How to migrate Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to Azure and Windows Virtual Desktop

(air whooshing) – Coming up, I'll walk youthrough all the steps as an admin to assess and migrate yourclient virtual machines and their related dependencies to Azure, using Azure Migrate.

Azure Migrate is acentral hub to discover, assess and migrate workloads to Azure.

It provides tooling andmonitoring for both Microsoft and partner migrationservices for moving servers, databases, websites andvirtual desktop infrastructure to the cloud.

You can find more aka.

ms/azuremigrate.

Now today I'm going tofocus on the steps used for migrating your virtualdesktop infrastructure.

Now when migrating VDI, there are two primary paths.

You can either migrate yourexisting host infrastructure to new Windows Virtual Desktophost infrastructure on Azure, and tailor your VDI imagesthat you already have to the new environment.

And this is great forshared virtual machines.

Or you can also choose to replicate existingpersistent virtual machines on the new infrastructure, which really works well foruser-dedicated personal VMs.

In both scenarios, AzureMigrate provides the tools to support your migrationand even helps when you need to migrate dependent appsand services that are running in your server VMs.

And if you saw our lasthow-to for Azure Migrate for migrating servers ataka.

ms/MechanicsAzureMigrate that process to migratepersistent client VMs shares many of the same steps.

So first, we're going toset up the prerequisites.

And then next we'll set up Azure Migrate.

Then we'll discover the different VMs and their composition andhow they're being used.

Then you'll review the assessment and if you're bringingover persistent VMs, you'll replicate them, then test your migration and finally migrate them to production.

Now this process will use thesame Azure migrate server, migration tool for replication, testing and the production migration, which also works forclient operating systems.

And to save time, I'llfocus on what's different from the client OS perspective.

And if you're migrating infrastructure and tailoring or building new images for Windows Virtual Desktop, the assessment tool from Lakeside will give you all the information needed, to make any necessarychanges to your images or build new ones, basedon detailed inventory and usage information that it provides.

We'll also cover the processto convert user profile disks or UPDs to FSLogix, and add WPD componentsto your base images.

So let's get started.

First, you'll need an Azure subscription, and if your organization already has one, you'll need to make surethat you have the right level of permissions.

Now, this also extendsto service provisioning, networking, storage and of course, virtual machine creation, among other services.

Next, we're going to headover to Azure Migrate.

Now the best way to get there from the Azure portal's homepage, go down to useful linksand Azure Migration Tools.

Now once you're here, you're going to see options for migrating Windows and Linux servers, migrating SQL and other databases or exploring more scenarios, which is where you'll see VDIas well as web app migration.

Now to get started withVDI, I'm going to go ahead and click into VDI, then I'll click on to add tools.

And this is going to walk usthrough a wizard-based process to select assessment and migration tools.

So in the first step that you see here, select assessment tool, we're going to see Lakeside SysTrack.

Now Lakeside is a Microsoftpartner that specializes in assessing and migratingVDI environments.

Now at SysTrack solutionssupports Microsoft RDS, VMware, Citrix and even physical devices, to help with a readinessassessment, app usage analysis, and to make sure that wecan discover, prioritize and migrate dependent apps, as well as right sizing avirtual machine infrastructure for Windows Virtual Desktop.

So now I've got it selected, I'm going to go ahead and click Next to the next step.

So that's where we're goingto see our migration tool.

And as I mentioned earlier, this is going to be AzureMigrate Server Migration, again, that supportsclient operating systems.

So it works with VMware, Hyper-V as well as physical machines andcan be used with on-premises or other clouds.

Now it's going to replicate VMs and also allowed testmigration ultimately, migrate or cutover yourproduction workloads into Azure.

So I've already got this selected, so I just have to hit Next and continue.

Here I can see all my selections, and I'll click Add tools.

And now I've got my tools selected, I'm ready to start assessingmy current infrastructure.

This is easily the most important phase if you're going to be usingshared VMs and standard images.

