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Both Nerdio and Parallels provide additional value to Azure Virtual Desktop. Learn the difference in strategy and approach between the two solutions and determine which is best for your needs.
Azure Virtual Desktop as a Platform
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a platform provided by Microsoft that enables organizations and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to provide secure access to Windows desktops and published applications efficiently. It's a great remote work solution for organizations using Microsoft Azure, allowing them to support options for users to work remotely (either fully remote or partial/hybrid).
Common native Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) challenges
Management is too complex.
While the Azure Virtual Desktop platform provides many benefits, successfully managing it natively requires deep administrative knowledge in many different areas. It cannot be easily managed with a few clicks or even a few hours.
By contrast, managing Azure Virtual Desktop natively requires an experienced engineer to create and deploy the various services, manage and optimize Azure processing, handle desktop images, understand Azure pricing and Azure costs, and scale. advanced automation to properly optimize the management of an Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment.
Lack of suitable workloads for Azure Virtual Desktops (AVD)
Additionally, running your workloads on Microsoft Azure is not ideal for all organizations, all types of people within an organization, all types of data, and all application environments. Parallels® RAS creates the necessary bridges between Azure and on-premises to help you run your workloads in the most optimal way for your organization.
How to overcome Azure Virtual Desktop challenges for both your business and your users
Solutions like Parallels RAS and Nerdio Manager can help you overcome the aforementioned challenges. This blog post delves into the added value that Parallels RAS and Nerdio Manager can offer in addition to native Azure Virtual Desktop, and also highlights key differences in the implementation of both solutions.
Improved management of Azure Virtual Desktop
Both Nerdio Manager and Parallels RAS provide great additional value for managing Azure Virtual Desktop workloads. Whether you're an enterprise, small/medium business, partner, or managed service provider (MSP), both solutions offer ease of management through a single pane of glass, mitigating most of the complexity that comes with Azure Virtual Desktop.
Providing additional value since the early days of Windows Virtual Desktop
Both Parallels RAS and Nerdio Manager do not replace the Azure Virtual Desktop control panel. Instead, both have a solution that plugs directly into Azure Virtual Desktop and adds value on top of what Microsoft already offers. From a single console, administrators can deploy, create, access, manage, and maintain Azure Virtual Desktop.
Nerdio Manager and Parallels RAS include FSLogix-based user profile management, MSIX attached app management, and other features that, with native Azure Virtual Desktop, need to be managed through consoles and separate scripts that require an experienced engineer. Basically, all you need with Nerdio Manager and Parallels RAS is an Azure subscription.
To see some examples of how Parallels RAS improves Azure Virtual Desktop management, check out these short video clips showingdeploy Azure virtual desktop in minutesand the integrated management ofRDP Short Path.
Optimizing Microsoft Azure costs and storage costs
Consumption cost optimization is critical for any organization leveraging resources hosted in a public cloud environment. Azure Virtual Desktop is no exception to that rule. For organizations accustomed to an on-premises environment based on clear pricing for hardware, power, and cooling, transitioning to Azure's consumption-based model and optimizing Azure costs can be challenging.
Even for customers with experienced cloud engineers, it can be difficult to predict cloud costs taking into account compute cost, storage cost, concurrent users, user demand, reserved instances, and many other features. .
Both Parallels RAS and Nerdio provide customers, partners, and MSPs with cost optimization capabilities within the solution. Nerdio Manager has a strong focus on predicting and reducing costs by creating an optimized Azure Virtual Desktop environment based on virtual machine power management, autoscaling, and downgrading storage when a machine fails. Virtual is off.
Parallels RAS also provides these cost optimizations and more, including capabilities to optimize desktop images to increase user density. Read more in ourautomated image management, power management, and storage cost optimizations.
Improving the user experience
Azure Virtual Desktop provides a client for multiple platforms. Both Nerdio and Parallels can use this client, which provides a great user experience. Parallels RAS also improves the user experience by:
- Allowing users to list and launch AVD and non-AVD resources from a single workspace application, eliminating the need for users to use different applications to access their resources.
- Provides a unique way to quickly retrieve and list local files and folders using accelerated file retrieval-based drive redirection, significantly reducing local file retrieval and providing local file caching.
- It provides drag and drop functionality, allowing users to drag and drop files from the server to the client and vice versa.
- Offering a user portal that includes branding (white label) to provide the user with an environment that appears familiar to the client or end user. This includes the ability to configure the color scheme, company logos, display languages, pre- and post-login messages, and more.
- Unlock the ability to centrally manage connected PCs and Windows devices, as well as lock down and extend the PC lifecycle by transforming a Windows PC with the look and feel of thin clients.
Azure Virtual Desktop and on-premises: the best of both worlds
Azure Virtual Desktops is a great platform for many types of Windows desktops and applications. Users having the ability to access their Windows desktop and applications from any location offer great benefits for many workloads. While the technology is great, it's not right for every type of workload, application, or data. As a business, you may be subject to data sovereignty rules that prevent you from running parts of your workloads in any cloud, or you may be subject to other legal rules and regulations.
Beyond these types of rules and regulations, Microsoft Azure might not be the most optimal solution for some specific types of Windows desktop applications or workloads, due to specific hardware or low latency required. While Parallels RAS can take advantage of GPU-enabled virtual machines in Azure, there is a high cost for those types of virtual machines, and Azure GPU processing has limited availability in all regions.
Both Parallels RAS and Nerdio Manager offer options for managing workloads outside of Azure. Nerdio provides this based on Azure Stack HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure). With Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, you can run virtualized workloads and storage in a hybrid environment that combines on-premises infrastructure with Azure cloud services.
However, the downside of Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI is that it requires specific hardware, has additional license fees, and there is no full feature parity with Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure. Additionally, Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI is still in public preview.
Parallels RAS takes a different approach than Nerdio Manager. Beyond support for Azure Stack HCI, Parallels RAS can also host your workloads at any on-premises location without the need for Azure Stack HCI and without incurring additional license fees.
Parallels RAS has direct integration with all major hypervisors such as Hyper-V, VMware, Nutanix, and Scale Computing. In addition, Parallels RAS also offers direct integration with Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure IaaS. The deployment is done from the same management console, included in the same user license, and accessible from the same client.
For more information read:better together: hybrid deployments with Parallels RAS and Azure Virtual Desktop.
Freedom of choice and the best of all worlds with Parallels RAS
When you choose Parallels RAS, you get freedom of choice, ease of administration, a streamlined user experience, no vendor lock-in, and optimized costs. The ability to select the most suitable provider for your needs, whether it is a cloud or on-premises provider, or a combination, gives you the best of both worlds by combining the power and flexibility of on-premises and multi-clouds. This is what makes Parallels RAS a great solution!
Interested in learning more about how Parallels RAS can make it easy to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) as well as Windows desktops and on-premises apps for your own business or organization? get your free30 day trialnow!