Spitballing time.....I have a customer with a use case for virtual desktops that is looking for them to be used as test beds. So the idea is to provide a bunch of virtualized standard corporate desktops with a standard set of apps, but they are to be throwaway devices for running testing on, to the extent that they can do whatever they want with them - install software, reboot, stress the device, etc. They also want to be able to revert at any given point to a saved or golden state, so when they break the device, they can simply reset it straight back to where they were. And they want the user to be able to do this snapshot/reset function themselves, no need to log a case or get support involved. I did think we should host the desktops (probably in Azure) using Citrix Cloud with non-persistent MCS, and then users could do whatever they wanted with them, including restarting via the Windows OS, but when they wanted to "reset" the machines they could initiate a reboot instead from the Citrix console (assuming you can allow the "restart your own device" permission in that kind of granular fashion) and that would revert to the original state of the image? Or is there a better way to do this, something that maybe doesn't involve Citrix and could be done natively in AVD maybe? Customer is keen to reduce footprint of on-premises hardware so that's why they're looking to host these use cases in a hyperscaler. Open to all ideas, please help me broaden my thinking 🙂

Ephemeral disk vms

Maybe AVD + Nerdio could consider it as a feature request. https://nmehelp.getnerdio.com/hc/en-us/articles/25499401137549-Personal-Host-Pool-User-Self-Service

Is resetting a machine with an ephemeral disk something you could delegate to the user themselves?

I would use a persistent mcs based machine because then whatever they need to install will work even if it needs to be rebooted then give them a way to reset the desktops back to the original image using a powershell script or api based process. https://updates.cloud.com/details/reset-os-disk-of-a-persistent-azure-vm-in-an-mcs-machine-catalog-pmcs35344/

@Rob Zylowski can you do that by giving them access to Citrix Web Studio or would they just have to run a script from their virtual desktop to initiate it?

You can do that wiht web studio but not sure you would want users in that

Would Msft DevBox fit your need? https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box

If it has the ability to "reset" to a golden state without engaging support or jumping through too many hoops, it would fit....

We have something similar to this, except we have the users submit a form on ServiceNow to reset vm, and it reverts to the previous snapshot using Github actions or they can submit a request with teams chatbot. Maybe reach out to Marcel and see if he can add the options into his self-service portal. https://github.com/MarcelMeurer/Azure-Starter-for-WVD

Just give them powershell scripts that does what you want. Non-persistent machines, if they shutdown (because they will), they will loose their work and then complain about it. Go for persistent machines instead. You give them shortcuts on their desktops with fancy icons (do snapshot, revert to snapshot, revert to base) and that'd be it. If you need help settings this up, feel free to reach James 😉