Nerdio Advisor: Modeler

The Nerdio Advisor Modeler provides cost modeling and optimization recommendations to ensure your environment is configured with the right settings to meet your needs. The Modeler lets you create detailed models for new host pools. These models provide anticipated costs, allowing you to tweak settings to meet your requirements.

Model Settings

Nerdio Manager license and infrastructure costs can be included in the model calculations. These can be configured at the global level, along with any agreed upon enterprise discount.

To manage the model settings:

1. Navigate to Advisor > Modeler.

2. On the upper right side, select the Settings button.

3. Enter the following information:

   • Enterprise Agreement Discount: If you have an Enterprise Agreement (EA) in place with Microsoft that entitles you to a global discount on your Azure spend, please enter this value here as a percentage (for example, 2.5). If you do not have an Enterprise Agreement in place, or you are unsure, please leave this value as 0.

   • Include Nerdio Manager License Costs: From the drop-down list, select the Nerdio Manager license costs you wish to include.

     Note: Select either Standard, Premium, or Custom. If selected, a minimum $1,000 per month is added to the model costs.

   • Include Nerdio Manager Resource Costs: From the drop-down list, select the Azure resource costs for Nerdio Manager you wish to include.

     Note: You can select one of the following options:

     • Automatic: Include costs for the existing Nerdio Manager deployment.

     • Small: 1-100 users

     • Medium: 101-500 users

     • Large: 501-1,000 users

     • Extra Large: 1,001+ users

4. Once you have entered the desired information, select OK.

   Note: The Nerdio Manager license and resource costs are broken out on the model's summary. For example:

   

Create a New Model

Nerdio Manager allows you to create models, as needed, based on your requirements.

To create a new model:

1. Navigate to Advisor > Modeler.

2. Select Add.

   Model Basics

   In this section, specify the basic information for the model.

3. Enter the following Model basics information:

   • Model name: Type the model name.

   • Description: Optionally, type the model's description.

4. Once you have entered all the desired Model basics information, select Next.

   Host Pools

   In this section, specify the host pool(s) in the model.

5. Enter the following Host pool information:

   • Host pool name: Type the host pool name.

   • Total number of users in this host pool: Type the total number of users who have access to this pool.

     Note: This is not the predicted number of concurrent users.

   • Desktop experience: Select the desktop experience.

     Note: See this Microsoft article for additional information.

     • Multi user desktop (pooled): This is the full desktop experience. Users are not assigned to individual session hosts and are placed on a host based on its load. Multiple users are pooled together on a group of hosts.

     • Multi user RemoteApp (pooled): This is only published applications, not a full desktop experience. Published RemoteApps are visible to users as native apps running on their local computer. The RemoteApps are provided by a collection (pool) of session hosts.

     • Single user desktop (pooled): This is the full desktop experience. Users are placed on individual desktop VMs (one user per session host) and a preconfigured number of spare(available) desktops is maintained.

     • Single user desktop (personal): This is a personal (persistent) full desktop experience. A dedicated session host VM is assigned to each user.

   • Azure region where your desktops will be created: From the drop-down list, select the Azure region where the desktops should be created.

     Note: It is generally recommended that the desktops should be created in the same geographical region as your users to minimize latency.

6. Optionally, select the add button to add additional host pools. In addition, select the copy button to copy a host pool.

   

7. Once you have entered all the desired Host pool information, select Next.

   Compute, Image, Work Hours, and FSLogix Sections

   These sections must be completed for each host pool. That is, select each host pool one at a time and complete these sections for the selected host pool. Repeat until all the host pools have been modeled.

   Compute

   In this section, select the VM size for your users based upon how demanding their activities are. If you don’t have a specific size requirement, it is recommended that you select one of the preconfigured sizes. Once selected, this tool offers some options for adjusting the VM within the selected workload. However, the default offers the lowest predicted resource cost.

8. Enter the following Compute information:

   • How demanding are your user workloads?: Select the workload type.

     Note:

     • If you wish to fully customize your VM size, please select the Custom option.

     • See this Microsoft article for additional information.

   • Reserved Instances: Select this option if you have purchased reserved instances for a specific VM size in your selected region.

     Note: Please ensure that the correct VM size is selected to ensure the presented costs are accurate. See this Microsoft article for additional information.

     • Number of Reserved Instances: Type the number of reserved instances. In addition, select a one-year or three-year term.

   • Maximum users per vCPU: Type the maximum number of users per vCPU.

     Note: This option is only configurable when the Custom workload type is selected.

   • Network egress per user: Type the network egress per user in GB.