And I want to point out afew unique considerations, when moving your VDI environment to Azure.

Now here we'll assess quitea few different aspects across our hosts in our VM host pools, or for personal VMs that areassigned to individual users.

Now the assessment from Lakesideis going to help you gather this information, the firstthing you need to do is click into register for Azure Migrate.

That's going to actually log you in and then create thatconnection, that linkage, between Azure Migrate andyour Lakeside dashboard.

Then you'll be able totrack discovered users that are ready for migrationwithin Azure Migrate.

Now importantly here, you're going to have to deploy agents to yourvirtual machines as packages.

And you can use your standardsoftware distribution tools, things like Configuration Manager.

And once those agents areinstalled and configured, they'll start logging up performance and inventory data among other things into the Lakeside portal.

So in Lakeside SysTrack Visualizer, you'll see once I clickfrom Desktop into Persona, it's done a lot of work here in terms of looking at average CPUutilization, memory IOPS, and it's even segmentedthe different user types to deskbound, non-deskboundand shared users.

So we see quite a bit there.

Now if we go into resource consumption for users we'll be ableto see how each user and how each virtual machineis actually consuming resources in our inventory.

So all the different critical things there to make decisions around things like VM sizing, for example.

Now additionally, beyond all of this, you can go back into Desktopand check out all the rest of the aspects of your virtual machines for example, applications.

So here you get a full inventoryof all the applications that it gets discoveredin your environment.

But even more importantly for VDI, is looking at thingslike application latency.

So you can look at theconsiderations around in-house network resourcesthat you need to decide, with all of this, whatyou're going to move, what maybe to bring with you into Azure, as well as what you mightbe able to leave behind in your current on-premisesVDI infrastructure.

So one tip here forinternal network paths, and even connecting youron-prem domain controllers, you're going to need to establisha virtual network or Vnet between your internal network and the VM resources and services that you're going to be running in Azure.

Additionally, depending on the usage needs for your in-house hosted apps, you'll want to considermigrating your app servers, up into the cloud.

Also, using Azure Migrate; that will get them closer to your desktop VMs thatare running in Azure.

So let's go back to our assessment.

So here you can also seeunder resource consumption, you can see things like CPUpercentage, memory percentile, and also IOPS and networking consumption.

Now, Lakeside also provides a rating for individual userexperience that you can check pre-and post-migration for benchmarking.

Now, the tool will also log much of that collected informationback into Azure Migrate.

So here I'm going toclick on discovered users.

When I click in there, you'llsee that we've got information on user accounts, their devices, total applications used, the operating system that's used if it's a shared WindowsServer OS, for example, that will show up as well.

Also their persona, the target VM size, and even the target location.

Now another tip here forWindows Virtual Desktop, you're going to need tosynchronize your Active Directory with Azure AD.

Now, if you use Office 365 right now, chances are you already have done this.

And Azure AD is used to authenticate into the remote desktop appsas well as the WVD web portal.

But then when you accessvirtual desktops or apps, the authentication for those sessions is performed via your domain controller, which is usually eitheranother virtual machine that runs on Azure, or Azure Active DirectoryDomain Services in Azure.

Now in most cases, you won't be bringing yourexisting standard images as is completely as they are right now, from your current VDI environment.

The details from the Lakeside assessment is going to help you inform how to compose your desktop images, including approaches forprovisioned applications, security components and controls, how they connect to services and also matching appropriatedesktop and app resources to end users based on theircurrent usage patterns.

Next, you'll need to set up your Windows Virtual Desktop instance in Azure.

Now here, you'll startby creating a host pool.

So you do that by goingthrough the standard process, you'll see kind of the familiarfields around the name, some of the aspects around who's using it, then if I want to customizethe virtual machines, I can do that here.

I'll give that a number ofvirtual machines I want to have within my host pooland I can select either from an image that I importedinto Azure Blob Storage.

Or I can choose to use animage from the gallery, which I'll do in this case.

