The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Service, which is a Citrix Cloud only Service, has many management features that allows you to seamlessly manage your Windows 10 Multi User Desktop session. Autoscale is a feature exclusive to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service that provides a consistent, high-performance solution to proactively power. Citrix builds on their long-standing partnership with Microsoft and offers multiple VDI deployment options for Citrix solutions on Microsoft Azure—including virtual apps, desktops, data and networking.

As of recent, there has been much discussion around about working remotely due to the Covid-19 outbreak that is causing an unprecedented amount of cloud usage. Most of us are working from home at the moment, and there are organisations still struggling to get around the grips of working remotely, due to their;

• ICT Strategy
• ICT Staff
• Technological constraints
• Business Continuity Plans that aren’t developed for a situation where staff cannot be physically onsite
• Funding

Whilst the above could only be a few reasons why some organisations struggle, I will try to outline them all in this post as best I can.

Windows Virtual Desktop w/ Multi-User Windows 10. What is it?

Microsoft has developed an extraordinary method that allows multiple-user desktop sessions on its cloud-based managed desktop and application virtualization service called Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD). The Remote Desktop Session Host is capable of permitting several parallel sessions on a single virtual machine, a capability that was previously restricted to Windows Server. The Azure-based Windows Virtual Desktop combines the benefits of Windows Server with the Windows 10 Enterprise Operating System.

Users have more power at their disposal on the familiar Windows 10 environment along with the Office 365 suite while minimizing the resource consumption. Most importantly, WVD can be remotely accessed from any device without compromising on the security of the applications.

Where is this WVD hosted?

This is an Azure PaaS Service, hosted in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft look after all the management interfaces for you, leaving you only looking after the Windows 10 image and .. Its free (The service, not compute) So what are the other benefits?

• Near unlimited scalability
  • Scale to support 50 users to 5000 users in minutes
• Unified management from the Azure portal
• A productive, secure virtual desktop experience on Azure with Microsoft 365
• Free and extended Windows security for Windows 7
• Everything is centralized!

“So you’re telling me, I don’t need to build an RDSH?

Yes, that is correct – Check out this high level overview of WVD.

You don’t need to go through all the pain of setting up RDS, although there are some services that are required.
From a high level you will require the following items before you can deploy Windows Virtual Desktop.

1. An Azure Active Directory
2. An Active Directory
3. Azure Active Directory Connect
4. An Azure Virtual Network (Connected back to your DC’s)
5. An Azure subscription
6. A Windows Virtual Desktop tenant

Why do you need all of these?

1. Azure Active Directory is your identity provider in the cloud and users authenticate against this provider to get access to the Windows Virtual Desktop service
2. When launching published Desktops and Applications – Windows still requires Active Directory authentication.
3. Azure AD Connect is the tool that will provision accounts from AD to AAD to enable 1. above.
4. The Virtual Machines all need to be located on a Virtual Network. That vNet needs access to Active Directory, that can either be located in Azure or on-premises as long as there is connectivity. When Azure deploys new VM’s it will join these VM’s to your Active Directory domain and as such the VM’s need to locate the Domain Controller via DNS, without this DNS server setting being set the VM’s have no name resolution for the local AD, and hence won’t be able to join the domain. If your AD Domain Controllers are on-prem then you will need some connectivity back to on-prem to access those DC’s, either VPN or ExpressRoute.
5. It all runs in an Azure Subscription
6. A tenant is required inside the WVD management service

Management and Autoscaling

WVD management, if I’m completely honest, is probably the weakest aspect of the service right now. Currently there is no out-of-the-box, native portal so everything is managed from PowerShell. There are some great community tools (Microsoft Approved) that allow you to manage WVD Windows 10 Images, applications, which also include the management of scale-sets (autoscaling) in Azure! What more do you want 🙂

Without the community made management tools, or paid tools like Nerdio autoscaling needs to be configured through an Azure Automation account. Once this is configured, you should be on your way.

Benefits of autoscale

When your application demand increases, the load on the VM instances in your scale set increases. If this increased load is consistat during business hours you can configure autoscale rules to increase the number of VM instances in the scale set.

“But wait, what if I’m only a 9-5 business, and I only want them active during those hours?”

