Welcome to this news blog post from the official Microsoft VirtualDesktops global community. In this newsletter, we will take you along with all the community and partner news of the past weeks, including Ignite.
Sponsors
Nerdio
Nerdio have released their NME product into Public Preview! In this new version they have released Azure Capacity Extender, Global Search, RBAC Scoping for Images, Auto-start hosts for maintenance, Remote App Maintenance Mode and much more! You can read a full set of release notes here – https://nmw.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045731614-Release-Notes
Five Azure Virtual Desktop Considerations in Risk Management
Risk management and asset protection in a distributed workforce environment need to include fully leveraging the identity, and access controls feature offered by Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop. Amol Dalvi, vice president of product at Nerdio, shares key considerations to keep in mind for better risk management.
Igel
IGEL releases 11.08.200 firmware, read about improvements for AVD, Windows365, Citrix, Unified Communications
IGEL is just about to release a new Rolling Release firmware, and this time it is a BIG update!
The release webinar for the IGEL Community (https://www.igelcommunity.com) presented by IGEL’s Sebastian Perusat and Christian Werner can be found here:
Community
Custom images for Windows 365 Cloud PC
In this blog, Ivo Uenk shows his experience building and assigning a custom image for Windows 365 Cloud PC. He shows where to start, which steps he took, and how to configure the correct provisioning policy.
Defender for Cloud Just-in-Time or Azure Bastion?
Should we use Defender for Cloud Just-in-Time or Azure Bastion to secure remote desktop access to our Azure Virtual Machines?
In this LinkedIn discussion started by Erik M. an interesting discussion is there about how to secure AVD the best way.
4 Great Ways ControlUp for VDI & DaaS Makes Azure and AVD Even Better
ControlUp is a monitoring solution that is used very often in modern desktop management. In this article, they explain how ControlUp can help you how to monitor Azure Virtual Desktop.
Deploy and monitor conditional access authentication strength automated
Not a virtual desktop technical thing but definitely a subject to secure your virtual desktops is authentication. Sander Rozemuller has written a post about how to configure authenticating strength with conditional access policies using the hidden Azure API.
https://www.rozemuller.com/deploy-monitor-conditional-access-require-authentication-strength/
New Monitoring and TroubleShooting Reports for Cloud PCs
Dominiek Verham has written a great blog post on the new monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for Cloud PC. In this blog post he details the different options and how to use them. You can read his post here – New Monitoring And Troubleshooting Reports For Cloud PC’s – techlab.blog
Microsoft
During Ignite, Microsoft announced a lot of virtual desktop news
Announcing general availability of support for Azure availability zones in the host pool deployment
It is now possible to automatically distribute your session hosts across any number of availability zones. This enables you to take full advantage of the built-in Azure resiliency options from within the same deployment process. Also, the ARM templates are updated now.
Announcement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-virtual-desktop/arm-templates-updated-to-support-availability-zones/m-p/3657186
ARM template update: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-virtual-desktop/arm-templates-updated-to-support-availability-zones/m-p/3657186
New ways to optimize flexibility, improve security, and reduce costs with Azure Virtual Desktop
See what is new about RDP Shortpath, Single Sign On, and reduce costs in Azure Virtual Desktop
Networking and capacity management with Windows 365
One of the biggest factors in delivering a great Cloud PC experience comes down to simple physics: deploying Cloud PCs as geographically close to users as possible. Windows 365 leverages the global network and datacenter footprint of Azure to provide geographically distributed Cloud PC deployment options to help ensure that every user in your organization will have a great Cloud PC experience, regardless of where they work. In practical terms, that means selecting the right Azure datacenter for each user’s Cloud PC and mitigating against datacenter capacity or availability issues.
[Session] Understanding Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 for hybrid work
On 26 October, Microsoft is hosting a session about Understanding how to select the right product(s) to address your organization’s needs is a critical first step. Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 are complementary products that enable every organization to deliver Windows from the Cloud to its employees.
How to automate Windows 365 Cloud PC self-service requests
This blog post explains how to create a form to automate Windows 365 self-service requests in detail.