to manually logoff the session in the Server Manager console:

    RD Connection Broker failed to process the connection request for user <domain><userid>.
    Failed while checking for disconnected session.
    Error: User is trying to connect to the same Pool more than once simultaneously.

This issue occurs because the host computer does not receive a notification that the previous session has ended during the logoff operation. Therefore, the previous session does not log off successfully.

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft.