Your Storage is your data, so in Azure Virtual Desktop we need to address your storage needs. This comes in a few flavors: FSLogix User Profiles and Office Profiles as well as the Storage solution that they will be mounted from and the disks for your Operating Systems and data drives.
In this course, we will help you design your Azure Virtual Desktop storage components so you can get the most out of them in your AVD solution but also control cost to make AVD a more cost-effective solution with a dedicated focus on preparing you for the Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty exam.
Learning Objectives
- Understand Azure Virtual Desktop Storage requirements
- Recommend an appropriate storage solution
- Configure storage for FSLogix components
- Configure storage solution
- Configure disks
- Create and configure file shares
- Protect your storage using Azure Backup
- Understand high availability and disaster recovery
Intended Audience
- Azure administrators with subject matter expertise in planning, delivering, and managing virtual desktop experiences and remote apps, for any device, on Azure
- Anyone looking to learn more about Azure Virtual Desktop
Prerequisites
To get the most out of this course, you should already have some knowledge of:
- Azure Storage accounts
- Storage capacity planning
- Storage performance
- Windows PowerShell
Now that our storage account is created, we need to do some configuring. First, we need to create a file share. In the data storage section of the blade on the left, select file shares. At the top click to create a file share. We need to name our file share and I'll call mine F S Logics. Now we have to set our capacity. Notice that there is a table showing the maximum IO and burst IO and throughput rate. And as I change the provision capacity from one terabyte to 2.5 terabytes, our IO numbers change with it. This share can be as small as 100 gigabytes and as large as 100 terabytes and the performance characteristics change accordingly. So even if you only need 500 gigabytes of capacity, you may have to provision a one terabyte final share to get the performance you need.
The other thing to think about is that premium file shares bill based on the size of the share you provision, no matter how much data you store in it. So here's a quick tip to save some money. Change your provision to capacity to 100 gigabytes so you can build the solution at the lowest cost. And then when you're ready to start bringing users into the environment, you can change the size to what you need to meet demand.
One last thing before we create the file share, notice at the bottom that there is a note that says to use the SMB protocol with the file share, check if you can communicate over port 445. This is because most ISPs and some companies block port 445 because it has been a vector of attack across networks. However, in this case, our storage account and our network are both inside Azure and we made this storage account accessible from only our virtual network. So this will not be an issue as long as your firewall or network security group isn't blocking port 445. Click the create button and don't forget to increase the size of your file share when you're ready to start onboarding your users.
The last step in this section is enabling our premium file share to have more network connections, increased throughput, increased IOPS, and network fault tolerance. Notice at the top of the screen, SMB multi-channel is currently disabled. Let's enable it so we can get those benefits. Click on the word disabled. And the only thing to do is toggle SMB multi-channel to on and click the save button at the bottom.
Dean Cefola is a Principal Azure Engineer at Microsoft and has worked in the IT industry for over 20 years. Dean has been supporting Azure Virtual Desktop from the beginning and is the Microsoft FastTrack Global Leader for AVD.