For all the benefits of cloud-based virtual desktops, such as more location flexibility and easier BYOD support, they don't provide IT with a completely hassle-free experience.
Virtual desktops can provide a lot of value to an organization, but they only work well if they are the right size. In some respects, this is no different than when organizations were using physical PCs. a created userComputer Aided Design (CAD)For example, drawing requires a more powerful PC than a user who only uses a browser or a single application.
Because users' job responsibilities vary, cloud-based virtual desktop providers from vendors like Microsoft offer a variety of sizing options. The trick you need to figure out as a virtual desktop administrator is finding the best virtual desktop size for each job function.
Azure Virtual Desktop hosting pool
Sizing an Azure Virtual Desktop environment is not as simple as resizing other types of virtual machines. In addition to considering application hardware requirements, you also need to size based on the host pool type.First steps in setting up Azure Virtual Desktopis to create a host pool. These pools can be individual or pooled (Figure 1).
The pool type is important because it determines whether virtual desktops are shared. In turn, this factor determines how much load can be placed on a virtual desktop.according toFor Microsoft, personal pools have a one-to-one user-to-virtual desktop mapping. In other words, each virtual desktop is dedicated to a specific user. Pooled virtual desktops, on the other hand, are assigned to users based on availability. When users log in, they are assigned to one of the virtual desktops in the pool.
Pooled virtual desktops are non-persistent, which means that the user's settings and data are not stored on the virtual desktop. Virtual desktops reset to their original state at the end of each session, which helps with security. Pooled virtual desktops can also be multi-session, meaning that multiple users may be using a virtual desktop at a given moment. In this case, each user will be logged into a separate profile.
Personal virtual desktops generally provide better performance because there are never multiple users working on the same virtual desktop. However, if you do choose to create pooled virtual desktops, they must be slightly larger in size because there may be multiple instances of the application running concurrently in different sessions.
Define user groups for your Azure Virtual Desktop environment
The first step in sizing an Azure virtual machine is to group users based on their computing needs. As some users may have workWill require them to have a more powerful physical PC than everyone else, some users will inevitably require more powerful virtual hardware than others. MicrosoftdefinitionFour categories of users.
- light user. Workers that impose minimal load on available hardware. For example, a user whose job is to do data entry. Users who only use browser-based applications for work may also be classified as light users.
- Medium users. Employees who use a few basic desktop applications without placing a significant burden on the system. An example of such a user might be someone who works in Microsoft Word all day.
- heavy user. Employees using more demanding desktop applications. This could include content creators, software developers, or people who build and deliver PowerPoint presentations.
- VIP. Worker placing heavy load on table.This may include users who create CAD drawings, edit video, do 3D modeling, or run multiple applications simultaneously.
Tuning recommendations for Azure Virtual Desktop
Microsoft's Azure Virtual Desktop sizing recommendations vary depending on whether the environment is configured as single-session (that is, one user per virtual desktop) or multi-session. The following figure illustrates the minimum hardware resources that should be allocated in a single-session environment based on user type.
| user type | vCPU | Memory | storage |
| light user | 2 vCPUs | 8GB | 32GB |
| medium user | 4 vCPUs | 16 GB | 32GB |
| heavy user | 8 vCPUs | 32GB | 32GB |
There are two additional factors to consider with regard to these sizing guidelines. First, you may have noticed that there is no guide for advanced users. Therefore, you should size the virtual desktops for power users according to your workload needs.
The second important thing about these guidelines is that storage recommendations do not include space for user profiles. Each virtual desktop requires at least 30 GB of additional storage to accommodate user profiles.
Sizing guidelines are slightly different for multi-session environments. In addition to listing a minimum number ofvirtual CPUFor example, Microsoft lists the number of users that a virtual desktop can host per virtual CPU. Again, you will need at least 30 GB of storage to accommodate user profiles. Here are Microsoft's official guidelines for multi-session environments:
| user type | Maximum number of users per vCPU | vCPU | Memory | storage |
| light user | 6 | 8 | 16 | 32GB |
| medium user | 4 | 8 | 16 | 32GB |
| heavy user | 2 | 8 | 16 | 32GB |
| root | 1 | 6 | 56 | 340GB |
The values listed in the table above are the minimum recommended by Microsoft. also. While you could theoretically create virtual desktops with fewer vCPUs, Microsoft says that due to the way the Windows Desktop Environment relies on parallel processing, no virtual desktop should have fewer than two cores.