From there, I can look at the parameters and create my host pool.

Now one note here is that WVD is optimized for FSLogix user profiles and doesn't support otherforms of user profile disks.

But you can convert user profile disks to FSLogix profiles using PowerShell.

That converts the disks and also places it into the correct shared location in Azure.

And to do this you need to get to the FSLogix migration preview module for Powershell ataka.

ms/FSLogixMigrationPreviewModule.

And here you can alsosee the sample syntax, for both UDP conversion, as well as roaming profile conversion.

One note is that you'll needto have the modules loaded for Hyper-V, ActiveDirectory and Pester to run these commands.

Now if you're using personalVMs, one dedicated per user and client operating systems, you might want to startby looking into moving to Windows 10 Enterprise multi session.

This option is unique to WVDE and can give you the same compatibility and user experience of adedicated VM, using a client OS.

But the resource utilization benefits of a shared operating system, which until now, was only a server option.

Now, that means thatdepending on your VM specs and usage, your usersmight actually benefit from more powerful compute, while reducing your overallinfrastructure costs.

Now, when you combine thiswith FSLogix user profiles and app layering using MSIX App Attach, shared VMs feel dedicated to your users.

But each time they login their user profile and apps will dynamicallyget assigned instantly and provide a consistentexperience regardless of which VM they're assigned to in a host pool.

If your primary use case is moving the underlyingvirtual desktop infrastructure to Azure, using new or standard images, your work now in Azure Migrate is done.

Now you need to do the rest of the work in the WVD admin experience.

And if you haven't lookedat this since WVD's initial launch in September 2019, we've delivered acomprehensive set of controls in the new WVD Admin Center.

This is where you'regoing to provision most of the aspects of the service, the host pools I showed you earlier, as well as your user's workspacesand application groups.

Plus any considerationsfor managing user profiles by FSLogix or app deliveryvia MSIX App Attach.

Now if you're looking to move persistent and dedicated personal VMs into Azure, then we'll continueusing the migration tool that we selected earlier with Azure Migrate Server Migration.

Now in this process, justlike with migrating servers, you're going to firstset up an appliance VM in your environment that'sgoing to manage the replication.

Next, you'll target the host that you want to replicate into Azure Blob Storage.

Then once you're donereplicating virtual machines will continuously replicate into Azure until you're ready totest and migrate those VMs into production.

Now, for either migration type after your virtual machinesare running in Azure, you'll need to install andconfigure the WVD agent which you can get from aka.

ms/WVDVMAgent.

Let me show you what that looks like.

So here after we run it, we'll click Next, we'llsee our licensing terms.

Now here's where it's going toask for a registration token.

Now we have to usePowerShell to export that from our host pool andour tenant running WVD.

Once we do that, thatwill create a txt file with your registration token.

You'll Copy that, and theninsert that value here into the agent.

Then I'll click Next.

And that will basically connectthat virtual machine running in Azure to your webenvironment and host pool.

The agent is packaged as an MSI, and you can pass in yourEdge token as a parameter when automating the processes shown here, using an MSI exec commands.

Now the final step is tomatch those VMs to users and assign them to the peoplethat are using them prior to the migration.

You'll see as I do thathere, I'm just going to go into WVD admin portal, click on users, then we'll search for the users or groups.

In my case, I'll just clickon accountants; and here I'll see the assignments thatI've already got prepared for them in one host pool.

And I can add another hostpool, for example here, with work apps and 0224HP.

That's going to then applya new host pool maybe from the VMs that I just imported.

So remember, as with any migration, it's usually best to startout with just a few hosts and users, then scale your deployment out as you master the tools and processes.

So that was an overview ofthe IT admin steps needed to assess and migrate yourvirtual desktop environments to Windows VirtualDesktop hosted on Azure.

Now, check out aka.

ms/WVDplaylist.

For even more informationon Windows Virtual Desktop, and all of your options.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you next time.

(soft music).