You can use the scaling tool to:

• Schedule VMs to start and stop based on Peak and Off-Peak business hours.
• Scale out VMs based on number of sessions per CPU core.
• Scale in VMs during Off-Peak hours, leaving the minimum number of session host VMs running.

When these VM instances are created and your applications are deployed, the scale set starts to distribute traffic to them through the load balancer. You control what metrics to monitor, such as CPU or memory, how long the application load must meet a given threshold, and how many VM instances to add to the scale set.

On an evening or weekend, your application demand may decrease. If this decreased load is consistent over a period of time, you can configure autoscale rules to decrease the number of VM instances in the scale set. This scale-in action reduces the cost to run your scale set as you only run the number of instances required to meet the current demand.

SHOW ME THE MONEY! So you’re telling me, I can turn off a VM if no-one is using it?

Yes – Actually, this will automatically be done for you (if configured right, see above where I spoke about an Azure Automation Account).

So lets work this out together.

Scenario 1

• Light to Medium use of applications
• Business hours 9×5
• 15-20 users
• VM Instance 2X D4s v3 (4vCpu 16GB Ram) with a 128GB Disk
• VM’s turned off after hours
• All staff working from home

The total amount of hours per month these VM instances will be on, is 160 hours, based on a 40 hour week.

Total cost per month: $163.96
Total cost per year: $1,967.52

Scenaro 2

• Medium to Heavy use of applications
• Business hours 24×7
• 350 Users
• MAX VM Instance 25X D4s v3 (4vCpu 16GB Ram) with a 128GB Disk during Peak
• MAX VM Instance 5X D4s v3 (4vCpu 16GB Ram) with a 128GB Disk
• VM’s autoscaling during peak-offpeak hours
• All staff working from home
• Peak staff = 350 Users
• Off-Peak staff = 35 Users

Total cost per month: $2,802.70
Total cost per year: $33,632.4‬

(This is also cheaper by $200 per month if you purchase 5 Azure RI)

WHAT! $8.00 PER User, Per month? To run a desktop? Yes. And I don’t need to worry about hardware? Nope. Warranty? Nope.
No problem, have a lovely day, boom. Anytime.

What do I need to worry about?

There are a couple of things you need to be overlooking here. The first thing i’ll get started with is ..

Licensing!

You are eligible to access Windows 10 and Windows 7 with Windows Virtual Desktop if you have one of the following licences*:

• Microsoft 365 E3/E5
• Microsoft 365 A3/A5/Student use benefits
• Microsoft 365 F1
• Microsoft 365 Business
• Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5
• Windows 10 Education A3/A5
• Windows 10 VDA per user

*Customers can access Windows Virtual Desktop from their non-Windows Pro endpoints if they have a Microsoft 365 E3/E5/F1/Business/A3/A5/Student use benefits or Windows 10 VDA per user licence.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/pricing/details/virtual-desktop/

I cannot stress, how important this is to get right. Utilizing the WVD in Azure is very important, and a configuration could be a nightmare for you, and a big bill for the organisation. $2800 Per month could turn into $15,000 per month, if it has been misconfigured. Even if you are licensed, misconfiguration during the licensing process will come back to bite you.

Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session can’t run in on-premises production environments because it’s optimized for the Windows Virtual Desktop service for Azure. It’s against the licensing agreement to run Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session outside of Azure for production purposes. Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session won’t activate against on-premises Key Management Services (KMS).

Don’t believe people who say cloud is expensive

It’s not, its because people misconfigure it. And they want your money.

Back to the worries >

Autoscaling!

Seriously! Why do you want a VM turned on 24/7 and its not being used? You’re essentially throwing money in the bin, where it could be going to other essential services services in the organisation (or creating really cool Azure Bots). Please refer to my statement above. CONFIGURE IT RIGHT!

Citrix Cloud

So I’ve gone on about WVD and Win 10 Multi User Desktop. Lets get into the mix with Citrix Cloud here.

Citrix Cloud and Microsoft Azure have common control plane integrations that establish identity, governance, and security for global operations. This is where Citrix Cloud and its control plane are a winner winner here.

