DR Planning | Windows Virtual Desktop - #19

[@AzureAcademy]

Want to learn EVERYTHING about Windows Virtual Desktop? Watch this FREE video series on The Azure Academy today! aka.ms/AzureAcademy-WVD

[@Cmart6444]

Hi Dean, this is one of the items of major interest on AZ-140 recertification exam. Thanks for this one too Bro!!!!

[@AzureAcademy]

Awesome!

[@morpk1]

Best Microsoft Chanel around

[@AzureAcademy]

WOW...thanks @Mark and this isn't even an official Microsoft channel 😁😜

[@tilikumtim5562]

@@AzureAcademy It's the best 'unofficial' Microsoft channel and better than any of the official ones! 😁

[@AzureAcademy]

WOW...thanks Tim, that is amazing to hear. Lets continue to get the word out so we can help more people! Thanks again!!!

[@megaa1c]

Hi Dean, thnaks - I think we need a deep dive session on fslogix topic / fslogix DR and perfomance (standard vs premium azure file shares in DR situation) - like what is the difference between multiple vhdx locations vs multiple cloudcache locations, perfomance implication, pros and cons for each method ( vhdx locations vs cloud cache etc)

[@AzureAcademy]

WOW...you just wrote my script for me Maxim...Thanks!

[@marcomav4131]

Upvote for a NetApp files video!

[@AzureAcademy]

thanks Marco!

[@jonathanclyde4725]

Note, Microsoft SLA on Azure Site Recovery is 2 hours. I have never seen it take longer than 15 minutes, but since Microsoft cannot guarantee less than 2 hour recovery time I always tell customers it's a minimum RTO of 2 hours, though "off the record", it will probably be faster.

[@AzureAcademy]

👍👍

[@suraj22224]

Hi Dean, I love your content. Keep up the great work! just a one question if i am migrating my on prem server to azure in that case my DC should be up and running on the azure cloud for connectivity?

[@AzureAcademy]

YES, The best practice is to build a new DC in the cloud, then wait for AD Sync to replicate everything into Azure...then you can do your migration

[@ctxshekhar7979]

Hi Azure Academy, I am interested on the deeper knowledge on FsLogix. Kindly create a video on the same. Thank You

[@AzureAcademy]

thanks CTX...working on it now

[@icici321]

I believe as of now Azure files is not an option for DR unless Fslogix cloud cache is used. Again with cloud cache my understanding is that one location is primary and other secondary. So in the event of DR then any changes need to be done to reverse primary and secondary in the registry? or does the DR failover and failback works without making any registry changes?. Using any of the replication technologies i wanted to understand how the failback to Primary region is going to work with all data synced back to Primary region from DR region.

[@AzureAcademy]

This answer depends on a lot of things. What is it that is failing? Is it the VM The FSLogix Storage The Azure region? Or you can add the primary and secondary storage to the cloud cache Which solves the FSLogix part Setup ASR which solved the azure region part Or build new VMs in a DR region that are configured with the FSLogix primary and secondary reversed All these would work...but it depends on how you define the disaster as to how you need to recover from it

[@kvsc5914]

Interested in FSLogic

[@AzureAcademy]

I will start working on it

[@ExpertInvisible]

Thanks for another great video. Is WVD Persistent VM support FSLogix? Do you have any idea, when MSFT going to announce manage WVD multi sessions with Endpoint manager?

[@AzureAcademy]

oh, I know...but I can't tell ya. 😜 I do not speak about things that Microsoft has not said or released publicly...sorry...and YES WVD Personal (Persistent) Host pools do support FSLogix...however I would think about they WHY. Why do you want to have a roaming profile technology on a non roaming Desktop?

[@ExpertInvisible]

@@AzureAcademy I don't want to roam profiles, just asked for my knowledge 😁

[@AzureAcademy]

got it...thanks!

[@feeneymi]

Hi Dean, I love your content. Keep up the great work! I would be interested in learning if it is possible, whereby an Azure VM (in this case a WVD Host Pool VM) is protected by a Recovery Services Vault with Cross Region Restore (CRR) turned on, to restore that WVD Azure VM in the Secondary Region and register it with the original Host Pool as a more cost effective (but longer RTO) DR solution than using Azure Site Recovery?

[@AzureAcademy]

With ASR the replication is happening in the background so it doesn’t matter where you want to restore the VM...and The ASR scenario I showed was a cross region restore process. For me it is more of a holistic DR requirement and solution question...and how large of a blast radius do you need to plan for.

[@feeneymi]

@@AzureAcademy I get the whole holistic DR capabilities of ASR, which I would put in place for mission critical systems. I do have a single host pool VM instance where it is only being utilized by at most 3 individuals, so the angle I was coming at here was to ultimately keep Azure costs to a minimum but still provide a basic level of DR capabilities to the single instance. ASR requires that you setup and replicate the VM disks in the selected secondary (DR) region so there is an ongoing cost for those disks in the secondary region. Whereas a Recovery Services Vault with CRR enabled means you don't have managed disks in place in the secondary region until you do the actual restore of the VM. The only question that remains is how do you registry this VM to the original Windows virtual desktop host pool?

