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Findings Video conference with Azure Virtual Desktop using Teams

Introduction

Over the last couple of years, there has been an impressive flux with many businesses and institutions adopting and relying on large-scale remote working and remote learning environments to maintain workforce and learning continuity. During this time, it’s generally been recognised that this type of remote working/learning has been quite successful, with many businesses and institutions continuing remoting working/learning practices or introducing hybrid models with a combination of remote and office work for their staff.

One of the reasons why remote working/learning has been successful is the availability of supporting technologies that have delivered a high standard of human communication and engagement across large numbers of workers or students/faculty in remote environments. Video conferencing applications, which includes video conferencing, screen sharing, IMs and more, are such technologies that have contributed to viable remote working/learning environment success.

But to use these applications to their fullest potential, a robust IT infrastructure is also a must. Many large enterprise companies, as well as SMB and other institutions have centralised their IT environment into virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), either as an on-premises solution or as a managed-service by cloud service providers (CSP). Centralizing resources, applications and data into a single infrastructure allows for better IT management and security of vital resources and data which can help improve workforce productivity, data security and IT efficiencies.

Investigation overview

This blog details a recent technical investigation where popular video conferencing applications are deployed on AMD-based Azure instances to determine the performance of each application, the number of deployable users in a multi-session environment, and the user experience each person would receive. The AMD-based instances includes both CPU-only based instances and CPU+GPU based instances to understand the impact of GPU-enabled resources to the density and experience of the users.

So next let’s look at the various parameters for the investigation.

The Lab:

For the investigation, we had three areas of consideration:

Findings Video conference with Azure Virtual Desktop using Meet

Introduction

Investigation overview

So next let’s look at the various parameters for the investigation.

The Lab:

For the investigation, we had three areas of consideration:

Findings Video conference with Azure Virtual Desktop using Zoom

Introduction

Investigation overview

So next let’s look at the various parameters for the investigation.

The Lab:

For the investigation, we had three areas of consideration:

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AMD (NvV4-series) and Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)

Hi all

I am excited to share this is a blogseries around better understanding the value of NVv4-series in Azure and I will cover different views. From what NVv4-series is, which software vendors it works with and which remoting technology it can be used with, and I also cover later in a blogpost how you can scale and run different workloads and utilize the AMD CPU/GPU and how you can monitor and troubleshoot.

In this blogpost i will cover the overview of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop and how it can be hardware accelerated (GPU) enabled with AMD CPU/GPU more specific the NVv4 series in Azure.

You will learn what offerings Microsoft have with Windows Virtual Desktop high level and where you can access the NVv4-series in which Azure datacenter. The process which is required to start and how you can start enabling your VM’s with graphics acceleration.

I will also cover what the difference is with the difference NVv4 instances and the use cases how to use them with Windows Virtual Desktop.

Windows Virtual Desktop have now been GA for almost a year, and it have been a huge success globally. NVv4-series also have 1 year anniversary as it was GA in 4th March 2020, which I covered in a blogpost here

Case study – NVv4, Azure, Citrix BIM customer TBI

Last March 2020, I wrote about the availability of the AMD NVv4-series powered by AMD CPU/GPU. I have been working with NVv4-series and I am excited to share one of the customers, I have helped are now an official reference customer for NVv4-series.

TBI, is a dutch BIM customer, I have been working together with a couple of years designing their on-prem which is now a hybrid platform. They are the first official customer case study using AMD NVv4 instances in Azure together with Citrix Cloud. They have been using VDI for several years and been one of the leading innovators using high end graphics for VDI for their BIM users. Microsoft, Autodesk, Citrix uses them as reference customer through the years.


1) Azure session host	2) Application	3) End-point devices