I'm relatively new to Azure and currently studying for the AZ-104 certification. I've set up some simple configurations like VMs using Terraform and GitHub, but now I'm trying to deploy virtual desktops into an Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) host pool using ARM templates. I've already created the host pool and added some VMs through the Azure portal.
My plan is to store secrets in an Azure Key Vault, and keep the template and parameter files in a storage account. I'd like others to run an 'az deployment group create' command in Cloud Shell to automate the deployment process, which should handle VM registration into the host pool, GPU driver installation, and domain joining. However, I'm struggling with how to automatically generate and copy the registration token from the host pool into the Key Vault so that it can be referenced in the parameter file during deployment.
Also, I'm curious about the management of VM numbers. Will Azure automatically increment the VM number each time I deploy, or do I need to manually adjust the initial VM number in the parameter file to avoid conflicts with existing resources? I'm open to any advice, as I'm learning a lot and there might be other approaches I should consider!
1 Answer
How many users do you plan to support with AVD? Are they using shared VMs or is each getting their own? From what I gather, it seems like you’re provisioning dedicated VMs for each user, right? That might not be the most efficient setup, especially as you scale up.
Currently, I’ve got about 60 users slated to use AVD, and yes, each user is getting their own dedicated VM. It's all personal assignments with no sharing, which I'm not too thrilled about, but it's the way my employer wants to proceed. Just trying to make it as manageable as possible!