Citrix Cloud .. Why

Why? There is no server to setup. No more provisioning of

• Delivery Controllers
• Citrix Studio
• Storefront
• SQL Databases

Backups? What backups, no need for them. All taken care of for you.

The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Service, which is a Citrix Cloud only Service, has many management features that allows you to seamlessly manage your Windows 10 Multi User Desktop session.

Autoscale is a feature exclusive to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service that provides a consistent, high-performance solution to proactively power manage your machines. It aims to balance costs and user experience.

With the Citrix Cloud control plane, rather than the manually creating many host pools in Azure, Citrix Cloud allows you to seamlessly provision multiple delivery groups for different teams / departments based on usage, compute size etc without much effort. This is where Citrix Cloud has it over Azure, other than provisioning the initial image in Azure, you have a single management control interface that will prevent you from logging into Azure again… (Unless its been misconfigured!)

With Citrix Cloud, Azure becomes just another resource location. The different between the on-prem Citrix control plane and cloud control plane is its true cloud support. The on-premise control plane only supports 1:1 sessions. 1 desktop, 1 user. The Citrix Cloud control plane will support Windows 10 Multi User Desktop. 10 users, 1 desktop.
https://www.citrix.com/en-au/products/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops/release-feature-matrix.html

Licensing for Citrix Cloud

So here is where it gets very interesting. You are licensed for Citrix on-premise, but Citrix Cloud does come at a cost. This is where WVD has it over Citrix Cloud for licensing.

To get true Windows 10 Multi-user Session, in addition to the Microsoft Licensing you’re paying for, you also need to purchase Citrix Cloud licensing. But what is your end game here?

• Decommissioning Citrix On-Prem
• Citrix Cloud hosted Service
• Complete provider hosted support
• Windows 10 Multi-User

Sign me up!

Depending on your needs within your organisation, application support is what is determined. You will have 3rd party applications that don’t integrate with Citrix Cloud, but are fully supported on-premise and vice-versa.

The choices are endless …

Your choice between both will come down to what are your end goals with Cloud.

You can easily train ITS staff about both services. Since you don’t need to build every Citrix service on-premise, patch and monitor, its quite seamless to manage. The articles and tools that we are currently exposed to allow us to quickly develop the knowledge to maintain and manage the service. Having less to manage on-premise is always a bonus, the quicker you can remove that infrastructure, the more time staff can focus on more important tasks.

If you are already heavily invested into Citrix, then moving to a hybrid model with Citrix Cloud will benefit you long term, as transitioning your users becomes a much easier process.

So what about BCP? Having a fast proactive BCP for desktop infrastructure is critical. Windows Virtual Desktop has its benefits, due to it being free to setup the PaaS service and to quickly get a desktop up and running.

Citrix Cloud control plane is still far ahead in terms of user interface and features, and Citrix has much more experience in desktop virtualization than anyone else. But let’s face it, some customers do not need advanced features, and Windows Virtual Desktop could be a great fit for them.

Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is available as a tech preview for a few months now, and remains a hot topic within the EUC community. The reception of WVD was overwhelming and many experts are excited about this new solution.That said, there are a lot of unknowns about its future and how it will impact Citrix in the desktop virtualization field. Let’s find out what it is and what it means for Citrix!

Let’s recap: What is Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)?

There’s a lot of talk about WVD as of late, some of which are now misleading after we’ve learned more about its scope in recent weeks. Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop is an out-of-the-box and automated Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) cloud control plane hosted in Azure. WVD replaces the awful Azure RemoteApp (ARA) and is based on the never released RDmi. (So you could call it RDmi 2.0, but WVD sounds much better, right?) Compared to ARA, Windows Virtual Desktop is built natively for the cloud to virtualize and deliver business applications and desktops.

WVD infrastructure comprises the following:

• Web interface: RDweb (rdweb.wvd.microsoft.com)
• Gateway
• Broker (rdbroker.wvd.microsoft.com)
• And also Diagnostics & Licensing

All components are distributed and provided as a service in Azure, and leverage the benefits of the cloud platform such as load balancing, geolocation, etc. There’s no need to deploy and maintain any on-premises infrastructure, and everything is managed by Microsoft and delivered for FREE to F1, 365 E3, and E5 customers.

