Customers using Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solutions like Azure Virtual Desktop are commonly plagued by the same operational and cost efficiency challenge: underutilized Session Hosts.
The root cause is almost always the same: an application required by a subset of employees could not be included in their standard custom image for pooled multi-session desktops. To work around this, most organizations create a separate Host Pool with a dedicated Custom Image to deliver the problematic application via RemoteApp.
The issue with this approach is that these applications need to be available throughout business hours, even if employees only use them sporadically. Whether the application is accessed for a few minutes or not at all on a given day, the Session Hosts must remain active, incurring unnecessary costs.
The Challenge of Managing Custom Images and Host Pools
The RemoteApp scenario is just one example. Some organizations embed the problematic application into a new custom image within their pooled multi-session desktops and assign those desktops to the subset of employees who require the application. This often leads to underutilized Session Hosts when capacity exceeds actual demand. The result? Wasted resources, increased operational costs, and the ongoing burden of managing additional Custom Images and Host Pools.
Modernizing Application Management Through Containerization
Instead of relying on legacy methods, a more efficient approach is to modernize application delivery with Cloudpager. By dynamically delivering applications on a per-user basis, applications remain invisible to non-entitled users, even in multi-session (aka Pooled Desktop) environments.
Using containerized application delivery provides several advantages including:
- Application Portability: Containerizing applications with Cloudpaging ensures they can lift and shift to any modern physical or virtual Windows desktop environment without being repackaged.
- Granular Isolation: Prevents application conflicts and allows multiple versions of the same application to run side by side.
- Legacy Application Support: Enables the use of applications that may not natively function in multi-session desktops or on modern Windows operating systems.
- License Control: Ensures sensitive or expensive licensed applications are only accessible to authorized users, preventing unintended consumption by other employees on shared session hosts.
Business Impact of Containerization for Azure Virtual Desktop
Cloudpager provides Azure Virtual Desktop teams with an intuitive platform to dynamically manage applications in a streamlined and cost-efficient manner.
- Unify Application Management Across Physical and AVD Desktops: Cloudpager provides a single pane of glass for administrators to deploy, update, rollback, recall, and meter applications across all physical and virtual Windows desktops in a highly automated fashion.
- Mitigate Application Packaging and Maintenance Overhead: Package once, deploy to any Windows desktop – eliminating the need to virtualize applications for disparate environments.
- Right-Size AVD Session Host Utilization: Leveraging Cloudpager, you can use the scaling tools built into AVD and the power of containerization to ensure your AVD Session Hosts are utilized a majority of the time.
- Lower Storage Costs: Cloudpager enables customers to achieve a single Custom Image for all their users (read case study here). By virtualizing apps per user, they are dynamically provisioned outside your Custom Image. In other words, by not installing them into your Custom image you don’t have to maintain multiple images, resulting in significantly less storage to support your employees.
- Reduce Azure Virtual Desktop Run Costs: During a recent webinar with Jim Moyle, Senior Program Manager of Azure Virtual Desktop, he mentioned moving from personal desktops to Pooled Desktops can reduce AVD costs up to half.
Application Containers are the Future of Azure Virtual Desktop
Traditional practices from on-premises Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) were never truly efficient. In fact, these inefficiencies become even more costly in the cloud. Creating disparate Custom Images, Host Pools, and Session Hosts to solve application issues only compounds IT complexity and expenses.
To maximize application compatibility, eliminate deployment challenges, and minimize the number of Azure resources required, organizations must adopt modern, cloud-native solutions for application management.
Want to see a live demonstration of Cloudpager in action? Request a demo below.
