deploying azure virtual desktop can be
complex
and time-consuming wouldn't it be great
if you could just press the abd easy
button and have it all done for you
i'm dean sefola and this is the azure
academy in this episode we're going to
build
avd the easy way with the latest feature
the azure virtual desktop quick start
this feature is in preview at this time
so you'll need a special link to access
it
and that is linked in the video
description down below the video
while you're down there if you want to
master azure and improve your career
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this also helps me out by telling
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azure academy with more people
which i would appreciate now when you
click that special link in the
description that'll bring you here
to the avd admin page and on the left
you can see that there's a new item in
the blade
called quick start and right in the
center it lets us know what you'll be
getting when you do this build process
one host pool one app group and one user
so let's click create our first choice
is if we have
an empty or an existing subscription
choose existing if you have either a
traditional
active directory that you want to use or
you want to use an existing
azure ad domain services which is a
microsoft managed domain controller
solution
in the cloud both of them will work and
are fully supported
but you'll have to pick one or the other
which we'll get to in a minute
if you select an empty subscription the
quick start will build azure ad domain
services for you
which will take roughly 40 minutes and
by the way
if you're hoping to extend your on-prem
active directory
into the cloud by using azure av domain
services
then you better watch this video first
because there's a lot of things you need
to understand
now we need a resource group prefix for
the two or
three resource groups that we'll be
creating through the quick start
and i'll show you the differences
between them at the end but either way
this is going to make it easier to
identify
these resource groups then select the
azure region that you want to build in
i'll take east us
as usual and for the azure account this
is referring to your azure ad
global admin credentials and then we
have the domain
admin account what you put in here will
depend on if you chose
existing or empty if you chose empty
then this account will become your azure
ad
domain services admin but if you chose
existing
this is the credentials that your vms
will use when joining your domain
one thing to keep in mind here is that
you will not be able to specify
the ou that your vms will be joined to
from the quick start
so if that's a requirement for you then
you'll have to pre-stage
those computer objects in the right
place
now onto the identity box if you chose
empty you'll only have one option here
azure ad domain services
but if you chose existing then you'll
see both
active directory and aads
select the one that you want and click
next on this screen the first
options here are to choose either yes or
no
yes we'll give you a pooled post pool
and no
will build a personal host pool then we
have your image
from the images drop down you can see
the list of all the options that
microsoft has
in the gallery and pick whichever one
suits you or
you can select see all images underneath
it
and then you can go to my items at the
top choose your own custom vm image
or if you have one in the shared image
gallery you can select that as well
then we have our vm size now the default
here is fine for me but if you need
something like a graphics card in your
vms for example
change the vm to the appropriate size
that best fits your needs
then we have the number of vms this is
how many virtual machine session hosts
the quick start will build into your
pool
now if you selected no at the top then
what you're saying
is that you've got for example 30 users
and you'll need
30 vms if you chose yes then you wanted
a pooled host pool
and for those 30 users you have to
decide now how many users you want on
the same
virtual machine at the same time and for
example you could want
10 users on each vm so you would just
build
three now we need to select the virtual
network that you'll want to build those
vms on
and finally the resource group where
your domain controllers are located
now one important thing to note here is
that if you have
existing domain controllers in the cloud
then they'll need to be within the same
subscription that you selected at the
beginning because your resource group
selections here are scoped to that
subscription
so if you have multiple subscriptions
like i do and your dc's don't live
in the subscription where you're
building things through the quick start
then that's not gonna work once you have
the appropriate resource
group selected then go ahead and select
one of your domain controllers
quick start will communicate with this
domain controller using the credentials
that you provided earlier
to create your users and get your groups
in here
which is the next step now if you want
to build a validation user go ahead and
check that box and add the appropriate
upn and password
and quickstart will create this new user
for you and whether you choose to do
that or not you can also select
existing users or groups and just check
the box there for that
and then from the picker as usual go
ahead and select who you want to give
access to
then click the next button and review
everything once you're happy
click create and walking through the
quick start is really that simple
but now let's take a look at what we're
actually going to get when we do this
we have two resource groups they have my
prefix and we have one
that is labeled deployment and the other
wvd
oh and remember this feature is in
preview so the name of the resource
groups and other resources here are
going to be
updated from wvd to abd
so keep that in mind if you're
pre-staging resources like i mentioned
earlier
if you had chosen an empty subscription
you would have gotten a
third resource group labeled
prerequisite this would have been a
dedicated resource
group for your azure aed domain services
instance
looking at the deployment resource
groups we see an azure automation
account and run books this is the magic
behind the easy button process
and it's a great example of work smarter
not harder
these automation runbooks did all of the
work in coordination with the
arm templates to build everything for
you and if you want to unlock your full
potential in the cloud you should be
investing in your automation skills
so you can do cool things like the abd
easy button
and the last resource group here is for
our environment
here you'll find the abd resources such
as the host pool
app group and workspace you'll also find
the session host vms
along with their network cards and disks
now if you chose to build a
personal host pool that's it for you but
if you built a pooled host pool like i
did then you will also have a storage
account
and managed identity this is for my
fslogix user profiles
and the managed identity helped set up
active directory authentication
to my storage account so i didn't have
to
now as for my experiences with this tool
overall i love it the only issue that i
ran into in the quick start was one of
the prerequisite run books having a
failure and i've already talked to the
product group about this
so hopefully we'll get an update in
there soon by default
the validation users group that you can
see here in active directory
will be created in the users container
now this validation group must be synced
into azure ad for the process to
complete successfully
and this goes back to how you have azure
ad connect
configured in my case i sync from the
corp ou
down through the rest of that tree so i
don't sync the entire directory and i
wasn't syncing the user's container
so my runbook was failing and my
temporary fix until the product group
gets around this
was to pre-stage the wvd validation
users group
into the ou that is being synced into
azure
once i did that everything worked like a
charm as for build times if you chose an
empty subscription this will take about
an hour and a half
and most of that time is actually in
building azure ad domain services
if you chose the existing subscription
model this will take about 20 minutes
so what about your experience the
product team
wants to hear from you with any issues
that you ran into and
features you'd like to see added to
improve the experience for everyone
and this feedback page is linked in the
video description below and your
feedback is much appreciated
if you want to keep learning about azure
virtual desktop go check out my abd
playlist
there we dive into every feature and
help you learn all you need to know
or if you think that you're ready to be
avd certified
go check out the video series
so you can go and prep for the exam
thanks for joining me today and i will
catch you in our next episode
happy learning that was easy