174 Nerdio Manager Reviews
With Nerdio Manager, we can manage Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) for all of our customers within one portal. We almost use it every day to monitor that AVD status.
The best thing I like about Nerdio is its automation. It can combine a series of complicated steps if I do it from Azure to a single click. For example, update the Gold Image. If I do it from Azure, it takes me 30 mins to 1 hour with steps of sys-prep, snapshotting from disk, saving to image, etc. But with Nerdio, it's just a single click on "Save as image". The rest of the thing will be done by Nerdio. We just need a cup of coffee and wait till it is completed. It gives us status update step-by-step. If anything went wrong, it's easy for us to troubleshoot based on the status and error message. It saved us a lot of time and effort on monthly patching.
The other thing I like is the auto-scale. The auto-scale settings are way more powerful than the Azure built-in scale plan. Also, the history of auto-scale makes us easy to optimise auto-scale to save customers' costs.
The deployment and integration for a customer is very simple. The initial setup of the whole AVD environment can be done within 30 minutes by following the wizard. I love its automation.
The customer support is also excellent. Support can find the root cause quickly and give us solutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Not something I dislike, but a suggestion. The AVD troubleshooting still needs to go to Azure Insight, not from Nerdio itself. But Nerdio gives a clear link to redirect to Azure portal AVD Insight. I can see Nerdio are adding more functions from Insight already, like CPU and RAM usage of each session host, RTT of each user, etc. I am expecting more functions will be integrated into Nerdio. So I don't need to jump to Azure for anything moving forward. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It makes any AVD admins life easy. The tool has capability to manages anything related to Azure Virtual Desktops reducing the manual effort upto 90% and Nerdio provide great support to their customers Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nothing i can recollect now. In my experience this is a great tool of AVD management Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) needs a third-party manager. Nerdio's offering brings cost savings via its proprietary scaling model. The savings extend to reduced administrative overhead in managing images, software deployments, problem resolution, and more. Since choosing Nerdio over a year ago, we only encountered one issue that required reaching out to support. While tier-one support could not resolve the issue the same day, we received a satisfactory response within 24 hours. At no time did the issue cause downtime for our tenant.
For those just starting out with AVD, consider a Nerdio trial. You can build your first image and deploy a workspace and host pool in less than a day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nerdio Manager is expensive! The licensing cost should be recovered by the scaling model savings, but it does eat into the savings tremendously.
We regularly run into errors with the 'User cost attribution' report. Redeploying Nerdio resolves the issue, but repeatedly doing this is aggravating. Lastly, Nerdio "power off and set as image" will fail on the sysprep stage if there are errors--Nerdio does not check for these possible issues including having antivirus installed on the image VM.
Is Nerdio too pricey for your institution? Talk to the sales reps. They may be able to work with you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Over the last 10 years, I've been tasked with learning, optimizing, and managing various Microsoft products and platforms and it's rarely ever been easy. I'm not sure if Microsoft does this on purpose, or if they have a build first, figure it out later kind of attitude, but sludging through Microsoft documentation to put all of the pieces together can be quite draining. Microsoft AVD is no exception from this. Trying to fit all of the peice together to setup a functioning and manageable virtual desktop environment is not an easy task if you're trying to do it all from portal.azure.com.
And thankfully, that's where Nerdio comes into play. Nerdio's platform is straight forward and simple to figure out. Documentation is straight forward and it doesn't take very long to feel comfortable using their UI. Setting up a new AVD environment using their wizard is a dream. It takes care of securely setting up all of the underlying infrastracture in Azure and turns a few days of work into a couple of hours.
After the initial setup, Nerdio makes managing the AVD environment simple and straight forward.
We haven't had too many issues that have required reaching out to custom support, but when we have, their support has been responsive, friendly and helpful.
