Welcome to the 19th Azure Virtual Desktop community newsletter! We now release our newsletter on Thursdays to get a wider reach and give you the ability to engage with us in a better way!

Community Stats

• Slack channel: 1175 members and we´re still growing! You can find us here: https://communityinviter.com/apps/wvdcommunity/join
• Podcast: 2500 downloads – You can view all podcast downloads here – WVD Community Podcast (buzzsprout.com)
• Twitter Followers: 2284 Followers – Follow us here – wvdcommunity (@wvdcommunity) / Twitter

Sponsors

Nerdio

Nerdio Launches Inaugural NVP Program Recognizing Exceptional Supporters

Nerdio has launched their very first community award recognition program called the NVP – Nerdio Valued Professional. The program is for those who are passionate about Nerdio and enjoy sharing content, evangelizing Nerdio, providing feedback, bringing in ideas, educating others, and basically being a champion for Nerdio! If you fancy becoming an NVP or seeing what it’s about then check out this post – https://getnerdio.com/academy/nerdio-launches-inaugural-nvp-program-recognizing-exceptional-supporters/

IGEL

IGEL has published a press release on how they managed to help McMaster University in Canada to refresh its desktop estate by using IGEL UD3 Multimedia Endpoints. Very interesting case study so make sure you give it a read! https://www.igel.com/about-us/press-releases/mcmaster-universitys-faculty-of-engineering-standardizes-on-igel-for-its-end-user-computing-solution/

Community

UK Azure Virtual Desktop User Group

The next UK Azure Virtual Desktop user group has been announced for the 9th of December and it will be an in-person event!! The event is being held in Leeds but will also be streamed. You can view more info and sign up here – https://www.meetup.com/UK-Windows-Virtual-Desktop-User-Group/events/281969876/

Dutch Virtual Desktop User Group

The next Dutch Virtual Desktop User group has been announced for the 14th of December!! There are some great sessions on Autoscaling, SSO with AVD, and Building Images using Winget. You can view more info and sign up here – https://www.meetup.com/Dutch-Virtual-Desktop-User-Group/events/282308864/

Manage Azure Virtual Desktop with Nerdio – Initial setup

Johan Vanneuville has written a blog post in which he goes through the setup and configuration of Nerdio. In the blog post, he deploys Nerdio into his own tenant and shows how easy it is to deploy. Hopefully, we will see more posts from Johan with more Nerdio goodness! You can read the post here – https://johanvanneuville.com/avd/manage-azure-virtual-desktop-with-nerdio-initial-setup/

Deploying Azure Virtual Desktop with Terraform Part 1

Johan has been a busy boy and has written another blog post in which he discusses how to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop using Terraform. You can view his post here – https://johanvanneuville.com/avd/deploy-azure-virtual-desktop-with-terraform-part-1/

Mastering Azure Virtual Desktop

Ryan Mangan has announced his next book which will be Mastering Azure Virtual Desktop! You can pre-order his book on Amazon here – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Azure-Virtual-Desktop-implementation/dp/1801075026/

Autoscale with Azure Virtual Desktop Scaling Plans

Travis Roberts has released a new video in which he discusses the new AVD Scaling Plans. In the video, he shows you what they are, and how to implement them. You can view his video here –

Convert FSLogix profile to a local profile

Jos Lieben has shared a blog post in which he discusses how to convert a FSLogix profile to a local profile. This maybe useful in specific scenarios so is a good tool to have! He has written a PowerShell script that will mount the profile, copies the profile onto the local VM, and then unmounts the profile. You can view more details here – https://www.lieben.nu/liebensraum/2021/11/convert-fslogix-profile-to-local-profile/

Nerdio Manager for v3.3 Released

Nerdio has released v3.3 of their popular Nerdio Manager for Enterprise product. As usual, this feature includes lots of new features including FSLogix App Masking, RAM Autoscaling, Custom RBAC Roles, and much more. You can read the full release notes here – https://nmw.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045731614-Release-Notes

Azure VM Size Battle Round I: Ddasv5 vs. Ddsv5

Daniel Weppeler from Microsoft has written a great blog post in which he does some testing of a few different VM sizes on Azure to show the performance differences. It’s really interesting to see the results and he also compares v4 to v5. You should definitely check out his post here – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/azure-vm-size-battle-round-i-ddsv5-vs-daniel-weppeler/

Install Company Portal Offline version using Intune for AVD Windows 365 Cloud PC

Anoop C Nair has written yet another blog post in which he discusses how to deploy an offline company portal using Intune for Azure Virtual Desktop. In the post, he discusses why you would do this and the steps required to do so. You can read more here: https://www.anoopcnair.com/install-company-portal-offline-using-intune/

Prevent Users to save files on local drives using Intune MEM Policies

Anoop Nair has shared a blog post in which he discusses how to prevent users from saving files on local drives using Intune/MEM Policies. This is especially important in a Multi-Session environment so definitely worth a read. You can view his post here – https://www.anoopcnair.com/prevent-users-to-save-files-on-drives-intune/

HTMD Conference 2021

The How to Manage Devices Conference was recently held and all the sessions were recorded on YouTube. There were some excellent Windows AVD and Windows 365 sessions so make sure you check out the recordings here – https://www.anoopcnair.com/recordings-of-htmd-conference-2021/

Microsoft

Azure AD Kerberos authentication (Preview)

Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure AD support for Kerberos authentication. This new feature will allow SMB file share access using Azure AD credentials from VM’s and devices to Azure AD. This is also the reason they announced the Public Preview of FSLogix profiles for Azure AD-joined VM’s.

Public Preview of FSLogix profiles for Azure AD-joined VMs

Microsoft has announced that the Public Preview of FSLogix profiles for Azure AD-joined VMs has been released! A few months ago they release the public preview of Azure-AD Joined VMs but the use case was limited as FSLogix was not supported. This has now been lifted so the adoption rate should be much higher! You can read more about it here – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-virtual-desktop-blog/announcing-public-preview-of-fslogix-profiles-for-azure-ad/ba-p/3019855