Once virtual desktops have more than 16 vCPUs, their returns start to diminish. This is due to the overhead involved in scheduling processes to use available vCPUs. While you can configure demanding virtual desktops with 16 or more vCPU cores, you should never create virtual desktops with more than 32 cores.
Additional Considerations for Sharing Azure Virtual Desktops
If you plan to create an environment where multiple users share a set of Azure Virtual Desktops, it is important to consider the structure of the AVD when sizing. For example, you need to consider whether it is better to create several very large virtual desktops each handling a few users, or more virtual desktops each handling only a few users. Obviously, cost issues can have an impact, but you should start planning primarily from a performance perspective.
Let's say you have 100 mid-level users who will be using shared cloud virtual desktops. With this in mind, is it better from a performance standpoint to create 50 virtual desktops with 8 vCPUs each or 20 virtual desktops with 16 vCPUs each?
The answer to this question comes down to a concept called burst capacity. Most of the time, users don't use all available CPU cycles. Even so, CPU spikes can still occur due to certain user activities, such as launching applications.Virtual desktops need to have sufficient resources to handle these contingencies.
In an either-or situation like the previous example, the configuration that provides the lowest user-per-core ratio (or the highest number of cores per user) will provide better burst performance. By the way, personal virtual desktops are not shared and thus provide the best user-per-core ratio and the best overall performance.
In the first scenario, there are 50 virtual desktops with 8 vCPUs each. This means 100 users have a total of 400 vCPUs. The overall ratio is 4 to 1. This is of course in full compliance with Microsoft's requirement of no more than four users per core on medium VMs. In fact, this example does the opposite - four cores per user, rather than four users per core - so these machines should perform just fine.
For the second configuration with 20 virtual desktops (16 vCPUs each), the pool has a total of 320 vCPUs available. When shared between 100 users, the ratio is 3.2 vCPUs per user or 3.2 to 1. This configuration will not provide as much burst capacity as the previous configuration because fewer cores are allocated to each user.
In fact, both configurations may be overkill and you may end up with smaller virtual desktops. Of course there's nothing stopping you from resizing your AVD this way, but doing so may incur additional costs as users may not consume all the resources available to them.
FAQs
Azure Virtual Desktop Sizing Guide for IT | Technical Goals? ›
If the virtual desktop sessions are performing well, you can try increasing user density per processor – either by allocating more users per session host or by decreasing the size of the session host. Whilst this decreases your cost, you will need to monitor and ensure the trade off on performance.
How do I improve my Azure Virtual Desktop performance? ›If the virtual desktop sessions are performing well, you can try increasing user density per processor – either by allocating more users per session host or by decreasing the size of the session host. Whilst this decreases your cost, you will need to monitor and ensure the trade off on performance.
What is the recommended virtual machine size in Azure for a production environment? ›At minimum, a 64-bit Tableau Server requires a 4-core CPU (the equivalent of 8 Azure vCPUs) and 64 GB RAM. However, a total of 8 CPU cores (16 Azure vCPUs) and 128 GB RAM are strongly recommended for a single production Microsoft Azure VM.
Which virtual machine sizes should you consider choosing to display a virtual machine on Azure with a low memory entry level requirement? ›When you decide to deploy a virtual machine on Azure with a low memory entry level requirement, you should start small and grow big. There are virtual machines available with different families and sizes. They are identified as A0, A1, A0, A1, D2s_v3, NV24, etc. You can choose any of them.
How do I maximize my virtual desktop? ›- Ensure you have a robust internet connection. ...
- Install VM tools for improved accessibility. ...
- Configure computing resources that fit into your exact needs. ...
- Always be aware of resource requirements. ...
- Regularly Update your Virtual Machine Software.
- Allocate Enough System Resources to the Virtual Machine. ...
