General availability of Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid on Nutanix AHV gives enterprises greater control over data, infrastructure and desktop workloads
Nutanix has announced support for the general availability of Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid on Nutanix AHV, giving organisations greater flexibility in deciding where virtual desktops and associated workloads should run.
The hybrid model enables organisations to run Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts on-premises while continuing to use Microsoft’s cloud-based control plane for identity, access and session brokering. The approach is particularly relevant for enterprises balancing cloud modernisation with data residency, digital sovereignty, security, latency and infrastructure cost requirements.
With Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid on Nutanix AHV, the Azure control plane remains in the cloud while session hosts operate within the customer’s own data centre. Azure Arc connects these workloads to the Azure environment, while Microsoft Entra ID supports identity and access management.
The development addresses a growing enterprise reality: not every workload can—or should—move entirely to the public cloud. Regulated industries and organisations with sensitive data increasingly require hybrid architectures that combine cloud services with greater control over infrastructure and data location.
“The value for customers is straightforward. They no longer have to choose between using Azure Virtual Desktop and maintaining control over where their desktops run,” said Tarkan Maner, President at Nutanix.
IT teams can manage the environment using Nutanix APIs and automation tools or use Nerdio Manager to centralise functions including VM provisioning, lifecycle management, power management, patching and autoscaling.
Bhavya Chopra, Partner Director, Product Management at Microsoft, said customer choice and flexibility were central to Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid.
The collaboration gives enterprises a more practical route to desktop modernisation without forcing a single infrastructure model. By combining Microsoft’s cloud-based desktop services with Nutanix AHV, organisations can modernise user computing while retaining greater control over performance, compliance, data sovereignty and existing infrastructure investments.
