Implement Application Masking – Install and Configure Apps on a Session Host

Implement Application Masking

As you learned earlier, application masking is one of the options you can use to allow only specific groups of users to access specific applications in a pooled environment. The main challenge with a pooled full desktop is the application access if you have different set of applications needed by different groups of users. You can create different pooled host pools for different sets of applications, but it’s not a cost-effective solution, and management will be difficult, so the best option is to have common host pools with multiple applications installed on all session hosts and restrict access by using the FSLogix app masking. Use application masking to manage user access of the installed components. Application masking may be used in both physical and virtual environments. Application masking is most often applied to manage nonpersistent, virtual environments, such as virtual desktops.

Where to Use Application Masking?

Application masking can be used with full desktop pooled Azure Virtual Desktop instances where you need multiple small applications for different groups of users.

For example, let’s consider you have 100 users out of which 50 users want Visual Studio Code, 50 users want Microsoft Office, but all 100 users want the Chrome browser. Now in this case you can create two different host pools, the first one with Visual Studio Code and Chrome for the first 50 users and Microsoft Office and Chrome for another set of 50 users, but you must create two different images, and host pools management will be difficult. Infrastructure costs will be higher, because you must keep a minimum number of VMs running in both pooled host pools.

The alternative is to create a single host pool and install all three applications, and you can add application masking to allow the first 50 users to access Visual Studio Code plus Chrome, and second group of 50 users to access Microsoft Office plus Chrome. By doing that you will be saving infrastructure costs, since there will be a single host pool and fewer VMs will be running during off business hours. Additionally, autoscaling will allow you to stop all VMs if they are not in use.