- Switch to a Solid State Drive (SSD) ...
- Debloat Your Virtual Machine. ...
- Tweak Your Virtual Machine Settings. ...
- Enable Hardware Virtualization on Windows. ...
- Boost Windows' Speed.
Since the starting recommendation for production workloads is a memory-to-vCore ratio of 8, the minimum recommended configuration for a General Purpose VM running SQL Server is 4 vCPU and 32 GiB of memory.
Is 4 cores enough for virtualization? ›In general, a quad-core CPU should be enough for running a few VMs with moderate workloads. However, for more demanding workloads or a larger number of VMs, you may need more CPU cores to ensure sufficient performance.
How much memory should I allocate to virtual machine? ›Create New Virtual Machine
VirtualBox recommends that the memory size be at least 512MB, however, the more memory you make available to the VM, the smoother and more powerful it will be. As a rule of thumb, 1/4 of the amount of memory you have on your computer should be just fine.
The correct answer could be - A-series. The general purpose virtual machine sizes are to provide a balanced ratio of the CPU to the memory. The A-series and the Av2-series virtual machines can be used to be deployed on many types of hardware and processors.
How many vCPUs are in a core Azure? ›
The Dav4 and Dasv4 Azure VM-series provide up to 96 vCPUs, 384 GiBs of RAM and 2,400 GiBs of SSD-based temporary storage and feature the AMD EPYC™ 7452 processor.
How many virtual machines can I run per core? ›You could share one core between a VM with 1 MB of memory and two other VMs, but there's no point because the VM performance would suffer. More than three VMs per core causes scheduling overhead, among other issues. This doesn't mean paltry consolidation numbers, however.
What are 3 types of prebuilt VM sizes that Azure provides? ›Learn more about the different VM sizes that are available: General purpose. Compute optimized. Memory optimized.
What happens if you create two Azure virtual machines that use the b2ms size? ›If you create two Azure virtual machine that use the B2S size, each virtual machine will always generate the same monthly costs. 3. When an Azure virtual machine is stopped, you continue to pay storage costs associated to the virtual machine.
What should you choose for a Azure Virtual Desktop User Profile solution? ›The Azure Virtual Desktop service recommends FSLogix profile containers as a user profile solution. FSLogix is designed to roam profiles in remote computing environments, such as Azure Virtual Desktop.
What is the best latency for virtual desktop? ›In Azure Virtual Desktop, latency up to 150 ms shouldn't impact user experience that doesn't involve rendering or video. Latencies between 150 ms and 200 ms should be fine for text processing. Latency above 200 ms may impact user experience.
How do I allocate more CPU to virtual desktop? ›This can be done by opening the VirtualBox Manager, selecting the virtual machine you want to modify, and clicking on the “Settings” button. In the “System” tab, select the “Processor” tab and increase the number of CPUs.
Does virtual desktop increase performance? ›Virtual Desktop Boosts PC Performance But Now Requires Internet Connection. Virtual Desktop's latest update boosts PC VR performance but adds an Internet connection requirement.
What can be a limiting factor for virtual machine performance? ›The rule of thumb for achieving the best performance in VM is to strip the number of applications and services running to the bare minimum because that's where the consumption of vCPU and memory are most often the first two limiting factors.
What is the best practice for VM CPU allocation? ›Keep the ratio of allocated vCPUS to the total vCPU at an optimal value. The best practice is to keep the ratio in between f 1:1 to 3:1. Above 3:1, you will start noticing performance issues, and anything above 6:1 will cause severe performance degradation. Monitor your VM with respect to their CPU usage.
How do you optimize performance settings? ›
- Press the Windows start button on your PC or keyboard and type appearance and performance.
- Click on "Adjust the performance and appearance of Windows" when it appears.
- Look for the setting that says "adjust for the best performance"
- Select that and click apply.
The current maximum limit for IOPS for a single VM in generally available sizes is 80,000. Ultra disks with greater IOPS can be used as shared disks to support multiple VMs. The minimum guaranteed IOPS per disk are 1 IOPS/GiB, with an overall baseline minimum of 100 IOPS.
