I'm building an Azure Virtual Desktop host pool with roughly 10 session hosts and need a reliable process for updating an application such as Sage 300. The common recommendation seems to be updating a golden image and then deploying a new image version across the host pool. However, I'm unsure how to test and configure applications that require access to domain resources, SQL databases, file shares, licensing servers, or other infrastructure. Since golden images are often described as not being domain joined, how does this workflow work in practice?
1 Answer
A golden image can be domain joined during the build and testing process; it generally should not be Microsoft Entra joined. Once the applications are installed and tested, generalize the image so the existing domain identity and machine-specific information aren’t carried over to the new session hosts. Tools such as Hydra or Nerdio can simplify capturing the image and deploying the updated version to the host pool if you don’t want to automate the process yourself.
Those tools mainly provide a guided interface and automation around the normal image-building and deployment workflow. They can help with the capture and rollout steps, but the image still needs to be prepared and generalized correctly before it’s used for new hosts.