I repeat: customers will not pay for WVD infrastructure. They will pay for the compute of the virtual machines, network, and storage, but the infrastructure components are essentially free.

See the connection flow below:

• User launches RDclient or connect to RDweb, which connects to Azure AD
• User signs in, and Azure AD returns token
• RDclient presents token to RDweb, RDbroker queries DB to determine resources authorized for user
• User selects resource
• RDbroker send RDP file (name of the gateway, UID tenants, etc)
• RDclient connects to RDgateway
• RDbroker orchestrates reverse connection from VM agent to RDgateway

Microsoft WVD is not an innovation by itself, as many vendors (including Citrix) are already delivering the same thing. The real change is that It’s the first solution that allows multi-session with Windows 10.

Windows 10 Enterprise Virtual Desktops (EVD)

At the same time as WVD, Microsoft released a preview of Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktops or EVD (multi-user) which is part of its Windows-As-a-Service (WaaS) strategy. This is the only Windows client version that supports multiple users at the same time and it is only available on Microsoft Azure (at least for now).

While Microsoft WVD can only be delivered by Microsoft itself, Windows 10 EVD can be delivered by any solution, including Citrix Workspace. The only rule is that the virtual machines where Windows 10 Enterprise Virtual Desktop is installed must be hosted on Microsoft Azure.

Up until now, the only way to do multi-user was to deploy Windows Server with RDSH installed and enable Desktop Experience to make it look like Windows client OS. While server and desktop operating systems are very similar, there are been issues with having desktop apps working on server OS.

The goal of Microsoft is to simultaneously move RDSH customers from Windows Server to Windows 10 and cash in with Azure. A major difference in the implementation is that RDSH is implemented in the kernel of server OS, but is only running in user-mode for the new multi-user Windows 10.

WVD is also the only way to get extended support for Windows 7 for three more years after 2020, but again, only on Azure.

To summarize, Windows Virtual Desktop supports the following operating systems:

• Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, 2019
• Windows 10 VDI
• Windows 7 (Azure only after 2020)
• Windows 10 EVD (new Multi-User in Azure only)

Templates (without optimizations) can be found in the Azure marketplace for W10 EVD with and without Office 365 Pro Plus and 2016 and more will be added soon. Regarding profiles, Fslogix profile containers with Azure Files will be the only supported profile management allowed with Windows Virtual Desktops. For applications, MSIX AppAttach will be the way to go.

WVD supports virtual desktops and virtual apps over the RDP protocol. An agent needs to be installed on the virtual machines to communicate with the WVD infrastructure.
Note: Reverse communication from the virtual machines to the broker for registration (over the internet) with a registration key.

Right now, all administration tasks are either done in PowerShell or within the Azure UI. Microsoft is working on a dedicated WVD management portal.

By now you probably understand that the goal of Microsoft is to bring more compute to Azure and increase its recurring revenue.

Most of us in the community believe that Microsoft cannot keep Windows 10 EVD (multi-user) an Azure exclusively, and that to succeed with WVD, Microsoft will have to make it available on-premises. Microsoft has hinted multiple times that this could happen, but at this time the official statement is that Windows 10 EVD is Azure only.

What does WVD mean for Citrix?

Back in 2016, Microsoft deprecated Azure Remote App and directed customers to purchase Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp Essentials via Azure Marketplace. These offerings were slightly different versions of XenApp and XenDesktop Service, and allowed users to access Windows 10 Enterprise virtual desktops on Azure for $12/user per month (Azure compute not included). This move left the door open for Citrix to be even more dominant in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) space, although they never really took off.

Today, Microsoft is actually following in the footsteps of Citrix by building its own control plane hosted in Azure. Both companies understand that building and maintaining VDI infrastructure on-premises is a lot of work, as its requires a lot of components. And that changes everything.

So what are WVD and Windows 10 EVD going to change for Citrix?

Citrix Cloud Portal

Probably not much. The first thing that is happening right now in preview is that Citrix added Windows 10 EVD (multi-user) to its supported operating system. Customers are able to create multi-user catalogs and delivery groups with that new OS on Azure from the Citrix Cloud control plane. This will most likely even be available from the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops hosted on-premises in a near future.

