Welcome and congratulations on taking the first steps toward creating an Azure Practice.
The articles below are designed to guide you through the provisioning process, post-provisioning configuration, data migration, unique use case setups, and some troubleshooting techniques to employ with your cloud environment.
Product : Nerdio for Azure Enterprise and Core
Topics:
- Highlights for Support
- Provisioning Best Practice & Prerequisites
- Configuring Your New Environment
- Unique Cases & Information Link
- Troubleshooting
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If you are purchasing Nerdio through a distributor, you will receive Nerdio support through them as well. In this case the Nerdio Support Scope still applies, however the hours of operation and contact info do not.
If at any point in this process you need support, we provide standard support M-F 7:00am - 7:00pm Central Standard Time. Nerdio support also responds to tickets outside of standard business hours (no SLA) for urgent items that negatively impact partners service levels as a result of Nerdio Admin Portal availability and function.
If you are not familiar with Nerdio's support scope or need a refresher, please review our Nerdio Support Scope diagram. Nerdio is an Independent Software Vendor that develops tools to provision, manage and optimize solutions in Azure. Technical support for Azure, Microsoft products and/or Line of Business applications should remain with those specific support entities. Any items related to Nerdio in general, Nerdio orchestration/configuration and influence in Azure, we're happy to help.
For an optimal support experience...
When submitting a ticket please include the following info:
- In the subject line (preferred) or body please Include the Account ID (four digit number associated with a Nerdio account, i.e. 5XXX to 9XXX).
- Detailed description of your issue. The more info you provide the better we'll be able to assist.
- Full screenshots, when applicable (snips are not recommended as a full screen tells a bigger story).
- Troubleshooting that has already been performed.
To contact support simply email engineering@getnerdio.com to open a ticket
Provisioning Best Practice & Prerequisites
In setting you up for success, you must read and understand the following 3 articles. Having a working understanding of this content is essential for your overall deployment success. Once you've consumed the 3 articles, you'll be ready to proceed to the fourth article which covers the provisioning process.
- Nerdio For Azure (NFA) QuickStart Guide
- AVD QuickStart Guide
- AVD Pools Explained
Provisioning is straightforward - There are a few things to keep in mind before getting started. The article below walks you through best practices and prerequisites that must be considered.
Tips for Provisioning a New Nerdio For Azure (NFA) Account
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If the Azure AD Sync status has changed recently you might experience a delay on step 9 of the provisioning process. This delay is imposed by Microsoft and not something we're able to speed up. If this applies to your situation you'll see the task status go from "Pending" to "Awaiting Cooldown" and the system will send an automatic email informing you of the details. We'll retry the task from our end until we're able to proceed, or until 3 days have passed at which point the task will error out.
Configuring Your New Environment
The configuration stage can be broken down into manageable chunks. This next article will walk you through the First 7 Things to configure in your new environment. These are essential and in sequential order. Paying close attention to the steps in this article is important to ensure a successful deployment.
Before you begin with the First 7 Things article it's important that you create a service account to allow for administration of the environment. This account should have Domain Admin rights and should not be assigned any Office licensing or Azure resources. This account is administration, is considered a service account which will not incur any cost with Nerdio or M365. Listed below are some best practices when utilizing the admin account.
- For managing templates – generate RDP icon or RDP from FS01 or DC01
- Always sign out – do not disconnect the session
- Do not access the hosts with the domain admin via the Remote Desktop Client (RDC) for administrative tasks
- Use a separate test user for logging into resources with RDC (requires M365 license)
- Log into only one host/template at a time
- Create additional admin accounts if multiple hosts/templates need to be accessed at the same time
- Using the same domain admin account at the same time will result in an error
- Add the domain admin account to the IT Department group for access to manage resources
- Never test the end user experience with a domain admin account
Two final tips before you get started:
- Never allow an end user to access the template
- License a test user that is as close to a real user as possible
First 7 Things To Configure In a New NFA Account
VM Sizing and Deployment Strategy for Cost Savings and End User Performance
Data Migration
Data migration is a critical piece of every deployment. Nerdio makes this simple with it's Data Mirroring tool. As long as you have a VPN connection setup between Azure and the data source, a data mirroring job makes the data migration process simple and easy.
The following articles walk you through unique environment configurations that may be necessary for some deployments.
- Pursuing a Hybrid AD solution? Please contact support to discuss the details.
- Adding additional Subnets or modifying existing Firewall rules.
- Making Bulk User Changes - Such as password updates, AVD pool assignment, license adjustments, etc.
- Setting up a standard Site-to-Site VPN that supports IKEv2 or one that supports IKEv1 (Ex: common with Meraki devices)
Due to the relative newness of AVD, the global archives (a.k.a. the web) have minimal information around troubleshooting an AVD environment. The below articles explain some good techniques for troubleshooting, along with best practices for optimizing performance.
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