What Does Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop Do?
Azure Virtual Desktop is a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offering that allows customers to run virtual apps and desktop services from the Azure public cloud. Admins deploy the solution through the Azure portal and can leverage Azure Active Directory and a host of operating system options to deliver resources to users. Since Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based solution, you don’t have to worry about hardware procurement or any other license cost.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, most companies are allowing employees to work from home across the world. That’s why demand for VDI/VPNs has increased, but at the same time expanding a VDI/VPN infrastructure is time-consuming, so companies started looking for alternative. Microsoft came up with a solution to allow companies to set up a VDI in the cloud on demand with multiregion support.
Azure Virtual Desktop allows admins to set up a virtual desktop in the cloud on demand and scale up and down whenever they want. Additionally, admins can use an existing operating system image with all the tools and agents installed on it or create a
new image with a company-specific compliance policy, tools, and agents to create an AVD session host. AVD desktops can be joined to an existing AD domain controller so that users can use the same credential they were using earlier. AD domains also allow the enterprise to set up compliance policy on the AVD session host and use an existing patching, antivirus, and monitoring solution to manage AVD. Users can access on- premises applications over a site-to-site VPN or over ExpressRoute from Azure Virtual Desktop. See Figure 1-2.
Figure 1-2. What does Azure Virtual Desktop do?