The Hidden Cost of Azure Local

Thank you ChatGPT image generation for almost getting it right 

I've previously discussed the various licensing models for Azure Local, so I won't go over them again here. However, for an excellent overview, I highly recommend Sarah Lean's blog post: https://www.techielass.com/azure-local-licensing-explained/.

In February 2024 Microsoft announced support for Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Local which extended its availability to on-premises infrastructures (that are connected to the internet) however with a fully licensed Azure Local cluster there is a cost that many businesses are not budgeting for and thats ARC.

Azure ARC is the connection between the cloud and your on-premises Azure Local environment, without Azure ARC there is no AVD on Azure Local.

Azure Arc costs $0.01 per hour per running vCPU which might seem negligible at first. However, when running EUC workloads, those costs can quickly accumulate. The money saved by not requiring RDS CALs, as you would with something like Citrix Virtual Apps on a Server OS, can just as easily vanish if these costs aren’t carefully managed.

Example

Lets assume you have an 8 vCPU session host with 12 users per host running 24/7 then the table below is what you can expect as a run cost bill from Microsoft

Concurrent Users	Session Hosts	Running VCPU	Cost Per Hour	Cost per 24 hours	Cost per week	Cost Per Year
1000	84	672	$6.72	$161.28	$1,128,96	$58,705.92
2000	167	1,336	$13.36	$320.64	$2244.48	$116,712.96
3000	250	2,000	$20.00	$480	$3,360	$174,720
4000	334	2,672	$26.72	$641.28	$4,488.96	$233,425.92
5000	417	3,336	$33.36	800.64	$5,604.48	$291,432.96

These cost will be very environment specific depending on user density and deployment models but the key take away is you need to manage resources like they are in the cloud, the days of not caring that your on-premises machines are running over the weekends are long gone.

In summary always use Auto Scaling, personally Nerdio is what i would use but more on Nerdio with Azure Local in an upcoming post.

You can review the pricing for Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Local here; https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-desktop/.

Keep in mind there may be additional charges if you wish to use additional features, you can view pricing here;

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/azure-arc/core-control-plane/.