After using Nerdio for AVD setup and management I can't imagine going back to trying to do it all directly through Azure. It's definitely a must have product and I would highly recommend checking it out if you're working with AVD. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I think the biggest issue we had was there was a bug in one of the versions of the platform that caused auto scaling host pools to take 30 minutes longer when creating a new session host. We opened a ticket and their development team quickly fixed the issue and released an updated version. This caused a minor interruption for one of our larger clients and spiked our help desk tickets during that time period because there weren't any available sessions for users to connect into. Other than that, I haven't had any issues or anything that I dislike about the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What I like most about Nerdio is I can quickly spin up an entire AVD instance in just a few clicks and Nerdio takes care of the busy work for you. It is great for managing it even if you are an Azure Portal expert as it reduces the amount of menus you have to go through. This also enables you to give lower experienced technicians the ability to help with AVD related issues as the simpler interface and approval processes Nerdio has makes it easy for anyone to get into. They are also adding new features all the time that keep impressing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I wish there wasnt a minimum charge for new accounts. Sometimes you have a small 1 or 2 client mom and pop shop that could use an AVD but the nerdio mininum makes it cost prohibitive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nerdio makes configuring and maintaining AVD environments for specific customer enviornments easier than going through Azure. Once you understand what Nerdio can and can't do you can adjust your expectations and utilize the tool to its greatest potential. Their script library for installing and uninstalling specific applications on freshly spun up session hosts is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nerdio adds an extra interface layer to an already complicated process that can be annoying to work with at times. There are some things that Nerdio cannot do that require you to still go through Azure to accomplish that keeps it from being a one stop AVD shop. The afformentioned script library can be both a boon and a detriment. When the scripts fail, they fail in a most spectacular fashion and it can be difficult to discern exactly why. We mostly use them to install our RMM tool and then run other scripts through our RMM for more reliability. It can also be difficult at times to make sense of their limited KB database for learning how to manage the tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nerdio Manager creates a single page dashboard, that I review every day, for managing my client and their respective Host Pools, attached users, and to see server resource usage: this was critical data in determining how many users per host we could effeciently host. Moreover, the ability to deply master images has been easy to implement without issue. Finally, Jignesh Daniels was absolutely brilliant in the assisting with the implementation of the environment and helping me to better understand how to leverage and easily use the software going forward. He answered all of my questions in a timely fashion, and was always professional and incredibly courtious. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are times when hosts fail, but that is not entirely the fault of Nerdio, but my next step is to learn how to have notifications sent to me when hosts are not available or when processes fail. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The automation and scheduling features are its best features. The product saves us so much time versus using the (in my opinion) more complicated Azure Portal. We manage 125 VMs using Nerdio. The scheduling feature helps us to spin up and down the VMs on a daily basis. We also use the reimage option on a weekly basis for all VMs so that they are fresh every Monday morning. The ease of use in setting up the master image was a delight. We used a 3rd party to help us implement the system but I have used Nerdio support on a couple of things. They were always quick and helpful with their responses. I also like that they are constantly improving the product and adding new and useful features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
When we first started using Nerdio, we found the scheduling options a bit limited for our use case but luckily after a few updates to the system, it is now perfect for us. The only real issue that we run into occasionally is a VM will fail on an upgrade for the Nerdio agent. This causes that VM to be inaccessible. Sometimes a simple reboot fixes it while other times it requires a reimage to fix. Overall it is a rare occurrence and is easily fixable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Simple and easy to use.
If you have little to no training, it can be a bit confusing at first because you are unfamiliar with the layout, but it takes minutes as you navigate through it for the first time.
For the most part, all the drop-down menus and actions are straight forward, and logs provide relevant information on what is going on and who started the tasks.
I'm also glad there is a training opportunity in Chicago to learn more, as I would like to learn from the ground up, rather than second-hand training. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
If one has never performed specific tasks/actions, you would have to run it, obviously, on a test host, as you don't want to disrupt production.
I am not sure if there is a learning manager somewhere, where you can work in a lab environment to learn all these, that would be nice to have.
Complaints - my main one is when auto-scale fails to start hosts and we have to manually turn them on.
Also running a resize/reimage, sometimes the results are not always consistent with each AVD host, such as FSLogix not working or a missing functionality, like an app isn't available or can't open on one vs. another.
Also limiting the amount of users that can be on a host at a time, we set our limit to 6 but I've seen 7+ users with active sessions working on them. At one point, I saw 12! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Centralized management and deployment of AVD for customers. The platform is much easier to use than native Azure tools for AVD deployment and management. It's easy to get started, though reaching the destination is a journey (one that never ends if you're doing it correctly). Support is great and we honestly haven't needed very much of that. We use this to manage all AVD deployments for all our customers that utilize AVD, which is often. It's easy to integrate with a new customer Azure tenant and the software guides you along the necessary steps to setup proper management. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
You do need to host the app in your own Azure environment, which has a cost. You are responsible for updating and maintaining your own instance. It can be tricky to navigate which support is needed when something doesn't work. Nerdio support only supports Nerdio itself. For problems with Azure resources, you need to reach out to Microsoft support. This can be a bit of a grey area at times. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
