RDP performance with Azure machines

Question

I was surprised that RDP accesses to an Azure machine has low performances.

While the internet bandwidth from the RDP machine to any internet destination is high, the display of the RDP sessions is quite bad.

What if I want to create whole virtual networks on Azure for my customers and tell them they just have to RDP these remote workstations ?

It's almost impossible to display a youtube crisp video and even moving the vertical slider on any explorer window is sluggish

Does it mean we shouldn't consider using AZURE for virtual workstations?

thanks

cyril

Steeve

I can certainly watch a youtube video over RDP without issues. Maybe your internet bandwidth is just bad? – Haldis

This depends also on the size of the virtual machines. A Windows Server on a small instance isn't the fastest one. What sizes and operating systems do you use? – Pimple

HI. We used a virtual "Windows 2012 R2 - Xeon E5 2660 2.20 Ghz". We simply wanted to make a test as our first Azure virtual machine in our 30 days free account. We were surprised we couldn't install a windows 7 or 8, just Windows server. We used the fast creation wizard for it. – Steeve

I must add that the same youtube page from my workstation is perfect. I got pixelated images in the RDP connexion to the azure server. it's not a azure-internet bandwidth issue. We have the same sluggish refresh rate when we scroll a windows explorer in the RDP machine. – Steeve

Answer 1

Pulsar, you should not be intending to use Azure VMs as virtual workstations. If you want to host Windows applications for end users to run you should check out Azure RemoteApp - http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/remoteapp/.

As for your RDP performance, make sure you are hosting your VM in the closest datacenter. http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/ is a quick way to determine which datacenter is likely to perform the best for you. Also make sure your RDP settings are correct - in the Remote Desktop Connection client app go to the Experience tab and make sure the dropdown is set to 'Detect connection quality automatically'. You can also try a larger size Azure VM to see if that helps.

Whitewing

Hi. Does it mean AZURE is not designed to build complete virtual networks (servers and workstations) we could coonect to with RDP ? Is my objective (RDP workstations called from thin clients) unrealistic or should I choose another cloud platform? thanks – Steeve

Even If i drop the idea of VM workstations and only consiser RDP sessions on a server, why is the RDP session so slow. The azurespeedtest indicates WEST Europe or NORTH Europe which is fair since I'm in France. – Steeve

At this time, Azure is primarely for servers. There is not even a workstation license of Windows available for Azure, nor is running Win7/8 allowed. RemoteApp is the closest service you get. – Broker

Very tediously however azure remoteapp has a minumum 20 user billing limit and a 400 user maximum cap, so depending on how many clients there are remoteapp may not be the solution. – Ichnography

Answer 2

I do not agree with the previous answer. I can see that it is from 2014, so maybe it was valid back at then, but it does not apply anymore

Today Azure has services like DevTest labs, Azure Bastion, and Azure Virtual Desktop that are there to make Azure VMs to be used as workstations.

Underwood