Now in public preview: Azure Virtual Desktop regional host pools

At Microsoft, we understand customers need a desktop service that is reliable and resilient. That’s why we’ve made service resilience a core architectural design principle within the Azure Virtual Desktop connectivity platform — so your employees stay connected and productive. To deliver enhanced resiliency, we are announcing regional host pools, a new host pool deployment type that is now in public preview.

What are regional host pools?

Today, Azure Virtual Desktop uses a geographical model for all host pools, where the metadata is stored in a geographical database within each of the Azure geographies around the globe. For resiliency purposes, these geographical databases store multiple replicas within the same region as well as in a separate, paired region. This enables local and cross-region recovery. However, having only one database within a geography serving multiple regions introduces a cross-region dependency, where any issue within the region hosting the Azure Virtual Desktop metadata database or with the database itself could impact users connected or trying to connect to host pools in un-related Azure regions.

To reduce the impact of these types of issues and remove the cross-region dependency, we are deploying new Azure Virtual Desktop databases and infrastructure into every Azure region that Azure Virtual Desktop supports. This means any issue will only impact host pools in the same region. These service enhancements will ultimately result in approximately 40 regional databases across Azure. This also significantly improves your ability to meet any data sovereignty requirements your organization may have, as the metadata associated with your host pools is stored within the Azure region you select. In the event of a local database issue, we still store multiple local replicas across availability zones within the region as well as replicate the metadata to a secondary region where there is an Azure paired region for cross-region failover. This paired region is typically within the same country or at least the same Azure geography.

There are no functional differences between existing geographical host pools and the new regional host pools, aside from one additional field to complete within the deployment process. The only differences are the type of database they are stored in, and the supporting infrastructure, the regional location of each database, and the enhanced resiliency they provide.

What are the benefits of regional host pools?

The main benefit of the new regional host pools is the increased resiliency inherent in the underlying database and infrastructure architecture. They will also give you more control to define your data sovereignty requirements by aligning your host pool metadata with each of the Azure regions supported. When this service becomes generally available, we strongly recommend that you create all new host pools as regional host pools to take full advantage of these benefits and consider transitioning your existing geographical host pools over to regional.

Where can you use regional host pools?

Two infrastructures will co-exist until after we have completed deploying all of the new regional infrastructure in all regions that Azure Virtual Desktop supports.

Future changes:

1. A date will be announced when creating new geographical host pools will no longer be allowed.
2. A later date will be announced for retiring geographical infrastructure entirely.

During this transition you can still create geographical host pools, but they won’t offer the improved resiliency of regional host pools. We recommend creating all new host pools as regional host pools to take advantage of improved resiliency and data sovereignty. Begin planning your transition from geographical host pools early — Microsoft will provide tools to help move metadata, or you can manually deploy new regional host pools with the same configuration and transition users. Watch for upcoming communications on timelines to ensure a smooth migration

During the public preview, we are supporting two new “regional” regions, East US 2 and Central US. Additional regions will be added individually once these two regions enter general availability. This rollout will enable you to deploy new regional host pools in an ever-increasing number of Azure regions over time.

Getting started

The public preview of regional host pools is an admin controlled opt-in. In order to participate in this preview, you will need to enable the preview feature via PowerShell or in the Azure portal:

PowerShell

When connected to your Azure subscription run the following command:

Register-AzProviderFeature -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization -FeatureName AVDRegionalResourcesPublicPreview

Azure portal

When signed into the Azure portal go to:

1. Subscriptions - select your subscription.
2. Go to: Settings > Preview Features
3. Filter using AVDRegionalResourcesPublicPreview
4. Select AVDRegionalResourcesPublicPreview
5. Click on Register

PowerShell

Once this preview feature is enabled, the 5.4.5-preview version of the Az.DesktopVirtualization module will be required to create new regional host pools via PowerShell.

Once installed you just need to add the -DeploymentScope parameter to your PowerShell commands. When creating a new regional host pool your command would include:

“New-AzWvdHostPool -DeploymentScope Regional ….”

If you are deploying a normal geographical host pool, use the value of Geographical in place of Regional. This parameter is not required, so if this is not set the deployment will default to Geographical. The same -DeploymentScope parameter needs to be used when creating new workspaces. New application groups will automatically inherit the deployment scope of the host pool they are being created in.

Azure portal

The only additional step required to deploy a new regional host pool is to set the new Deployment Scope field to Regional. The new Deployment Scope drop down will only appear when you have selected a region that hosts the new regional infrastructure, in the Location drop down:

When creating new application groups, the existing deployment scope of the parent host pool will be auto selected. When creating new workspaces, the deployment scope drop down box becomes visible only when selecting a location that supports a regional database and will allow you to select the deployment scope you require. App attach is not yet supported and remains only Geographical, therefore regional host pools cannot use app attach packages during the preview.

All other host pool deployment configurations remain unchanged, so there are no additional configuration items that need to be specifically selected for regional host pools.

As the metadata for new regional host pools will exist within a separate set of infrastructure, it will not be possible to join new regional objects such as application groups to existing geographical objects such as workspaces or vice versa. Only objects of the same deployment scope can be associated together. Application groups created in regional host pools will automatically be regional, and only regional application groups can be associated with regional workspaces. Likewise, geographic application groups can only be associated with geographical objects. To make this easier we will filter out objects with an incompatible deployment scope: for example, when adding a new application group as part of a new regional host pool, geographical workspaces will not be available:

When the portal support is added to the public preview, you will be able to see the deployment scope for your Azure Virtual Desktop objects by using the new Deployment scope column. This is the host pools blade:

Public preview limitations

During public preview the following features are not supported:

• Automated host pools which enable Session host configuration, Session host update.

• Private Link.

• Dynamic autoscaling.
• App Attach. All App attach objects are Geographical only.
  
  
• Errors and checkpoints will not be reported into Log Analytics for regional session hosts.

Migration

We are working on a future service that will enable the migration between existing geographical objects to new regional objects.

Global availability

New “regional” infrastructure is slowly being enabled globally, and individual or small numbers of regions will become available periodically over time.

Click here for further detailed instructions: Regional Host Pools

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