What is the largest amount of RAM for Azure VM? ›The maximum memory of an Azure Linux virtual machine is limited to 64 GB.
What is the maximum RAM in Azure VM? ›The M-series family of Azure virtual machines are memory optimised and are ideal for heavy in-memory workloads such as SAP HANA. The M-Series offer up to 4 TB of RAM on a single VM. In addition, these VMs offer a virtual CPU count of up to 128 vCPUs on a single VM to enable high performance parallel processing.
How many vCPU are in 8 cores? ›Intel Xeon CPU E5-2650 v2 holds 8 Cores x8 = 64 vCPUs.
How many cores is 1 vCPU? ›A vCPU stands for virtual Central Processing Unit and represents the central processing unit used in virtual machines and cloud environments. Each vCPU in a VM's operating system represents one physical CPU core.
Is 16GB enough for virtualization? ›It all depends on what you plan on using the primary machine for and what you plan on using the VM for. If I had to guess, you'll probably want a minimum 16GB RAM. It will be near enough to run one Windows VM or couple of Linux VM. I'd also suggest to extend RAM to 16GB.
What is the optimal virtual memory size for 8GB RAM? ›As a rule of thumb, the paging file should be a minimum of 1.5 times the size of your installed RAM, and a maximum of 3 times your RAM size. For example, if you have 8 GB RAM, your minumum would be 1024 x 8 x 1.5 = 12,288 MB, and your maximum would be 1024 x 8 x 3 = 24,576 MB.
Is 8GB RAM enough for virtual machines? ›With virtual machines RAM is user configurable. For decent performance at least 8GB would be recommended if you have a computer with 16GB or more. Linux in general works best with at least 4GB of RAM, but it all depends on the workload.
What happens if you allocate too much virtual memory? ›However, users should not overly rely on virtual memory, since it is considerably slower than RAM. If the OS has to swap data between virtual memory and RAM too often, the computer will begin to slow down -- this is called thrashing.
What is the disk size of Azure Virtual Desktop? ›
The default virtual hard disk size for the operating system (OS) is typically 30 GB on a Linux VM in Azure.
What is the size of Azure VM CPU and RAM? ›Compute optimized virtual machines
They are equipped with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of local solid state drive (SSD) per CPU core, and are optimized for compute intensive workloads.
In the AKS case, the default node OS disk configuration uses 128 GB, which means that you need a VM size that has a cache larger than 128 GB.
How many cores does a 16 vCPU have? ›The number of vCPUs to license is 16. Two VMs are deployed on a server that has two processors. Each processor has 8 physical cores which gives 16 cores in total.
What is 1 vCPU in Azure? ›A virtual CPU (vCPU) also known as a virtual processor, is a physical central processing unit (CPU) that is assigned to a virtual machine (VM).
What is the difference between a CPU and a vCPU? ›The main difference between CPUs and vCPUs is CPUs are hardware-based while vCPUs are software-based. This means CPUs physically exist inside your computer while vCPUs do not; instead, they're created by hypervisors when needed.
How many VMs per host is too many? ›Balancing RAM and processor resources
So if there are 128 processors per physical machine, the total assigned processors for all VMs on that host should be no more than 64. Similarly, if there are 500GB of RAM, then the combined assigned RAM among all the VMs on the host should not exceed 250GB.
Processor/cores don't scale so well for guest OS because of core/processor process scheduling. 2 cores seems to be the sweet spot. You want to avoid having one processor and one core for a VM because if any operation that the host OS doesn't expect to block blocks unexpectedly in the host, the entire VM is blocked.
What is the maximum virtual machines per cluster? ›A vSphere cluster is a set of ESXi hosts configured to share resources such as processor, memory, network and storage. In vSphere environments, each cluster can accommodate a maximum of 32 ESXi hosts, with each host supporting up to 1024 VMs.
What determines VM size in Azure? ›The VM size determines the amount of compute resources (like CPU, GPU, and memory) that are made available to the VM.
What determines the number of VM size in Azure? ›
The size of vm specifies only the number of cores it contains and the cost is also calculated by the number of cores.
