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Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI now available!

SteveDMSFT's avatar
SteveDMSFT
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Feb 01, 2024

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI—now in general availability—extends the capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud to your datacenters.

IT pros face a complex and challenging environment as they help their organizations move to the cloud, especially when the cloud isn't the best option for every workload. Managing hybrid cloud migrations while meeting the needs of today's distributed workforce takes a comprehensive approach that balances performance and accessibility with security and control. For organizations that need desktop virtualization for applications that must remain on-premises for performance, data locality, or regulatory reasons, Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI may be the right solution.

Organizations like Commvault, a global leader in data management, also echo these benefits:

At Commvault, we have a unique environment where thousands of employees need hyper-local access to data with the lowest latency possible. Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI checked all the boxes and met our needs with its ease of deployment and management, network and storage performance, and its security integrations allowing for governed access policies. 
- Ernie Costa, Business Cloud Operations Manager, Commvault  

Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure Stack HCI each deliver their own value, and with Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, organizations can experience both. Read on to learn more about each solution and how Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI brings both together.

What is Azure Virtual Desktop?

Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud VDI solution designed to meet the challenges of remote and hybrid work​. It enables a secure, remote desktop experience from anywhere, providing employees the best virtualized experience with the only solution fully optimized for Windows 11 and Windows 10 multi-session capabilities. It has built-in security to help keep your organization's applications and data secure and compliant. Azure Virtual Desktop can simplify deployment and management of your infrastructure, gives you full control over configuration and management, and reduces costs by optimizing through existing virtualization investments and skills, as well as consumption-based pricing where you only pay for what you use.

What is Azure Stack HCI?

Azure Stack HCI is a Microsoft infrastructure solution powered by hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) that hosts Windows and Linux virtual machines (VMs) or containerized workloads and their storage. It's a hybrid product by design that connects on-premises systems to Azure for cloud-based services, monitoring, and management. Azure Stack HCI gives organizations the agility and cost-effectiveness of public cloud infrastructure while meeting the use case and regulatory requirements for specialized workloads that can't live in the public cloud.  

The new feature release of Azure Stack HCI is now in general availability. It brings cloud-based cluster deployment and management together with Azure Arc infrastructure, providing centralized management of workloads. Learn more about Azure Stack HCI.

What is Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI?

Bringing the benefits of Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure Stack HCI together, Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI lets organizations securely run virtualized desktops and apps on-premises at the edge or in their datacenter. For organizations with data residency requirements, latency-sensitive workloads, or those with data proximity requirements. Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI extends the capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud to your datacenters.

With Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, you can:

  • Improve performance for Azure Virtual Desktop users in areas with poor connectivity to the Azure public cloud by giving them session hosts closer to their location.
  • Meet data locality requirements by keeping app and user data on-premises. For more information, see Data locations for Azure Virtual Desktop.
  • Improve access to legacy on-premises apps and data sources by keeping desktops and apps in the same location.
  • Deliver the full Windows experience while retaining cost efficiency with Windows 11 and Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session. 
  • Unify your VDI deployment and management compared to traditional on-premises VDI solutions by using the Azure portal.
  • Achieve the best performance by using RDP Shortpath for low-latency user access.
  • Deploy the latest fully patched images quickly and easily using Azure Marketplace images.

How to get started

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI is generally available with the new feature release of Azure Stack HCI. After you deploy an Azure Stack HCI cluster, it will be available as a resource location for Azure Virtual Desktop host pools.

To run Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, you first need to make sure you're licensed correctly and understand the pricing model. There are three components that affect how much it costs to run Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI:

  • User access rights. The same licenses that grant access to Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure also apply to Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI. Learn more at Azure Virtual Desktop pricing. Note, per-user access pricing for external users is not supported on Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI.
  • Infrastructure costs. Learn more at Azure Stack HCI pricing.
  • Hybrid service fee. This fee requires you to pay for each active virtual CPU (vCPU) for your Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts running on Azure Stack HCI. This fee is active once the preview period ends. The hybrid service fee is $0.01/vCore/hour of consumption. Billing for the service begins on April 1, 2024.

Want to learn more?

Watch the Microsoft Mechanics episode to see a demo of Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI.

Read the Azure Stack HCI blog to learn more about its general availability details.

Your feedback makes our features better

For customers who have already experienced Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI in our preview phase, your feedback has been invaluable, and we thank you. We continue to integrate your requests and ideas into future releases, and your feedback helps our development teams prioritize new features, address missed opportunities, and ensure the product better meets your needs.

Updated Feb 01, 2024
Version 2.0
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39 Comments

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  • Thomas-S's avatar
    Thomas-S
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 02, 2024

    With the Azure Stack Service fee you kill the product at start up. 👍

     

    customer has to pay for licenses 4 times and has to buy the hardware, datacenters, power, cooling, maintenance themselves. 
    😂😂😂

     

    you think we are crazy???

