Ryan Mangan
By

Last updated on June 1, 2021
  0

Parallels RAS 18 Public Preview

Introduction

Parallels RAS has been an evolving contender in the End User Computing space over the last couple of years. Year on year Parallels RAS raises the bar. Version 18 public preview offers a number of new features and enhancements including the integration of FSLogix Profile Containers and an integration to Windows Virtual Desktop. It’s clear that the Parallels RAS team have worked hard to provide a much simpler approach to managing Virtual desktops and images as well as providing a single pane of glass management capability for the majority of the day to day technical virtual desktop/session management.

Windows Virtual Desktop Integration

This is a feature I have been waiting for. Parallels RAS now integrates into Windows Virtual Desktop allowing you to combine Parallels RAS features and functions within a Windows Virtual Desktop environment. This includes FSLogix Profile Containers, Auto-Scale, Universal Printing and Scanning, AI-Based Session prelaunch, accelerated file redirection, built-in image optimisations, and Parallels RAS reporting and monitoring. This removes the need for lots of third-party integrations and the majority of the day to day IT admin which can now be completed using the single pane of glass “Parallels RAS Console”

Main Use cases:

FSLogix Profile Containers

The new capability of setting up FSLogix Profile Containers from the Parallels RAS UI makes it much simpler for the admin. Again keeping configurations in the same place. As you can see from the settings windows screenshot below, all of the FSLogix functions have been included in the Parallels RAS UI.

“Parallels RAS 18 provides an ability to integrate, configure, maintain and support FSLogix Profile containers from within the Parallels RAS console, supporting Storage Spaces Direct, Azure Files, Azure NetApp files, based on their supported protocols such as SMB and Cloud Cache for resiliency and availability”

FSLogix UI interface

In Summary, Parallels RAS 18 simplifies the deployment and configuration of FSLogix Profile Containers by providing administrators with dedicated management capabilities, within the RAS console. This provides the ability to automate the deployment of the FSLogix Agent and ease of configuration without requiring manual registry changes or scripting. Such functionality can be enabled centrally, on Parallels RAS Farm level, and configured for RD Session Hosts, VDIs and Windows Virtual Desktop workloads.

Parallels RAS also provides customers currently using User profile disks, (UPD), the opportunity to move to FSLogix Profile Containers. Today, you will still need to manually migrate UDPs to FSLogix. Hopefully, this will be included in a future release.

UX Evaluator & Advanced Session Metrics

The UX Evaluator metric provides the admin the ability to read the indicative quantitive measure of user experience.

This is calculated by “calculating the time elapsed between user interaction with the published resource and a corresponding response, taking into account network latency, remote host response and other factors affecting the user experience.”

UX Evaluator

UX Evaluator & Advanced Session Details offers admins and the helpdesk full visibility of user session performance, working habits. This provides a proactive capability for IT Admins to resolve without user intervention. in cases where a user may report a slow session, the IT admin will be able to pinpoint issues much faster and accurately, providing a potential root cause quickly.

Automated Image Optimisation

Are you sick of image optimisations and want to automate the process in a simple GUI. Parallels RAS has built in a function the UI to allow you optimise over 130 image optimisations which have been divided into 100 main categories.

You will also note that you can add your own.

Optimization window

Other Features in Version 18

Summary

Version 18 of Parallels RAS offers notable game changing features and Functionally. with the integration of Windows Virtual Desktop, Parallels RAS now offers customers a number of new opportunities and options. One good example here is, customers with existing VDI resources who still have residual value left in hardware, software and licences can now leverage Parallels RAS’s capabilities to introduce Windows Virtual Desktop as well as offer the existing experience managed through a single pane of glass. Customers can also now take advantage of the Parallels RAS client which has an AI driven prelaunch capability enhancing the user experience.

All in all, this is a promising release …

Ryan is an end-user computing (EUC) specialist & general technologist. A speaker, author and presenter, who has helped customers and technical communities with enduser computing solutions, ranging from small to global 30,000-user deployments in various Fields. Ryan is the owner and author of ryanmangansitblog.com which currently has over 3 million visitors and over 70+ articles on Remote Desktop Services and Windows Virtual Desktop. Some of Ryan’s community and technical awards include: