Microsoft AVD AMA FAQ GA Dates Azure AD Join Orchestration

Following are my quick notes from AMA organized by the Microsoft AVD product team. It was super useful to me. I thought it would be helpful for you as well. Let’s have a quick walkthrough of the questions and answers which I wanted to highlight.

NOTE! – AVD is GA’d Generally Available World Wide with App Attach Feature?

You can go through all the AVD AMA discussions from the link which I shared in the Resources section of this post. More information on AVD – Microsoft VDI Story AVD Concept Setup Guide Myths Known Issues

GA Dates?

AVD GA – ? AVD GA by end of the calendar year. No specific dates.

AVD Service Availability Outside US

AVD Deployment Best Practice – We should deploy our VMs/VLANs in the Data Centers near to users as AVD is a non-regional service. The performance in other Azure regions will improve rapidly in the next 6+ months, as we deploy regional clusters.

Azure AD Join Support?

AVD VM Azure AD Join Support for AVD instead of Domain Join? Investigating!

AVD SSO Related Questions?

1. SSO without Azure AD Domain Services or AD DC requirement – We’ve got lots of feedback on this, and are investigating. Currently, you would need AD DC and AD FS (of which we’ll have some more documentation soon).

2. No AD Domain services or AD DC requirement – Same as above. This one is a top ask for a lot of customers and we’re investigating how we can solve this, but no specific dates.

3. Front end in the portal – Same as above. We’re investigating this. In the meantime, you can deploy the standalone management web app: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/manage-resources-using-ui .

4. Azure files with FSLogix for profiles with AD DC or Azure AD: Unfortunately, this is more of an Azure Files feature ask, since Azure Files–at the moment–isn’t recognizable by AD DC. They mentioned last Ignite that they are working on this specific feature (with AD DC), but we do not have updates at the time. Azure AD will be a separate issue, once we get there.

AVD Automation with Terraform

AVD automation with Terraform. Microsoft says they have production deployment done with Terraform

AVD Latency Related Issues?

AVD Latency Commitment/recommendation – It makes mention that 150ms is what you should stay under for Windows AVD. It’s a very generic commitment/guideline. Use AVD along with Citrix HDX? Is this possible?

Thin Client Support for AVD?

AVD Thin Client Support Dell – Linux/Windows 10 IoT/ThinOS will be announced as part of GA? Microsoft is working with Dell and some other vendors to have this support by GA. I like this discussion thread in AVD AMA.

AVD Audio Video Support

Support for Audio and Video comms apps running – Teams support is coming as per AVD AMA.

FSLogix Profile Redirection Support in AVD AMA

AVD FSLogix Profiles – can the full profile be excluded, and then specific items added back? Not supported now.

Teams Optimizations with AVD

Microsoft Teams and Camera Settings in AVD RD Client – Teams optimizations (including media offload for teams calling) will not be in the AVD service GA, but are a fast-follow feature that we are working hard on and targeting to deliver not long after the AVD service GA.

Directed to a specific VM?

AVD Users to allows be directed to a specific VM – This is coming as a feature. It’s a common ask. Right now there can be 1:1 but the mapping is done by the brokering. For example, user 1 comes in gets vm2, user 2 comes in gets vm3, etc. We cannot specify that user 1 must get vm1.

However, there can be 1 VM per host pool and just 1 user assigned to it. This is what I heard in WVD AMA discussions.

Orchestration

AVD Orchestration for New AVD Client – Automation discussion.

More details – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-10-AMA/Orchestration-for-New-WVD-Client/m-p/827163

Resources

Author

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is Blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. He writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc………

Azure Virtual Desktop Microsoft AVD FAQs from AMA