Joseph Landes and Amol Dalvi on Windows Virtual Desktop - Episode 82

In today’s episode, Jeffrey is speaking with two guests, Joseph Landes, the Chief Revenue Officer at Nerdio, and Amol Dalvi, the Vice President of Product Management Nerdio. They both do a lot with Azure and have implemented Windows Virtual Desktop into their work.    Amol and Joseph have some interesting learnings around using Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure for standardized development desktops — which is what they’ll be discussing today! Amol and Joseph share their insights on how they use Windows Virtual Desktop, give their advice regarding it, and share some of their personal experiences with it. You won’t want to miss out if you’ve been interested in learning more about Windows Virtual Desktop and its capabilities!   Topics of Discussion: [:40] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes. [:49] About Jeffrey’s upcoming .NET DevOps Bootcamp in Austin, Texas on April 30th and his free 30-point DevOps inspection. [1:21] About today’s episode and featured guests! [1:54] Jeffrey welcomes Joseph and Amol to the show! [2:01] Joseph shares what led up to him working in this field. [3:18] Amol shares his career background. [4:21] Amol speaks about the sizeable development team that he runs and where they’re located around the world. [5:09] How Amol is making heavy use of Windows Virtual Desktop for everyone on his team. [6:11] What Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure is! [9:34] How is Windows Virtual Desktop from the old terminal sever in terms of allowing people to have a remote desktop session? [11:03] If a small development team with 4 developers wants to have their own Visual Studio image and all use the same thing, how would they get started? [12:34] With a small team (such as 2-4 developers) is it possible to use Windows Virtual Desktop without a third-party solution? [13:28] Does Microsoft only market Windows Virtual Desktop for teams of a certain size? Is it not worth using for smaller teams? Or does it have some uses for smaller teams? [15:05] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast’s sponsor: Clear Measure. [15:31] Jeffrey gives some quick announcements. [17:22] Using Windows Virtual Desktop without a third-party solution: what does it look like to shut it down at night? [17:51] When configuring the image, what is the process to actually set up Windows the way it needs to be? [19:30] Would Amol agree with the sentiment that this solution is geared mainly towards really large groups? [20:37] How many VMs do developer share? What is the ratio that Amol has found that works best for him? [22:36] How much ram does Amol try to allocate? [23:45] At this point, is premium solid-state the commodity that’s expected? [24:08] What’s the experience like for a developer at their desk? What kind of computer would act as their terminal? [25:25] Is it literally the Windows Remote Desktop client that is being opened across all three of the monitors? [26:04] If you need to access your virtual workstation can you access it anywhere that supports RDS? [26:32] Amol highlights use cases beyond those for developers. [27:26] Are developers with expensive computers like MacBook Pros just used as terminals? Or is the development distributed between the Virtual Desktop and the actual host computer? [28:32] Are the computers that Amol’s developers use are their own personal computers? [30:23] How much does Microsoft charge for Windows Virtual Desktop? [32:09] What VM code has Amol landed on for his developers? [34:04] Jeffrey thanks Joseph and Amol for joining the podcast! [34:15] Joseph gives his recommendations on what to check out if you want to learn more about Windows Virtual Desktop. [34:51] Amol recommends some of his go-to resources! [35:48] Jeffrey thanks Amol and Joseph once again for joining the podcast!   Mentioned in this Episode: Azure DevOps Clear Measure (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook! bit.ly/dotnetdevopsbookforcommunity — Visit to get your hands on two free books to give away at conferences or events! Jeffrey Palermo’s Youtube Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! [email protected] — Email Jeffrey for a free 30-point DevOps inspection (regularly priced at $5000!) — Spaces are limited! Joseph Landes Nerdio Amol Dalvi Azure Calculator   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.