Business continuity favours remote work, even with vaccination drives happening across the world. The reduced overhead and smooth transition are factors to be considered for this change.
Microsoft has come out with its latest offering for the remote access market – the Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD). This late entrant enables secure Desktop-As-A-Service (DaaS) while meeting all compliances necessary for office and WFH-users. As is standard with traditional VDI. Microsoft WVD is able to provide smooth access to the virtualised environment running on your Azure cloud.
Unique Features of Microsoft WVD
A significant offering by Microsoft through WVD is the simplified VDI on Azure, which allow for multiple concurrent interactive sessions. The WVD also comes with the built-in connection broker, load balancing and traditional remote access functionalities. Some of the newer features include AppAttach and FSLogix.
In a scenario where businesses are yet to deploy a remote working policy, Microsoft WVD is available for ue right out of the box with zero management requirement and infrastructure support to run virtual desktops.
Limitations of Microsoft WVD
While Microsoft WVD comes with an ease of deployment, this also causes the solution to have far fewer features than an enterprise-grade VDI solution. In such situations, Accops places a foot in the door and provide an enterprise with a rich feature set, scalability and customisability. We list below some of the areas where Microsoft WVD falls short when compared to Accops
1. Microsoft WVD consumes more resources and a higher Azure consumption.
VMs cannot be shared for both apps as well as desktops. A VM in a pool can be either used for app delivery or for shared hosted desktop
2. A weak end-user experience
- No option to upload/download files from web client
- No support for USB redirection
- No Single Sign On for remote desktop connection
- No printing from web client, Limited support for driver free printing
- No application self-service
- Difficult to add new value add features as MS controls the sessions
- Limited support for MFA
3. Platform limitations
- Only supports 64bit server OS
- No support for Linux based guest OS
- Only support Azure, on-prem and other cloud options are not supported
4. Limited end user device support
- WVD client not available for Linux OS and thin client
5. Difficult to administer
- Limited management console, PowerShell expertise needed.
- No delegated administration for helpdesk teams.
- No user activity and admin activity logs for WVD
6. Limited data security controls
- Data copy-paste restrictions
- No watermark.
How Accops worked to integrate with WVD
Understanding the gap in the offering, Accops HyWorks worked to integrate with Microsoft WVD to provide all the benefits of Microsoft WVD along with the security features of Accops. The combined offerings are listed below:
- Windows Virtual Desktops can now be connected to using Accops connection broker, load balancing & gateway deployed in Azure.
- Windows 10 Multi-session OS is also usable now.
- Using Windows 10 multi-user session integration to easily deploy support and power management.
- AppAttach and FSLogix features are supported.
- Cost of Azure consumption & License requirements are same as WVD
The Final Result?
1. Reduced Cost
- Use same VMs to deliver apps as well as session-based desktops.
- Concurrent licensing for Contextual Aware MFA & Zero trust
2. End user experience
- Feature rich best Web HTML5 client
- Seamless file, upload download
- Seamless copy-paste across browser
- Seamless USB redirection
- SSO for remote app and remote desktop launch
- Driver less printing for modern as well as legacy apps
- Self-service enabled
- Extensive support for MFA
3. Better Platform support
- Support legacy OS to support legacy 32bit, 16bit apps
- Support Linux based apps & desktops
- Any cloud, on-prem supported
- Limited end user device support
- Linux client and thin client device support: Accops provided thin clients
- Simplified management console with delegated administration
- Data security controls like data copy-paste restriction, watermark, Device entry control
Now, what can you do? If you’re interested to know more about how we can help you, fill the form and sign up for a free session!