Managing Amazon WorkSpaces

As we covered in our blog, “Enabling Your Remote/Hybrid Workforce by Moving to Amazon WorkSpaces” last week, Amazon WorkSpaces provide secure, reliable, and scalable access to persistent desktops from any location.

Amazon WorkSpaces optimizes running modes based on end-user connection times. Amazon WorkSpaces is a cost-effective solution and optimizes costs. Use cases include onboarding new employees or contingent workers while providing tighter data access controls and protections. Amazon WorkSpaces comes in preconfigured bundles with Microsoft Office and Trend Micro Antivirus or you can make your own bundle to fit workers’ needs and quickly onboard them.

Amazon WorkSpaces also allows for quick recovery from ransomware and cyberattacks. Cloudnexa includes Trend Micro’s agent into the deployment bundle so that all environments are protected when they launch.

Once you have Amazon WorkSpaces, the next step is to manage them effectively. This can be achieved through Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer and Amazon AppStream 2.0.

Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer

Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer analyzes all of your Amazon WorkSpaces usage data and automatically converts the WorkSpace to the most cost-effective billing option (hourly or monthly), depending on your individual usage. This solution also helps you monitor your WorkSpace usage and optimize costs.

Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer automatically converts the WorkSpace to the most cost-effective billing option depending on usage.

Key benefits include:

• Automatic WorkSpaces conversion: Automatically convert your WorkSpaces to the most cost-effective billing option (hourly or monthly), depending on your individual usage.
• Monitor your WorkSpaces usage: Monitor your WorkSpace usage and optimize costs by using AWS CloudFormation to automatically provision and configure the necessary AWS services to convert individual WorkSpaces.
• Secure one-click deployment: Provide a secure one-click deployment using an AWS CloudFormation template developed with the AWS Well-Architected Framework methodologies.

AWS Solutions Implementation Overview

The diagram below presents the architecture you can automatically deploy using the solution's implementation guide and accompanying AWS CloudFormation template.

Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer solution architecture

1. This solution deploys an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule that invokes an AWS Lambda function every 24 hours.
2. The Lambda function runs the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) task, which gets the list of AWS Directories and Amazon WorkSpaces from the Regions where these services are available.
3. The Fargate task checks each WorkSpace for total usage for the month and converts the WorkSpace to the most efficient billing model depending on usage.
4. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) stores a log file with the conversions

Amazon AppStream 2.0

Amazon AppStream 2.0 provides secure, reliable, and scalable access to applications and non-persistent desktops from any location.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 empowers your remote workforce, strengthens security, optimizes costs, and reduces downtime.

• Empower your remote workforce and react quickly to changing conditions with access to applications and desktops from anywhere.
• Strengthen security by storing data on AWS instead of vulnerable endpoint devices.
• Optimize costs through on-demand cloud scalability with a range of compute, memory, and storage options.
• Reduce downtime with fully managed application delivery and reliable AWS infrastructure offering 99.9% uptime.

How it works

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed non-persistent desktop and application service for remotely accessing your work.

Use cases include:

• Empower contact center agents to work from anywhere: Enable contact center agents to work remotely from any location with a secure, easy-to-use agent experience.
• Launch SaaS for software vendors: Deliver Software as a Service (SaaS) versions of applications without rewrites, special hardware, or device installs, ideal for training, trials and software demonstrations.
• Access to 3D design and engineering applications: Enable user access to CAD, CAM, and CAE applications from any computer with responsive, high-performance streaming sessions.
• Support student learning environments: Enable online learning over slow network conditions with easy, reliable access to applications and resources.

Learn how you can manage Amazon WorkSpaces by contacting us today!