Introduction and prerequisites

Introduction

Organizations using or interested in using Microsoft Azure can provision, scale, and manage VDI and RD Session Host workloads directly from the Parallels RAS console and deploy on to Microsoft Azure using Azure Resource Manager (ARM). Parallels RAS uses a service principal with required permissions on relevant Azure resources (subscription and resource groups) to authenticate, provision and manage the resources.

Prerequisites

To use Microsoft Azure as a VDI provider, you need the following:

• An existing Microsoft Azure account and subscription.
• The necessary Microsoft Azure providers must be enabled, including Microsoft.ResourceGraph, Microsoft.Resources, Microsoft.Compute, Microsoft.Network.
• An ARM virtual network and subnet in your preferred region with connectivity to AD services. Azure Active Directory with Active Directory Domain Services (AADDS), Domain Controller in Azure IAAS or hybrid with connectivity to on-premises domain can be used.
• Site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute is required if hybrid RAS deployment is used.
• A configured VM to be used for VDI or RD Session Host as a template.

Adding Microsoft Azure as a VDI provider is a two-step process:

1. First, you need to create an application in Microsoft Azure to access the resources in your subscription. This step is described in the Create a Microsoft Azure AD application section.
2. Once the application is created and registered, you can add Microsoft Azure as a VDI provider in the Parallels RAS Console. This step is described in Add Microsoft Azure as a VDI provider.

Read on to learn how to perform the steps above.