Tips for Provisioning a New NFA Account

Applies to Nerdio for Azure Core, Professional and Enterprise customers

To provision a new Nerdio for Azure (NFA) account simply click on "Add NFA Account" button when you log in to Nerdio Admin Portal (NAP). Note that this button is available to Partner administrators only. Tier2 support and Tier 1 support users cannot provision a new account.

You will be redirected to the screen below:

Select the type of account (NFA Enterprise or NFA Core) you wish to provision along with the desktop configuration (RDS or AVD) and click "Next" button.

Nerdio Tip

• From now onwards, you no longer will be able to provision a new Professional account. You may, however, continue to use your existing Professional accounts

In order to provision a new NFA account, you must be connected to an Microsoft 365 account and an Azure subscription. There are certain minimum requirements for both (Microsoft 365 and Azure) accounts. See below for more details and learn how to sign up for Microsoft 365 and Azure accounts.

We recommend leaving Azure Hybrid Benefits (AHB) set to No. Having this set to No will cause all new VMs to rent the OS from Microsoft by default. You are still given the option to enabling AHB on each VM directly in the Azure Portal, however this will keep you MS compliant automatically since the assumption is made that you won't be purchasing the OS through AHB. 

Setting that option to Yes means that all new servers which are provisioned will automatically assume you have the OS license purchased. You are then responsible for turning AHB off on every VM where you won't be leveraging AHB (for instance DC01 since it defaults to a B-Series).  

Azure

Servers, desktops, backups, etc. are all hosted in Azure. Specifically in a subscription, preferably an empty one. And in a Resource Group under that subscription. In summary, you must have -

• An Azure account. You can sign up for a free Azure account. However, keep in mind Azure limits how many cores are available in an account. The "Add NFA Account" screen will show you how many cores are required for the plan you have selected. In general, it's best to upgrade to a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) Azure account to take advantage of Nerdio's offering.
• A subscription, preferably empty. Your brand new Azure account typically includes an empty subscription. Don't have an empty subscription? Create a new subscription here.
• A resource group. Nerdio will create one for you automatically, all you have to do is decide if you like the default name "NerdioRG" or you want to give it another name.
• AHU: It is advisable to enable this option to get the benefit of Azure Hybrid Benefit.

Microsoft 365

Due to Microsoft licensing requirements, NFA will work with certain Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 licenses only. See this KB article for a comprehensive list. You may use an existing account or sign up for a new account. Click here to sign up for a free trial of Microsoft 365 E3 account.

Note: The Microsoft 365 or Microsoft 365 account must have one available license.

Account information

You will need to provide the following information:

• Your company name
• Select Advanced options:
  • Nerdio AD domain (non-routable domain, i.e. contsoinc.az or contosoinc.cloud)
  • For RDS accounts: Golden desktop image configuration: either Windows 10 Experience or Windows 10 Enterprise. Refer to this article for details

Here are a few points to keep in mind to make sure that the provisioning process works smoothly:

• The user account that’s used to add NFA account must be an Owner of a subscription within the same directory (aka tenant, azure account) as the user account. For instance, admin@tenant.onmicrosoft.com should have access to a subscription in the same tenant.onmicrosoft.com directory. If using an admin@customdomain.com, this user could be in the same directory as the subscription or not. You can ensure a smooth ride by following these steps first:
• Log in to Azure Management Portal as an administrator that can see the subscription
• Look at Subscription Overview screen to verify its directory
• Go to Microsoft Entra ID and create a new user using user@tenant.onmicrosoft.com format (where tenant.onmicrosoft.com is the directory where subscription is located)
• Go back to Subscriptions and under Access Control make the newly created user Owner
• The subscription must have sufficient core quota to provision NFA. This can be seen in Azure Management Portal by going to Subscription and then the Usage and Quotas screen. We have found that free subscriptions generally never have enough.
• The subscription must have access to the VM series that will be used during provisioning: B-series, A-series and D-series. For example, the subscription in this screenshot does not have access to B-series VMs in South Central region. NAP will not allow you to select the region South Central.