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zimmie's avatar
zimmie
Copper Contributor
Jun 18, 2020

WVD Session Host High Availability

For a client that needs Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure, how do we create high availability for the session host(s)? Profile container using FSLogix is simpler to do, but i cannot find documentation on whether the session hosts should be put in to an Availability Set or create two behind a load balancer, etc.

Any suggestions?

  • Jeremy Brewer's avatar
    Jeremy Brewer
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 18, 2020

    zimmie Hopefully I can help with some items. With WVD you get some HA built in. The endpoint that users connect to is a Microsoft service, so that part is quite resilient. The Servers or Windows 10 Multi-Session when deployed automatically comes with a AV set that the system is put into. If you deploy with 10 VM's in the Host Pool, they will all be part of that single AV set, so that part is good. Then if you use FSLogix with Azure Files you will also receive a highly available profile for the users. 

     

    Let me know if you have more questions on this. 

    • zimmie's avatar
      zimmie
      Copper Contributor
      Jun 19, 2020

      Jeremy Brewer  thanks for the response. Just to make sure that i am clear: Session Hosts are automatically built in ScaleSets, so there is local redundancy already. What if there is a datacenter outage?

       

      If we use Azure Files or NetApp Files for the FSLogix profile container, those services have built in resiliency as well.
      If, for whatever reason, we go with a traditional file share on a VM and I want redundancy, I assume setting up a DFS share between 2+ servers would work.

      Again, thank you

      • Jeremy Brewer's avatar
        Jeremy Brewer
        Copper Contributor
        Jun 19, 2020

        zimmie I was reading through documentation the other day and I THINK that is all correct. The VM's are in AV Sets to start, but you are NOT getting zone redundancy with the VMs. If you need to protect the VM's like that you may be looking at doing something like Azure Site Recovery or Cross Regional Backups. 

         

        With Regards to the profile containers, I am not sure what NetApp files is doing for HA and regional recovery, I have not looked into it. The Azure files has some protections and if you have Geo-Redundant enabled then at least your data is made available in a MSFT declared disaster in the paired region. Lastly, if you go the route of a File Share server, I believe most people are going with 2 servers and using storage spaces direct. I know that shared disks in Azure was announced a little bit ago, so perhaps clustered storage is also usable? I am just not sure what limitations that introduces in Azure. I do believe some people were having success with DFS, I have not, so i just use name spaces but not syncing. 

         

        Happy to help 🙂 

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