Key Use Cases

Overview

Hydra supports a broad range of scenarios for organizations managing Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environments. Below are the primary use cases that highlight its flexibility and operational value:

Multi-Tenant AVD Management

Hydra provides native support for managing multiple logical tenants or departments from a single control plane. Each tenant is logically isolated with its own permissions, policies, and resource scope - enabling secure delegation and simplified operations across business units or customers. This is ideal for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), acquisitions, or test tenants.

Strong Image Management

Hydra simplifies and enhances the entire image lifecycle for Azure Virtual Desktop. It supports image creation from standalone, Active Directory-joined, and Entra ID-joined master VMs - regardless of whether applications were deployed manually or through Intune. Hydra's imaging process is non-destructive, preserving the original master VM even after the image is captured. Furthermore, Hydra enables fully unattended updates of master images and automates the imaging process itself, reducing administrative effort while maintaining consistency and control across environments.

Automated Host Pool Provisioning

Hydra enables blueprint-driven provisioning, allowing administrators to define reusable templates for host creation. This ensures consistency across environments and accelerates the deployment of new desktops, session hosts, and supporting infrastructure.

Power Management and Cost Optimization

Built-in scheduling and scaling capabilities allow Hydra to start and stop session hosts based on working hours, user activity, or capacity thresholds. This results in significant cost savings by avoiding unnecessary compute usage in off-hours or low-demand periods. Hydra can also create temporary session hosts and utilize disk swapping for further cost savings.

Real-Time Session Monitoring and Diagnostics

Hydra offers built-in monitoring capabilities for tracking session activity, session host health, processes, and user experience metrics. These insights allow operations teams to proactively troubleshoot issues, respond to incidents, and maintain high service availability.