[@AzureAcademy]

to do that you would need to force the WVD agents to reinstall with the new hostpool registration key

[@arunabhbiswas3210]

Interesting! We've Server-client architecture in our environment. If the WVDs have the client s/w installed, it won't experience any latency while having the server in the same region (US WEST). While performing the DR drills, the server needs to move to DR (which is a separate region (US EAST). In that case, due to the geographical distance between the server (moved to US EAST) and the client (within the VDI in US WEST) experiences high latency. So, in this case, what should be the best and cost effective approach to provide low latency access to WVDs?

[@AzureAcademy]

A few things...when DR happens...what is bring DR’d? EVERYTHING in west US? Or just a few things? Are there other on prem systems that you still need to communicate with when in DR? Finally, where are the clients? Are the on prem or over the public internet?

[@arunabhbiswas3210]

​@@AzureAcademyWe do not have anything in Azure but got the question in anticipation to understand the performance of the applications accessed from WVD. Suppose, we've prod servers VMs in US WEST and DR in US EAST. I'm assuming that when we create a pool of WVD for a specific app in the US WEST region. If we failover the app to the DR, I suspect the app access latency would be very high when we access the app running in DR from the WVD. So my question was to find out the best cost-effective way to address or mitigate this latency issue. I can think of a way that we can have a similar WVD pool in the DR region as well and keep them in a power-off state to save the cost and start them only when we run the app from DR. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong or suggest if you have a better option for this. Yes, we have few servers that we may need to access from the clients installed in the WVD.

[@AzureAcademy]

I would look at things from the other direction first. Think about your application. What is the app? Where is the app? what does the app need in a DR? The WVD Systems are a way to access the app. You want to keep the WVD systems and the app as close together as possible. and WVD should follow the DR plan that you already have.

[@jeetgarg23]

So, when we failover to the secondary region, how will the Failover VMs reach back to the original hostpool?

[@AzureAcademy]

Depends on what happens in the disaster. But when the VMs use ASR and power on in the DR region they are already attached to the hostpool because they are replicas of the VMs. If ARM is down then you won’t be able to manage the host pool but things should still work. This is why there are multiple DR options...because multiple things can go wrong

[@carloslasko2721]

@@AzureAcademy Hi! If I replicate my VMs from session hosts to another region, when performing a failvover, how do I make these DR VMs connect to the Host Pool of the DR region? Assuming the source region is down and the host pool of my primary region is not available.

[@AzureAcademy]

You don’t have to do anything. When the ASR vm comes online it is the exact vm from the source Region, so it is already joined to the host pool

[@TimTubed]

Does AAD domain services support more than one region yet?

[@AzureAcademy]

When you say support more than one region...I am guessing that you are NOT talking about VMs joining the domain, but rather that the AADDS service does not have a regional DR??? NO Azure AD Domain Services does not have regional DR and does not span regions at this time

[@jerardnaidoo1578]

Can you do a video on enabling MFA for Azure and O365

[@AzureAcademy]

Already covered...check it out kzbin.info/www/bejne/aWKngmuAqrGEm9U

[@kvsc5914]

Waiting for DevOps videos

[@AzureAcademy]

Working on it now

[@kvsc5914]

Thanks

[@AzureAcademy]

I hope to release it this next week, maybe the week after...stay tuned

[@wakkowarner9522]

oof, that background music is tough to listen to 😓

[@AzureAcademy]

Hey Wakko, your music in Animaniacs is awesome! What about the background music is tough? What would you like better?

[@wakkowarner9522]

@@AzureAcademy yeah some of my Animaniacs soundtracks would be cool 🤪 thx 🙏🏽 u have my permission to use

[@AzureAcademy]

Sweet!!! thanks!

[@netsider]

It's funny that MS actually thinks most users even know how to build Azure infrastructure that needs DR planning 😂

[@AzureAcademy]

Do you mean because Azure is so stable or because people know so little about building in Azure?

[@netsider]

@@AzureAcademy I meant the second one, but now that you mention it I do feel Azure is stable enough that I would probably not have a full DR plan, except maybe in the future when things get more complex or bigger (although I'm still learning, and this might be a bad idea).

[@netsider]

My comment wasn't necessarily aimed at Azure, also, but cloud services in general (AWS maybe even more so). They're just hard to find advanced learning tutorials for. As a web developer, I'd say the thing I have most trouble learning is cloud infrastructure, and I have a 2 year degree in networking and support (not a stranger to servers and networks).

[@AzureAcademy]

I always suggest that anything in production have a DR plan so you have as little down time as possible

[@AzureAcademy]

I suggest checking out my playlists to dig deeper into specific topics. If you are looking for something I don't have...I will see if I can create it for you #HappyLearning 😁