ARA Migration | Acuutech

AZURE REMOTE APP (ARA) MIGRATION

AZURE REMOTE APP IS END OF LIFE

Acuutech delivers an Azure remote App (ARA) replacement solution: Turnkey fully managed remote desktop

With Microsoft’s discontinuation of Azure Remote App (ARA), many customers have questions about the best path forward.

Acuutech is one of a select group of providers globally, validated and endorsed by Microsoft to provide next generation, fully managed, remote desktop solutions, providing you with a seamless and trouble free path away from ARA, while maintaining the capabilities and benefits you enjoyed from the service.

Acuutech offers current ARA clients a complete turnkey solution, providing a remote desktop solution, with management and maintenance, at a fixed per user per month cost, avoiding hidden extras or underlying system costs.

Our engineering teams have over 18 years’ experience in delivering remote desktop solutions on Microsoft and Citrix technologies.

Our staff were involved in the validation and testing of ARA and have deep technical knowledge of its systems and processes. Coupled with advanced automation of the key solution components – ARA, Azure and Remote Desktop Services.

This allows us to understand your existing deployment and requirements in detail, enabling us to provide you with the best possible solution – a state-of-the-art managed RDS solution that meets your specific needs.

SEAMLESS MIGRATION

We do the hard lifting for you, allowing you to seamlessly convert from your current ARA based solution, into Acuutech’s managed Remote Desktop platform.

We take care of everything, migrating over your existing application images and if required, moving your current user profile disks (UPD’s).

If you’re taking advantage of transparent AAD authentication or multi-factor auth, these capabilities are both supported and we provide direct inter-operation with your existing Azure or on-prem systems, allowing your RDS based applications to connect with backend systems, databases and file stores.

ONE INTEGRATED SOLUTION, 2 DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS

Our fully managed RDS solution provides two great deployment options

AZURE

Use existing features or services from Azure? Want to maintain a public cloud based delivery of your manged RDS solution in the region of your choice?

Acuutech’s managed RDS solution is deployed directly into Azure IaaS, providing you with an experience that closely mirrors your current ARA service.

Delivered as an integrated solution, with no hidden fee’s or extras, gain direct integration with your existing Azure services and simplify the overall migration process.

ACUUTECH DATACENTRES

Want to move away from public cloud hosting? Does your application have specific performance, quality of service or latency requirements? Do you require multi-site DR and failover?

If so, delivery of your RDS solution via Acuutech’s datacentres could be an attractive option. Acututech’s datacentre provides state-of-the-art capabilities and performance, based on the latest generation of Windows Server 2016. Providing the ideal location to deliver your critical managed RDS solution.

We can even provide direct integration between managed RDS running in our DC’s and Azure and/or your existing on-prem systems, providing true multi-platform resilience.

BENEFITS BEYOND AZURE REMOTE APP

Acuutech’s managed RDS solution provides enhanced capabilities over and above those in ARA, allowing you to gain additional service capabilities, while still enjoying the benefits of a fully managed turnkey solution:

Customisable and branded login portals – Unlike ARA, if required, your remote desktop web login page may be customised to your organisation’s brand, providing your users with a consistent and coherent connection experience.
Support for custom URL’s – You can define the web address (URL) users type / use when connecting to your solution.
Support for true per user desktops (VDI) – Our core RDS platform provides support for true per user virtual desktops if required, providing users with dedicated machines that they can control and install software onto. The power of a real machine, with the flexibility of a remote desktop.
Highly-available user profile disk storage – One of the challenges with Azure is providing highly-available storage for RDS related sub-systems. With Acuutech’s next generation platform, we take advantage of storage spaces direct to provide this capability, even when running on Azure.
Support for virtual GPU – Advantaged graphics and compute capabilities are available to your managed RDS applications, allowing you deliver the most demanding graphical or computational intensive applications via managed RDS.

FAQ’s

Get the answers you need to key Azure Remote App configuration and migration questions.

Is the solution a fully managed, per user based solution?

Yes, the manged RDS services is a fully maintained solution, operated and billed using a per user model, in a similar way to Azure Remote App.

Do you assist / perform the migration from our current ARA setup?

Yes, a fully managed migration is part of the overall solution package.

Do we pay extra for the underlying IaaS and related Azure services required to run your managed RDS service?

No, there are additional platform or fabric costs on top of the per user fee.

Can your solution integrate with / connect with my other Azure based services, for example IaaS or SQL databases?

Yes, if the managed RDS solution is deployed in Azure, full connectivity to your wider Azure services is supported.

Do you provide support for the ARA HTML5 RDP client?

The HTML5 client was a feature only available in the ARA service. However, if native HTML5 client access is required, we can support a range of 3rd party HTML5 RDP clients, within the managed RDS solution, providing similar functionality.

My application uses Azure AD, can Azure AD continue to be used as part of the authentication process?

Yes, this requires a connector between the managed RDS and Azure AD is created. There are a number of methods to achieve this depending on your current applications configuration.

Is there a minimum user requirement?

Yes, the minimum number of users is 20.

Is it possible to integrate my Azure generation 1 services and virtual networks with your RDS system?

Yes, although our RDS solution runs on Azure IaaS generation 2, full inter-operation between Azure generation 1 and 2 based systems is supported.

Do you provide regional support?

Yes, we provide global support from our office locations in the UK, Singapore and Houston, TX.

Is there an upper user limit?

No, the service dynamically scales in line with user growth requirements.

Is backup provided as part of the solution?

No, however it may be added as a feature bolt-on.

Is the solution highly-available?

The RDS topology that drives the solution is highly-available and fault resilient. By default, it is zoned to a single datacentre / Azure region. Should greater multi-region fault resilience be required, this can be delivered as an extra feature.

Is disaster recovery provided as part of the solution?

No, DR / failover is not provided in the standard solution. For clients who require DR and failover we would recommend using Acuutech’s managed DR solution, powered by ASR.

Can I use my existing application collection (sys-preped) images?

Yes, your existing images may be migrated if required, although a number of stages are required to complete this process correctly.

Can my User Profile Disks (UPD’s) be migrated?

Yes, they may be migrated, although a level of configuration modification is required.

Will my solution be running on a ||shared|| RDS system?

No, your managed RDS solution and components are running within a dedicated virtual network and IaaS platform, with instances deployed and maintained directly for your solution.

EXPLORE ADVANCED SERVICES

VIRTUAL DATACENTRE

Cutting edge infrastructure on demand.

MANAGED DISASTER RECOVERY

Flexible DR and failover than just works.

VIRTUAL DESKTOP

Opening up a new world of virtual desktop capabilities.

INFRASTRUCTURE DESIGN

Cloud power and workflow, within your on-premises systems.