     

    And that running on the Azure Stack HCI Alpha and Beta Versions?

    23h2 is alpha

    22h2 is beta. 
    every year a new buggy release?

     

    unstable stretched clusters?

     

    we have 180 clusternodes. 
    reverted completly back to Windows Server 2022. stable an running. 
    vGPU Support with full live migration done with XenServer. 

    which mid sized company can manage to test an upgrade 180 clusternodes every year?

    we do not. 

    at first announcement we had to connect

    to azure for license reasons every thirty days. 
    today you can nit install wirhout access to azure. 
    Azure that has been fully compromised many times in the lst months!?!? has

    access to my on prem servers. 

    definitly not. 

    i would say

    Complete failure Microsoft. 
    operation successful. 
    patient dead!

     

     

  • mattmcspirit's avatar
    mattmcspirit
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 02, 2024

    DannyC73 My understanding for the Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid fee, is that the physical cores wouldn't come into it, nor the number of users (as the licenses for them are taken care of with M365/Windows licenses etc), but using your 128 vCore example:

     

    - Let's say you have 32 Windows 11 Multi-Session virtual desktops, each with 4 vCPUs configured

    - In this example, each multi-session VM is shared by 4 users, but it could be more, it could be less, it wouldn't change the cost

    - Let's say those desktops run for exactly 260 hours a month, powered off outside of those times.

    - 260 hours x 128 cores total across the 32 VMs x $0.01 per month, as you correctly calculated is $333 per month. But, it would require you to manage the runtime of those VMs, to ensure they don't run over the 260 hours.

     

    This is, as you've called out, in addition to the AzSHCI fee at $10 per core, per month. This itself can be $0 if you take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit, through existing Windows Server Datacenter + Software Assurance licenses.

     

    SteveDMSFT can likely clarify if the AVD for AzSHCI Service Fee meter is actually more granular than per hour, and they just use a round number of $0.01 per hour instead of using something like $0.000166666667 per minute in their messaging and pricing info 🙂

  • DannyC73's avatar
    DannyC73
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 02, 2024

    If billing is based on 'hours of consumption', how is that consumption metered?  If a customer had, for example, 64 physical cores powered on and assigned to the workload (128 users), providing 128 vCores, with a light load of 1vCore/user with an average of 260 hours active work across the month*, would they be charged 260 hours x 128 cores x $0.01 per month ($333/month) or would it be based on the full 720 hours ($921/month) since on-prem workloads don't tend to be powered down as aggressively as cloud hosted workloads.

     

    *Likelihood is that it would be more than this with multi-session workloads even if machines are AutoScaled efficiently due to session lingering etc.

     

    Also, just to be clear, is the $0.01/vCore/Hour fee in addition to the $10/physical core/month Azure Stack Host Service fee (so in this case, an additional $640/month)

     

    Thanks

    Danny

  • ErnieCostaCVLT's avatar
    ErnieCostaCVLT
    Brass Contributor
    Feb 02, 2024

    agressiv - I think your feedback is valid and definitely worth providing to Microsoft. With that being said, I think it's also important to realize that not everyone wants to bring workloads on-prem in this "hybrid" connected manner simply to save costs, but also for the benefits they get that aren't possible with traditional RDS. I can spend hours typing it all out here, but I'm sure it's been debated ad nauseam in other forums.

     

    SteveDMSFT - what is the best way for customers to provide feedback to PG about this stuff?

     

  • agressiv's avatar
    agressiv
    Brass Contributor
    Feb 01, 2024

    If this fee is not negotiable, for us, it's cheaper to stay in Azure/W365 than to move this workload on-prem since the on-prem hardware isn't free.  It's actually more expensive if you use a premium Azure Stack HCI solution like Dell.  We wanted to move this workload on-prem to save on costs - but with this, it's just more work.  Disappointed.

  • SteveDMSFT's avatar
    SteveDMSFT
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Feb 01, 2024

    Hi,

    Thank you for the question. The hybrid service fee is $0.01/vCore/hour of consumption. Billing for the service begins on April 1, 2024.

     

    Thanks,

    Steve Downs

  • ErnieCostaCVLT's avatar
    ErnieCostaCVLT
    Brass Contributor
    Feb 01, 2024

    Agree with agressiv - the preview period HAS ended - that's what this post is for 😉


    On the AVD pricing page, if you go to AVD for HCI, you see this. Is this legit $0 or does this need to be updated for GA pricing?

     

  • agressiv's avatar
    agressiv
    Brass Contributor
    Feb 01, 2024
    • Hybrid service fee. This fee requires you to pay for each active virtual CPU (vCPU) for your Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts running on Azure Stack HCI. This fee is active once the preview period ends.

     

    Can we get details on this?  the preview period is now over, we're hoping to see what this Hybrid service fee actually entails in terms of real dollar amounts.