Note: at this time you need to configure the machine catalog for Server OS but we can assume that in the future, the new option for Multi-user Desktop OS will appear here.

Citrix Cloud Rename Desktop

You can now download the Citrix and Windows Virtual Desktop Public Preview Guide for step-by-step instructions on configuring Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service with the new multi-session Windows 10 entitlement of Windows Virtual Desktop Public Preview.

By doing this, Windows 10 EVD desktops will be aggregated in Citrix Workspace the same way as other resources.

Unfortunately because Microsoft licensing, you can only test Windows 10 EVD in Azure as you are not be allowed to do the same on-premises.

Regarding Windows Virtual Desktop, it is built as an alternative to Citrix and could compete with Citrix Cloud Virtual Apps and Desktop Service at some point. It may not be a viable competitor for a while, though, as most of the features are only available in PowerShell CLI, and because Microsoft is struggling with the performances of Windows 10 multi-user. Citrix with HDX has a far better protocol than RDP. However, RDP is good enough for 95% of the use cases and it is expected for protocols to become less relevant in the future as the capabilities gap between them is quickly shrinking.

So, is Microsoft really competing with Citrix now?

At this stage, not really, Citrix Cloud control plane is still far ahead in terms of user interface and features, and Citrix has much more experience in desktop virtualization than anyone else. But let’s face it, some customers do not need advanced features, and Windows Virtual Desktop could be a great fit for them.

As mentioned earlier, Microsoft is building WVD with a global architecture mindset. They are creating all WVD components in a distributed way even if for now the control plane is only available in East US-2 in the preview phase. That could a great advantage over Citrix Cloud where it is still not straightforward when you have workloads in multiple regions. The load balancing is configured at the control plane level.

Depending on how successful WVD is, Microsoft could decide to invest even more in this solution to bring advanced features to the table and even remove the artificial cloud-only limitation. This could be a real threat to Citrix desktops and apps virtualization business in the long run.

Citrix Managed Desktops Service

We discussed earlier that Citrix will aggregate Windows 10 EVD (multi-user) in Citrix Workspace via CVAD. But that’s not the only way Citrix plans to integrate the new multi-user OS.
Citrix announced Citrix Managed Desktops (CMD) Service on March 20, 2019, their upcoming full end-to-end DaaS offering. They mistakenly marketed CMD Service as an extension of Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) which is inaccurate and confusing. Let’s see why!

The first thing to keep in mind is that Citrix cannot leverage Microsoft WVD infrastructure for the CMD Service. Why? Because it is by design, WVD infrastructure can only be used by Microsoft and they have not announced anything to allow partners to leverage it.

The reality is that we don’t know much about this new offering. Back in March 2019, Citrix only talked briefly about it by mentioning that it’d be a full end-to-end DaaS solution that would allow users to easily deploy Microsoft operating systems including Windows 10 EVD (multi-user) on Azure from the Citrix Cloud control plane. This solution will include Citrix signature HDX desktop virtualization protocol (instead of RDP for WVD) to provide a high-performance user experience.

On top of that, Citrix will become a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider and bill customers directly for this services, including the cost of cloud services, software licenses, and Azure compute needed to securely deliver Windows 10 on-demand. And that’s pretty much it. The unknown at this time is if Citrix will build something new for its DaaS offering or just do the integration within Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) Service.

Citrix Desktop Sign In

One thing for sure is that CMD Service is not an integration of WVD (even if it is marketed as such), but more an advanced and turnkey replacement provided by Citrix.

Wrap up

It is an exciting time for VDI and RDSH right now. Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop is the most anticipated VDI solution in years. The fact that Microsoft is really pushing and believing in WVD is a good thing for the industry, as it will incentivize others to keep innovating. And who knows? maybe this will help increase the percentage of desktops virtualized in organizations (currently between 4 and 8%). Microsoft and Citrix are still partners, and customers can take advantages of WVD as a standalone solution if that meets their needs. If they need advanced features such as SaaS apps, hybrid workloads or seamless access to user data, then they can look to different solutions from partners such as Citrix Workspace. The next step for WVD is to go GA between September 2019 and the end of the year, and for Citrix to release CMD Service around the same time.