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Anthony Alvarico - PeerSpot reviewer
Deliver Practice Director at DynTek
MSP
Top 10Leaderboard
The solution is scalable, stable, and easy to deploy
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the professor's administrative segregation of permission which is already in place."
  • "The solution can be improved by adding additional languages for the UI in order to support international students."

What is our primary use case?

Before we implemented Azure Labs, professors at the school were using on-premises labs. However, with the pandemic and students working remotely, it became difficult for them to use the labs. To solve this, we implemented Azure Virtual Desktop, but it was harder for professors to create templates without involving IT. With Azure Labs, professors can now create their own templates and manage their own schedules, which works better for them.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the professor's administrative segregation of permission which is already in place. We give the professor rights to one of the labs, he owns that lab, so he can create a template, and he can create a schedule without relying on us for help. The UI is very straightforward. Nothing too fancy with Azure nowadays, they change the UI it seems every day. We stumble upon different features and configuration changes all the time. 

What needs improvement?

The solution can be improved by adding additional languages for the UI in order to support international students.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I give the stability of the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution is stable. After we implement we should perhaps, revisit and ask the professors, educators, or IT people if they have measured outages or issues. We haven't received any complaints, so the solution must be working well.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

There are thousands of people using the solution. We have local IT, which is the administrator. They give the educators, professors, and teachers, their own Azure Lab. The professors then, whoever's enrolled in their classes, give the students permission to access their lab.

How was the initial setup?

I give the initial setup a nine out of ten.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When comparing what the customers have now to what we offer, they have Horizon and VMware Horizon VDI. Azure Virtual Desktop is less expensive than those two options.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Azure Virtual Desktop tends to be a problem for us, but Azure Lab Services is pretty straightforward.

The educational institution we deal with has a small IT department, with only a few people, including the director and their networking people, and the firewall team. I have not met all of their administrators, so I can't provide an exact number of administrators. I don't know if other IT people are delegated the permission or role. But for the ones we implemented, I deal with less than five people.

This solution is a competitor of all the VDIs out there right now. The solution's target audience is entities such as academia and educational institutions that need to provide virtual machines with customized templates.

We've just been given a project to use a new product that we're not sure how new it is. We know about it and its inception, but don't know when it was first created. We've never had a customer that actually needed it before, but it does come in handy when we do Azure Virtual Desktop implementations. For those customers that want more control over their environment, we show them how to create a template and manage the Azure Labs for them. There's a delegation type of feature that's very hard to do with Azure Virtual Desktop implementations until we have to do some administrative components in order to give that type of implementation with actual labs.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Senior Software Developer Team Lead at Dilowa
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Cost-effective and simple to use, full support that is excellent
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the number of options available and the price."
  • "Full hands-on labs for different environments like Angular would be really good."

What is our primary use case?

We use AWS for a large corporate client, currently migrating applications to AWS. Everything was within the company's data-center but it was becoming too costly to maintain and retain staff. We have had a few costly downtimes, which is always a panic and requires calling in staff to work through the night. With AWS, all of this is taken care of. 

The huge advantage with AWS is the cost and simplicity to use. We are in the process of migrating our applications.

How has it helped my organization?

It was decided that all staff should become AWS certified. We started the cloud migration process around October 2020. We currently have 50 certified developers within our organisation.

We are more confident that our developers can handle the new environment. Our board would only allow the migration to AWS after we had a specific number of certified developers. Due to COVID, training was the only option, as we have a hold on recruitment.

Certification is easy if you have the right training, I recommend https://www.udemy.com/course/e...

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the number of options available and the price. The price comparison is between the cloud and our in-house staff and the cost of running the data-centre, which includes rental, electricity, and other utilities like insurance, etc. Then, we all have to run an off-premise disaster recovery site with the same costs. Our concern was the POPI act, but AWS addresses that quite well.

What needs improvement?

More training videos, especially on how-to, with step-by-step guides. Full hands-on labs for different environments like Angular would be really good. I am planning to make a video soon, and I am going to have to dedicate some time to this. It will be a complete, pragmatic, hands-on training guide and I will send an update as soon as it is completed.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using AWS Training and Certification for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

On our initial pilot project on AWS, we have not had any downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are no limitations with AWS, you pay for what you use.

How are customer service and support?

The support is excellent. W have had full support and guided assistance with setup.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We switched from Azure, but this is only due to the cost implications. Our initial plan was to go with Azure and use AWS as a disaster recovery solution.

How was the initial setup?

There is a steep learning curve, but after the training, it is a pleasure to work with AWS.

What about the implementation team?

We worked directly with AWS.

What was our ROI?

A huge cost saving, can't disclose any figures, but it is significant.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

AWS has a good pricing calculator and the training on their site will assist in using it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have looked at Azure and Google Cloud, and the most cost-effective for us under these circumstances was AWS. The certification was quick and our developers were quick to get a grip on AWS.

What other advice do I have?

Get certified, it will make the migration much easier and the cost implications will be better understood. I have created a Udemy course that will help anyone pass their exam easily, search for Ruven Naidoo on Udemy to search for it or click this link https://www.udemy.com/course/e...

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.