Set the preferred application group type for a pooled host pool in Azure Virtual Desktop

Article
09/13/2024

An application group is a logical grouping of applications that are available on session hosts in a host pool. Application groups control whether a full desktop or which applications from a host pool are available to users to connect to. An application group can only be assigned to a single host pool, but you can assign multiple application groups to the same host pool. Users can be assigned to multiple application groups across multiple host pools, which enable you to vary the applications and desktops that users can access.

When you create an application group, it can be one of two types:

Desktop: users access the full Windows desktop from a session host. Available with pooled or personal host pools.
RemoteApp: users access individual applications you select and publish to the application group. Available with pooled host pools only.

To help prevent users from connecting to a desktop and RemoteApp application at the same time from application groups assigned to the same host pool, pooled host pools have the setting Preferred application group type. This setting determines whether users have access to the full desktop or RemoteApp applications from this host pool in Windows App or the Remote Desktop app, should they be assigned to an application group of each type to the same host pool.

For more information about the behavior of the preferred application group type setting and why it's necessary, see Preferred application group type behavior for pooled host pools in Azure Virtual Desktop.

This article shows you how to set the preferred application group type for a pooled host pool using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI.

Prerequisites

Before you can set the preferred application group type for a pooled host pool, you need:

An existing pooled host pool.
An Azure account you can use that has the Desktop Virtualization Host Pool Contributor role-based access control (RBAC) role assigned.
If you want to use Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI locally, see Use Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI with Azure Virtual Desktop to make sure you have the Az.DesktopVirtualization PowerShell module or the desktopvirtualization Azure CLI extension installed.

Set the preferred application group type

Select the relevant tab for your scenario.

Here's how to set the preferred application group type for a host pool using the Azure portal:

Sign in to the Azure portal.
In the search bar, enter Azure Virtual Desktop and select the matching service entry.
Select Host pools, then select the name of the pooled host pool you want to configure.
Select Properties.
For Preferred app group type, select either Desktop or RemoteApp from the drop-down list.
Select Save.

Here's how to set the preferred application group type for a host pool using the Az.DesktopVirtualization PowerShell module. Be sure to change the <placeholder> values for your own.

Run PowerShell on your local device.
- If you're using PowerShell locally, first sign in with Azure PowerShell, and then make sure your Azure context is set to the subscription that you want to use.

Use the Get-AzWvdHostPool cmdlet get the current preferred application group type for all host pools in the current Azure subscription:

$hostPools = Get-AzResource | ? ResourceType -eq Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization/hostpools

$preferredAppGroupType = @()
foreach ($hostPool in $hostPools) {
    $hostPoolProperties = Get-AzWvdHostPool -Name $hostPool.Name -ResourceGroup $hostPool.ResourceGroupName
    $preferredAppGroupType += $hostPoolProperties
}

$preferredAppGroupType | FT Name, PreferredAppGroupType

The output is similar to the following output:

Name          PreferredAppGroupType
----          ---------------------
contoso-hp01  Desktop
contoso-hp02  RailApplications
contoso-hp03  None

Tip

The term RailApplications is for RemoteApp application groups when using Azure PowerShell.

To set or change the preferred application group type for a host pool, use the Update-AzWvdHostPool cmdlet, as shown in the following example. For the PreferredAppGroupType parameter, use either Desktop or RailApplications as the value, depending on your requirements.
```
$parameters = @{
    hostPoolName = "<HostPoolName>"
    resourceGroupName = "<ResourceGroupName>"
    preferredAppGroupType = "<PreferredAppGroupType>"
}

Update-AzWvdHostPool @parameters
```
Run the commands in step 2 again and verify that the preferred application group type is set correctly.

Here's how to set the preferred application group type for a host pool using the desktopvirtualization extension for Azure CLI. In the following examples, you need to change the <placeholder> values for your own.

Run Azure CLI on your local device.
- If you're using the Azure CLI locally, first sign in with the Azure CLI, and then make sure your Azure context is set to the subscription that you want to use.

Use the az desktopvirtualization hostpool list command get the current preferred application group type for all host pools in the current Azure subscription:
```
az desktopvirtualization hostpool list \
    --query "[].{name:name, preferredAppGroupType:preferredAppGroupType}" \
    --output table
```
The output is similar to the following output:
```
Name          PreferredAppGroupType
------------  ---------------------
contoso-hp01  Desktop
contoso-hp02  RailApplications
contoso-hp03  None
```
Tip

The term RailApplications is for RemoteApp application groups when using Azure CLI.
To set or change the preferred application group type for a host pool, use the az desktopvirtualization hostpool update command, as shown in the following example. For the PreferredAppGroupType parameter, use either Desktop or RailApplications as the value, depending on your requirements.
```
az desktopvirtualization hostpool update \
    --name "<HostPoolName>" \
    --resource-group "<ResourceGroupName>" \
    --preferred-app-group-type "<PreferredAppGroupType>"
```
Run the commands in step 2 again and verify that the preferred application group type is set correctly.

Learn about the Preferred application group type behavior for pooled host pools in Azure Virtual Desktop

Set the preferred application group type for a pooled host pool in Azure Virtual Desktop

Prerequisites

Set the preferred application group type

Related content

Additional resources