What is Windows Virtual Desktop? (Part 3)

Brandon Miyazaki • March 24, 2021
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In Part 1 of our Blog series on Microsoft WVD, we covered the basics of what is WVD and its use cases.
In
Part 2, we took a look at how WVD is priced and licensed.

In Part 3, we will go over the end user experience and management features of Microsoft's WVD solution.


ACCESSING THE WVD SESSION

Microsoft provides two means for users to access their desktop session: an HTML5 browser client and a Remote Desktop App. The Remote Desktop App offers support for all major operating systems including Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. By singing into a web URL, the HTML5 browser client offers a flexible and convenient solution for users to access their WVD session even if a machine may not have the RDP client installed. Both options provide users with the ability to connect and work from any device!


PERFORMANCE

Running within Azure’s highspeed infrastructure, users working within the WVD session should not face any distracting levels of latency or noticeable delay in performance. As is common for any Remote Desktop solution, the size or compute power of the session host/s can greatly impact the user experience. Thankfully, Microsoft makes if very easy to manage our host pool and we can scale up to add more compute power or scale down if we have excess and wasted compute resources with a few button clicks.


Additionally, a user’s distance from the WVD environment can impact latency and performance. For example, if a user is in the UK and connecting to a US West based VM, their latency may be much slower than if they were connecting directly to a UK based VM.


To calculate these variables, Microsoft provides an assessment tool so you can better plan out your deployment. 
Microsoft WVD Simulator


FOR THE ADMINS

The most noticeable aspect of WVD is the time savings it provides. With minimal resources and without compromising security, it is possible to spin up a fully functioning WVD environment within a matter of hours. While a true working environment will always require significant planning, configuration and testing, Microsoft has made it meaningly easier to build out a remote workspace compared to traditional RDS environments.


When signed into your Azure tenant, getting started is as simple as creating a host pool from the Windows Virtual Desktop blade.


From the Windows Virtual Desktop blade, IT Admins can easily scale and configure host pools and assign users to their respective workspaces.


Microsoft has greatly minimized the learning curve by providing an easy to manage solution that gives users a rich and impressive Windows 10 Virtual Desktop experience.


For more documentation and product overviews, additional resources can be found here.

By Shawn Akins October 20, 2025
October 20, 2025 — Early today, Amazon Web Services experienced a major incident centered in its US‑EAST‑1 (N. Virginia) region. AWS reports the event began around 12:11 a.m. PT and tied back to DNS resolution affecting DynamoDB , with mitigation within a couple of hours and recovery continuing thereafter. As the outage rippled, popular services like Snapchat, Venmo, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite , and even some Amazon properties saw disruptions before recovering. If your apps or data are anchored to a single cloud, a morning like this can turn into a help‑desk fire drill. A multi‑cloud or cloud‑smart approach helps you ride through these moments with minimal end‑user impact. What happened (and why it matters) Single‑region fragility: US‑EAST‑1 is massive—and when it sneezes, the internet catches a cold. Incidents here have a history of wide blast radius. Shared dependencies: DNS issues to core services (like DynamoDB endpoints) can cascade across workloads that never directly “touch” that service. Multi‑cloud: practical resilience, not buzzwords For mid‑sized orgs, schools, and local government, multi‑cloud doesn’t have to mean “every app in every cloud.” It means thoughtful redundancy where it counts : Multi‑region or multi‑provider failover for critical apps Run active/standby across AWS and Azure (or another provider), or at least across two AWS regions with automated failover. Start with citizen‑facing portals, SIS/LMS access, emergency comms, and payment gateways. Portable platforms Use Kubernetes and containers, keep state externalized, and standardize infra with Terraform/Ansible so you can redeploy fast when a region (or a provider) wobbles. (Today’s DNS hiccup is exactly the kind of scenario this protects against.) Resilient data layers Replicate data asynchronously across clouds/regions; choose databases with cross‑region failover and test RPO/RTO quarterly. If you rely on a managed database tied to one region, design an escape hatch. Traffic and identity that float Use global traffic managers/DNS to shift users automatically; keep identity (MFA/SSO) highly available and not hard‑wired to a single provider’s control plane. Run the playbook Document health checks, automated cutover, and comms templates. Then practice —tabletops and live failovers. Many services today recovered within hours, but only teams with rehearsed playbooks avoided user‑visible downtime. The bottom line Cloud concentration risk is real. Outages will happen—what matters is whether your constituents, students, and staff feel it. A pragmatic multi‑cloud stance limits the blast radius and keeps your mission‑critical services online when one provider has a bad day. Need a resilience check? Akins IT can help you prioritize which systems should be multi‑cloud, design the right level of redundancy, and validate your failover plan—without overspending. Let’s start with a quick, 30‑minute review of your most critical services and RPO/RTO targets. (No slideware, just actionable next steps.)
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