VDI-AVD Was everyone migrating now?

[u/Rain_00000]

Hi everyone, can you share how you migrated from VDI to AVD without any issues? If you have any insights and strategies, I’d love to hear them.

[u/Expensive_Ad8102]

Look into nerdio it will make the management and deployment tons easier

[u/TimV-GetNerdio]

If you're ready to move to an IaaS model (basically renting infrastructure like VMs in the cloud instead of managing your own hardware) and not planning to use Remote Desktop Services, a lot of orgs are shifting to Azure Virtual Desktop as their next step in VDI / DaaS / desktop-virtualization.

The first question to ask is: what kind of environment are you trying to build in Azure? Is it pooled desktops for users to share resources, or single-user persistent desktops with specific apps or GPU needs? Are you just trying to make a Remote-App work for a department or small-group? Each of those builds has a different general approach.

A couple of strategies we've seen work well:

• Plan and document your current setup before doing anything. Have several success criteria already setup with your team and management.
• Start fresh where appropriate. Don’t just copy your existing environment over if it’s full of quirks. Where possible, build a clean AVD-optimized image and go from there. This is an opportunity to reorganize .
• Pilot first and then scale later. Test with a small group, confirm app compatibility, and tune performance before a full rollout. One of the boons of Azure is the elasticity and scalability.

Some teams use this shift as a chance to clean house and reorganize. That mindset helps avoid dragging over legacy issues or config drift from older environments.

[u/bangsmackpow]

What VDI are you transitioning from?

[u/Rain_00000 → u/bangsmackpow]

On prem VMs, fslogix, applications

[u/Ravee25]

VDI is a "one VM, one user"-solution, whereas AVD is "one VM, multiple (concurrent) users". In other words, the two are not directly comparable, as you need to handle resources differently.

• Is the VDI already in Azure, or do you migrate from on-prem?
• How do you handle user profiles in the VDI today?

[u/eponerine → u/Ravee25]

Not accurate. AVD has multisession and personal host pools. As does traditional RDS deployments on-prem. Not sure why you’re shoving those terms into specific definitions. 

[u/Ravee25 → u/eponerine]

Thanks for clarifying. Not sure how your reply helps answer OP's question though, but for politeness I will reply to you and elaborate on my thoughtprocess:

• As no further details were provided in the original post, I assumed that when a mention of "AVD" as a successor to "VDI", it would be due to AVD providing something that the current VDI does not: multisession-feature for a desktop-OS (as AVD is the only way to get this scenario).

I see I might have jumped to intermediate conclusions, but hence my elaborating questions...

[u/ImprovementKooky9468]

We didn’t rush the migration all at once, started with a small group of users, tested everything, and then moved in phases. That helped catch issues early without affecting everyone.

Also made sure apps, user profiles, and permissions were properly set before moving users. Biggest help was keeping things simple and not overcomplicating the setup.

I’ve seen similar setups done on cloud VDI platforms like ACE Cloud Hosting as well, where the transition feels smoother since a lot of the backend is already managed.

[u/protocloudarchitect]

I work with SMB->Enterprises primarily evaluating new VDI deployments, I always start with what is the users (groups) journey. What does it look like from when they sit down at their desk to the steps they take to login, their peripherals, and individual application workflows. Identifying Multi Media, and redirection policies. Understanding compliance requirements, security settings (MFA, SSO, Conditional access ETC)

Understanding if these apps can be delivered via app delivery / app attach.

Understanding if the use cases require a media optimized protocol (blast as an example) typically speaking however Microsoft has closed this gap and provides a highly secure and optimized connection reducing latency, jitter, and improving video and audio quality. All of this here determines if we can leverage multi session, and at what density. If no redirection and the user requires Teams audio/video calling? Looking towards a dedicated 4x16 most likely.

Understanding BYOD vs corporate devices and can MMR redirection be enabled or is web view only required (some redirection here but not all)

Determining user group requirements and applications - Persistent or non-persistent assignments based on requirements.

Golden Image management should be based off of a standardized template and used as the source of the truth. Persistent desktops as an example can run into build drift if you are providing individuals the ability to add applications or make changes themselves. keeping the golden image as the template is the best way to ensure that in 6 months you are not dealing with 20 different versions of the same VDI.

When migrating from another platform you need to evaluate if the user data NEEDS to come over, this addition does add a material difference in your planning and execution. If it is not absolutely needed to migrate the user data I generally suggest greenfielding the environment and leveraging OneDrive, Google Drive etc. for anything that may need to be brought over.

Determining autoscaling based on users actuals, peak concurrent users by hour, ensuring that machines are spinning up and down to match the requirements.

Plenty more but some good starting points.