     Note: This option is only configurable when the Custom workload type is selected.

   • VM size: From the drop-down list, select the preferred VM size.

     Note: If you have no preference, the default option should be selected.

   • Disk size: From the drop-down list, select the preferred disk size.

   • Stopped disk type: From the drop-down list, select the disk type for stopped VMs.

     Note: The default option to change the disk type to a Standard HDD when the VM is stopped can provide significant cost savings. Nerdio Manager can automate the conversion process to ensure a disk with the optimal performance profile is selected when VMs are running. See Enable Dynamic Host Pool Auto-scaling for details.

9. Once you have entered all the desired Compute information, select Next.

   Image

   In this section , select a VM template type. If you chose to use a marketplace offer, all machines are built from the publicly available Windows images provided by Microsoft. There are no additional costs for using this method. However, you must remember that this image is a standard, uncustomized version of Windows. Any applications need to be applied at desktop build time, which requires more time for deployment activities. Alternatively, you can provide a custom image which has been preconfigured with your required software and settings. Using this approach reduces build times, however the image requires on-going management to allow for application updates etc. If you select a custom image, please specify the number of hours that maintenance is required per month and a preferred VM size. If you are unsure, please leave these as the default values.

10. Enter the following Image information:

    • Choose your operating system: Select a marketplace offer or a custom image.

      For Custom image:

      • VM size: From the drop-down list, select the preferred VM size.

      • Monthly VM running hours: Type the number of hours the image is running per month to allow for maintenance.

11. Once you have entered all the desired Image information, select Next.

    Work Hours

    In this section, specify the details that form the basis of the Nerdio Manager auto-scale rules for this pool. If configured in the most economical way, this provides the single largest impact to the cost predictions . Auto-scaling ensures that the correct number of desktop are available for your users at the required time, and also ensures that costs are minimized by shutting down desktops and therefore removing costs when these resources are not required.

12. Enter the following Work Hours information:

    • Work hours: From the drop-down lists, select the standard working days and hours.

    • Absent users percent: Type your organization's known static average absence percentage. If this number is unpredictable or unknown, please leave this as 0.

    • Some users work outside standard hours: Select this option to specify the following information:

      • Percent of users: If some of the host pool’s users work outside of the specified standard hours, type the percentage of the total users in the pool. If no additional times are required, please leave this value as 0.

      • Average additional hours per user: Type the average number of additional hours to be worked per day by each user.

13. Once you have entered all the desired Work Hours information, select Next.

    FSLogix

    In this section, specify the user profile requirements for this host pool. If a Single user desktop (personal) has been selected, it is recommended that profiles are stored locally on the desktop. Therefore, no further configuration is required. If any other pool type has been selected, we recommend the use of FSLogix profile storage. This function allows user profile settings to be captured to disk and dynamically attached when a user connects to a session host, providing users with a consistent experience across any desktops in the pool they connect to, even after a desktop has been re-provisioned.

14. Enter the following FSLogix information:

    • Use FSLogix profiles: Select this option to use FSLogix profiles.

      • Profile storage: From the drop-down list, select the profile storage preference.

        Note: By default, shared host pools are configured with Azure Files storage and dedicated pools are configured with local storage.

      • Profile size (GiB): Type an initial profile size for you user’s profiles. By default, this value is 30 GiB.

15. Once you have entered all the desired FSLogix information, select Next.

    Review

    In this section, you can review the predicted costs for your host pool, including the cost per user. Nerdio Manager also included a cost comparison against a standard "always on" deployment to illustrate the savings which can be achieved using Nerdio Manager optimizations.

    

    

16. Review the model and select Save & Exit.

17. Optionally, you may perform any of the following actions:

    • Select Previous to make any desired changes.

    • Select any tooltip to see an explanation of each item.

    • Select Advanced details to view the details used to model the costs for this pool. Editing pool settings automatically updates these values.

Manage Existing Models

Nerdio Manager allows you to change, delete, clone, or export existing models.

To manage an existing model:

1. Navigate to Advisor > Modeler.

2. Locate the model you wish to work with.

3. From the action menu, select one of the following options:

   • Edit: Change an existing model.

   • Delete: Delete an existing model.

   • Clone: Clone an existing model.

   • Export: Export an existing model to a JSON file.

Import a Previously Exported Model

Nerdio Manager allows you to import a previously exported model.

To import a previously exported model:

1. Navigate to Advisor > Modeler.

2. Select Import model.

3. Select an model file with the extension .json.

4. Select OK.

   Note: The imported model is added to the list of models. If the model already exists in the list, the imported file is added with a suffix.