What’s up, everyone!
If you are managing virtual and physical desktops in the Microsoft ecosystem, chances are that you’ve heard about Nerdio and Nerdio Manager. Over the past few years, Nerdio has established itself as one of the leading management platforms for modern work, simplifying and optimizing new and existing Azure Virtual Desktop environments. But did you know that Nerdio Manager also supports Windows 365 and Microsoft Intune environments?
If we are talking about Nerdio, we are not just talking about solutions but also about the community which they are heavily invested in. A great example is the Nerdio NVP program where industry experts work together with Nerdio on new ideas or share knowledge via blogs, sessions and other methods.
Or what do you think about Nerdiocon? This amazing conference is hosted yearly and it’s where Nerdio showcases the latest and greatest updates and future direction, while partners have the opportunity to showcase their added value and attendees have a great opportunity to catch up with other attendees or NVP’s. All of that in arguably the greatest locations!
Did you know that Nerdio has it’s own training and certification platform named Nerdio University? It’s a great way to expand your current knowledge and reward yourself with a nice certification. Currently the university has a sales track with two certifications and a technical track with two fundamentals and three advanced certifications.
If you want more information on Nerdio Manager and what it can do for you, you probably would go to the website and you might be surprised to see two editions:
And that brings me to the question I get a lot when talking about Nerdio Manager: what’s the difference between Nerdio Manager for Enterprise and MSP? And what are the usecases?
Let’s take a look at these questions in this weeks post, the showdown between Nerdio Manager for Enterprise and MSP!
The showdown of use cases
Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is intended for every company who want to simplify management of their modern work landscape, or add additional features to make your IT admin life a bit more easy. It is designed to for a single organization and nowadays even allows multi-tenant features for AVD and Microsoft Intune (in case of separate geographical tenants).
Nerdio Manager for MSP is intended for managed service providers. Using NMM you can manage your customers using a single-pane-of-glass. The feature set might not go into the technical depth as NME, instead it focusses on broader endpoint support, Microsoft 365 and true multi-tenancy.
Time for a quick overview:
Introducing Nerdio Manager for Enterprise
Installing Nerdio Manager for Enterprise start with the Azure Marketplace. Just search for a keyword like Nerdio and deploy the application from there:
It’s time to sign into the portal once the installation finishes. Just locate the resource group where NME is installed and search for the web app, the URL will be displayed in the default domain entry:
I’ve installed NME version 8.0.4 in my environment and the portal looks like this:
Each menu item has it’s own purpose but note that it’s all designed to manage a single customer or environment.
Here is a short intro:
- Insights: your go to dashboard style information section divided into the topics of executive, health, AVDF, Windows 365, Intune, Cost and Efficiency.
- My custom views: an overview of built-in overviews and add your own as well.
- Workspaces: The go-to item for AVD management.
- Migrate: Ever wished you could migrate your AVD personal desktops to Windows 365 Cloud PCs? Well, be awesome and go ahead!
- Endpoints: Contains all the features to manage your physical and Windows 365 endpoints, including the new policy studio!
- Desktop images: enables AVD admins to build custom desktop images.
- Applications: manage your applications like a boss using the Unified Catalog!
- Automation: You love automation, so does Nerdio. Now apply your automation magic using Nerdio Manager for Enterprise!
- Monitoring: forwards you to AVD Insights.
- Storage: Manage storage options (Azure Files, Azure NetApp files, Log Analytics)
- RBAC roles: because we all know someone who shouldn’t have access to the one ring of power 🙂
- Logs: Nice feature if you forgot about configuring RBAC roles…
- Advisor: Access to the Nerdio Modeler, recommendations and right-sizing rules.
- Settings: Access to various settings like Environment, Profiles Management, Resource rules, Custom views and Theme.
- Updates: The legends at Nerdio add a lot of features to make you look good. It’s up to you to keep up!
Introducing Nerdio Manager for MSP
Just like NME, Nerdio Manager for MSP is installed using the Azure Marketplace. Search for a keyword like Nerdio and deploy the Azure application from there:
Now it’s time to sign into the portal once NMM has deployed successfully. Finding the URL is a bit different when compared to NME. Locate the resource group where NMM is deployed, it contains a managed application, click on that. Locate Settings and click on Parameters and Outputs. Locate the webAppUrl in the outputs section.
Copy the URL to your favorite browser and sign into the portal. At the time of writing I am running NMM version 7.1.2 which is the latest version. It will look a bit like this:
The layout and style look the same as NME but the menu is completely different. Signing into NMM automatically brings you the Accounts menu item, which is where your customers will appear once they are added to the environment.
Let’s do a short introduction on this NMM menu as well:
- All features: provides a single view of all the other menus and features available in NMM.
- Accounts: provides a list of all your customers that have been added to NMM.
- Insights: your dashboard style information section for AVD and Portal Health and access to Reports, data collectors and vulnerabilities.
- Global views: gathers information of customers environments and displays it in one view for Session hosts, Non-compliant endpoints, Physical endpoints, Servers, and Backup issues. Feel free to create your own custom global view.
- Baselines: your one-stop-shop for solution and policy baselines, tenant assessments and accepted drifts.
- Policies: access to policies divided into the categories Entra (Conditional Access and Named Locations), Devices (Configuration Policies, MAM policies, Autopilot Profiles and Enrollments Status Pages), Security (Security baselines, Compliance policies, Update rings, Endpoint security policies and Defender for Office 365 policies).
- Applications: the place where the Unified Catalog lives, access to app groups, Shell Apps and Certificates.
- Scripting: Enterprise Nerdio admins love automation. So do MSP admins. The place to deploy your automation magic.
- Shared Settings: Global AVD and Microsoft 365 settings.
- Notifications: the place to manage Conditions, Actions, Email queue, Email templates and Tickets.
- Tools: Access to the MSP Cost Estimator, Tenant Assessments and Tenant Monitoring.
- System: Access to system settings like RBAC, Environment settings, Billing, Logs and Updates.
You might have spotted my logo in the top left side of the portal. Follow these steps if you want to configure it in your own NMM environment: go to System, System settings, Whitelabel:
NME or NMM: The choice is yours!
I hope this blog helps you to get a better understanding of both editions of Nerdio Manager and their use cases. If you want to learn more about Nerdio Manager for MSP, make sure to following my upcoming posts where I will show the next steps in deploying, hardening and using NMM.
