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

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.