AskAresh

This post is in continuation of my part 1 – Mindmap – Part 1 – Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure (HCoA) – Quick start guide where we look at pre-requisites and the initial deployment of the HCoA solution. In this post, I want to share my learnings about the configuration of Images, Virtual Desktops, Farms and Assignments. We shall take a look into the following topics:

• Mind map for Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure – Part 2 – Configuration of Images – Desktops – Farms – Assignments
  • Creating a Virtual Desktop or RDSH Image
    • Import VM
    • Create Image (Converting VM to Image)
  • Farms (Published Applications)
    • Create Desktop Farm
  • Add Applications to the Farms
    • New Applications – Auto-Scan from Farm
  • Create an Application Assignment
  • Create an Assignment for Multi-session or Hosted Shared Desktop
  • Create a Virtual Desktop Assignment (Persistent – Full Clone)
  • Create a Virtual Desktop Assignment (Non-Persistent – Floating)
  • AppStacks

In the second part of this series, the mindmap acts as an visual representation of all the configurations to be performed post the initial deployment of the Horizon Cloud Pod. It also helps during customer discussions and allows everyone to be on the same page. You can figure out in advance the pre-requisites, deployment details, and requirements for performing the next steps in your HCoA journey.

Disclaimer – This guide is a deployment/configuration guide, and the production settings, configuration, and use-cases might be different. Please make sure you change the settings appropriate for production workloads. Here is the PDF version if you would like to download and zoom in (Don’t stress your eyes!) –

Screenshots from my deployment

Horizon Cloud POD Managers + Unified Access Gateways

Note everything is deployed keeping in mind High availability.

• 2 x Horizon Cloud Pod Managers
• 2 x External Unified Access Gateways (Public IP)
• 2 x Internal Unified Access Gateways (Internal on-premise network)

Azure Load Balancers

• 1 x Horizon Cloud Pod Managers
• 1 x Public UAG Appliances
• 1 x Internal UAG Appliance

Azure Virtual Network

I have created the vNet as part of pre-requisites in Part 1 series

• 1 x Subnet for DMZ (Unified Access Gateway)
• 1 x Subnet for Mgmt (Pod Managers)
• 1 x Subnet for Workload (Desktop/Farms)

Azure Resource Groups

Note these are auto-created during the Pod deployment.

I hope you will find this helpful information on your HCoA journey. Please let me know if I have missed any steps in the mindmap, and I will be happy to update the post.

Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari

Tags: Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, Desktop Virtualization, HCoA, Horizon Cloud, Microsoft Azure, VDI, VMware, Xmind