Applies to: Nerdio Manager for MSP (NMM) v2.3+
Overview
Your accounts created in NMM must have an AD to join the session host. NMM allows you to configure directory profiles (Azure AD or Active directory or Azure AD DS) for each of your host pools. Before we proceed further, let us briefly understand each directory profile type. Traditionally, AVD requires both Active Directory (AD) as well as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). AD DS is available in two formats:
- Traditional AD DS from Windows server: The AD DS domain controllers can either be located on-prem and accessed over a site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute. Or they can be VMs located within Azure itself or both. All AVD needs is a network line of sight to a domain controller, to facilitate the VM domain join at deployment time and to perform user authentication.
- Azure Active Directory Domain Services (AAD DS), which is a Microsoft-managed PaaS service to provide AD DS inside of Azure. Customers do not manage the virtual machines for this service and were originally designed for just cloud-only organizations but have had recent updates to support trust relationships to existing on-prem AD DS.
Azure AD-joined VMs remove the need to have line-of-sight from the VM to an on-premises or virtualized Active Directory Domain Controller (DC) or to deploy Azure AD Domain services (Azure AD DS). In some cases, it can remove the need for a DC entirely, simplifying the deployment and management of the environment. This reduces your costs and complexity significantly. Azure AD-joined VMs can also be automatically enrolled in Intune for ease of management.
In this article, we will learn about:
How to configure various directory profiles for your account
How the directory profile type impacts host pool creation
How to configure various directory profiles for your account
Login to NMM portal and click "Manage" option on an existing account:
From the main menu on your account's page, select "Settings->Integrations" tab as shown below:
On the "Directory" tile, click "Add" link to add another AD profile:
Provide the following details and click "OK" button:
- DIRECTORY: Select directory type (Active Directory, Azure AD DS, Azure Active Directory) from the drop-down
- AD DOMAIN: Specify the active directory domain (in FQDN format) for session host VMs to join
- AD username: Specify AD username in FQDN format
- AD password: Specify admin user's password
- Organization unit: Specify OU in distinguished name (DN) format. If left blank, all computer objects will be placed in Computer's AD container
For example, you can add an "Azure AD DS" directory profile as shown below:
You can also add "Azure Active directory" as shown below:
How the directory profile type impacts host pool creation

- FSLogix profiles are not supported, as a result all host pool desktops support local profiles only.
- A new RDP custom property needs to be added. This is done for you by Nerdio Manager behind-the-scenes.
- MFA is not supported for AAD joined session hosts.
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