How many times a day can an Azure virtual machine be backed up? ›You can back up DPM up to twice a day. You can set the scheduling policy to daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. You back up Azure VMs once a day.
How many VMs can I have in a virtual machine scale set? ›Scale sets support up to 1,000 VM instances for standard marketplace images and custom images through the Azure Compute Gallery (formerly known as Shared Image Gallery). If you create a scale set using a managed image, the limit is 600 VM instances.
Does resizing an Azure VM restart it? ›If the virtual machine is currently running, changing its size will cause it to restart.
Why is my virtual desktop so slow? ›Memory is a huge factor and often a major cause of a slow virtual machine. VMs are memory hogs; if you don't have enough free, your computer will begin memory swapping. That means it will use space on your hard drive to store things it would normally keep in memory.
How do I increase RAM in Azure Virtual Desktop? ›- Using the Azure Portal.
- Make sure to Turn off VM first.
- Open the Azure portal.
- Open the page for the virtual machine.
- In the left menu, select Size.
- Pick a new size from the list of available sizes and then select Resize.
Select the duration of data collection. For the High-CPU option, select at least 15 minutes or more. In Azure portal mode, you can collect up to 15 minutes of data. For longer periods of collection, you must run the program as an executable within the VM.
How do I improve my Azure function performance? ›- Avoid long running functions. ...
- Make sure background tasks complete. ...
- Cross function communication. ...
- Write functions to be stateless. ...
- Write defensive functions. ...
- Function organization best practices.
The type of applications and services you are running on the virtual desktop will have an impact on the amount of CPU resources required. For example, if you are running a web browser, video streaming service, or other resource-intensive applications, then more CPU resources will be required.
How many Mbps do I need for virtual desktop? ›| Scenario | Default mode | H.264/AVC 444 mode |
|---|---|---|
| Web Browsing | 6-6.5 Mbps | 0.9-1 Mbps |
| Image Gallery | 3.3-3.6 Mbps | 0.7-0.8 Mbps |
| Video playback | 8.5-9.5 Mbps | 2.5-2.8 Mbps |
| Fullscreen Video playback | 7.5-8.5 Mbps | 2.5-3.1 Mbps |
How much virtual RAM should I set? ›
Microsoft recommends that you set virtual memory to be no less than 1.5 times and no more than 3 times the amount of RAM on your computer. For power PC owners (like most UE/UC users), you likely have at least 2GB of RAM so your virtual memory can be set up to 6,144 MB (6 GB).
How much RAM should I allocate to virtual machine? ›VirtualBox recommends that the memory size be at least 512MB, however, the more memory you make available to the VM, the smoother and more powerful it will be. As a rule of thumb, 1/4 of the amount of memory you have on your computer should be just fine.
What is the recommended amount of RAM for virtual machine? ›You can run 3 or 4 basic virtual machines on a host that has 4GB of RAM, though you'll need more resources for more virtual machines. On the other end of the spectrum, you can also create large virtual machines with 32 processors and 512GB RAM, depending on your physical hardware.
What is average CPU in Azure VM? ›The metric "Percentage CPU" on Azure Portal shows 33.5% average.
What is the maximum CPU per VM? ›A virtual machine cannot have more virtual CPUs than the number of logical cores on the host. The number of logical cores is equal to the number of physical cores if hyperthreading is deactivated or two times that number if hyperthreading is activated.
What is the max CPU percentage in Azure? ›Max CPU percentage is 95% from metrics dashboard all the time, overall idle% is greater than 70%.
How do I reduce Azure latency? ›- Use the latest version of Windows or Linux.
- Enable Accelerated Networking for increased performance.
- Deploy VMs within an Azure proximity placement group.
- Create larger VMs for better performance.
AFAIK in Azure Functions,
Even the Function App is in Hot State, it will take some excessive amount of time to load the external libraries defined in it. In the Function App, Code Logic Performance also matters the cause of slowness in the Azure Functions.
- Determine scale units.
- Understand autoscaling delays.
- Use platform autoscaling features.
- Autoscale compute or memory-intensive applications.
- Use Azure services that autoscale.