AVD BCDR - Single host pool stretched across 2 regions

Question

Hi team,

I'm looking at implementing BCDR for AVD and have found lots of guides and documentation about this. The approach I'm looking at is a single host pool hosted (metadata) in region A with active powered-on hosts in region A and then some powered-off hosts in region B.

Most of the documentation seems to support this, for example the diagram at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/disaster-recovery-concepts#disaster-recovery-for-shared-host-pools and the statement "It's possible to locate Virtual Desktop metadata in one of the supported regions, and then deploy VMs in a different location. No other action is required." at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/example-scenario/wvd/azure-virtual-desktop-multi-region-bcdr#virtual-desktop-control-plane

But there's one statement in the FAQs ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/faq#if-i-store-my-host-pools-and-vms-in-different-regions--what-would-happen-in-a-disaster-scenario-where-the-host-pool-region-goes-down-but-the-vm-region-stays-online- ) that contradicts the above - "If the region you stored your host pool metadata in goes down, Azure Virtual Desktop won't accept new user connections to the session host VMs in that host pool. However, any existing sessions on the session host VMs in that host pool will remain connected and unaffected."

Can anyone shed light on this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Hello @Jamie Goff

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A platform. Happy to answer your question.

It's not contradictory. The first doc states that it's possible; you might have good reasons to have a single host pool with session hosts in multiple regions. For example, in a personal host pool where you know which user is nearest to each region, you can directly assign each user to a VM that's most suitable for them and not have to build multiple host pools. However, for a DR scenario, that's less ideal because the metadata would be unavailable too.

If this does answer your question, please accept it as the answer as a token of appreciation.