Deploy Siemens NX/X on Azure Virtual Desktop

This article shows the baseline architecture for deploying Siemens NX on Azure Virtual Desktop.

Siemens NX helps designers and manufacturers deliver better products faster with integrated CAD/CAM tools that realize the digital twin's full value. Many customers use different Siemens NX instances across the enterprise, work with multiple ISVs, and operate hybrid and on-premises deployments.

Host Siemens NX on Azure Virtual Desktop to unify deployments, simplify management, and provide a consistent, synced CAD/CAM experience across your enterprise.

Key benefits

Microsoft Azure's global footprint and GPU investments deliver power user workstation performance anywhere, on any device. Cloud-hosted engineering workstations on Azure deliver secure, high-performance desktops and apps that boost productivity, lower costs, and provide a consistent experience.

• Access Siemens NX from anywhere with Azure Virtual Desktop.
• Eliminate local NX installs. Users run NX through the Remote Desktop client.
• Centralize NX data in Azure VMs or file storage to prevent local file sprawl.
• Automatically scale session hosts up or down to match user demand.
• Choose modern, GPU‑accelerated VM SKUs tailored to CAD workloads.
• Gain virtualization flexibility without buying or maintaining physical hardware.
• Rapidly provision capacity and use autoscaling for fast adjustments to demand.
• Use Windows 10/11 Enterprise multi-session, exclusive to Azure Virtual Desktop, to lower costs.
• Reduce infrastructure costs with pooled, multi‑session session hosts and shared resources.
• Lower VM and OS overhead while delivering the same user experience with multi‑session deployments.

Prerequisites

• A Siemens Azure subscription with valid NX X licenses. Customers will need to BYOL (bring your own licenses) NX licenses, and these can be hosted in Azure or on-premises. NX X, the cloud application, gets its license from the Siemens cloud subscription.
• Set user identities and credentials in the Siemens Azure subscription so users can access NX X licenses.
• Assign users to an application group so they can access the session desktop and NX from the Remote Desktop workspace.

Architecture

Workflow

The following steps outline the end-to-end process for accessing, managing, and storing Siemens NX/X workloads on Azure Virtual Desktop:

1. Users access the NX application on Azure Virtual Desktop by using the Remote Desktop client (RDP). They can sign in to the session desktop or use a remote app (streaming).

2. User access to the NX application is granted through their company's Microsoft Entra ID. NX X access is granted by Siemens. NX X is the SaaS version of NX running on Siemens' tenant.

3. The Azure Virtual Desktop control plane manages web access, gateway, broker, diagnostics, and extensibility components, such as REST APIs. User access is routed to the assigned gateway and then to the session host.

4. The Azure Virtual Desktop host pools manage the session hosts, application groups, workspace, and user assignments. You can deploy NX to the session hosts by using a common NX product image.

5. Users store NX CAD files in Azure Files or Azure NetApp Files. User profiles are managed with FSLogix. FSLogix allows users to retrieve their last used session. User sessions are stored in Azure Files or NetApp Files. Multi-session is available with pooled desktops and requires FSLogix for user profile roaming.

6. Customers' internal IT administrators access and manage the Azure Virtual Desktop VDI hosts. IT administrators have full control, managing and configuring these remote desktops with ease. They have the entire arsenal of Azure's features at their disposal, including enhanced security, robust monitoring, log analytics, and rock-solid reliability.

Remote Desktop client and connection

1. Download the Remote Desktop client.

2. Sign in with your account to see the session desktop and the NX app.

   

3. Sign in to the session desktop with your credentials to open a desktop session where you use NX.

4. Save a part or drawing to the VM where your session runs.

5. Open the NX Remote app from the Remote Desktop client after you sign in. NX runs locally.

6. Create parts and drawings and save them to the VM where you launched NX.

Components

The reference architecture consists of the following Azure components.

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that manages traffic to web applications. Use it to manage and distribute traffic to the NX AVD services, improving performance and reliability.

Azure Files is a service that offers shared storage and lets you create a hierarchical folder structure to upload files. In an NX AVD deployment, use it to store FSLogix session profiles.

Azure Firewall is a cloud-native network firewall security service that provides threat protection for cloud workloads. For an NX AVD deployment, Azure Firewall can be used to protect the NX AVD services from threats.

Azure NetApp Files is a file-storage service developed jointly by Microsoft and NetApp. Use Azure NetApp Files to store FSLogix session profiles.

Azure Virtual Desktop is a desktop and app virtualization service that runs on Azure. Deliver a full Windows experience with Windows 11, Windows 10, or Windows Server. Use single-session host pools to assign a device to a single user, or use multi-session host pools for scalability. Use it to provide users with a virtualized desktop environment for CAD workstations and let them access NX from anywhere. For more information, see Azure Virtual Desktop for the enterprise - Azure Architecture Center | Microsoft Learn.

Azure Virtual Machines is an IaaS that provides on-demand, scalable compute without the need for physical hardware maintenance. Use virtual machines to host the NX applications.

Azure Virtual Network is a service that facilitates secure communication between Azure resources, the internet, and on-premises networks. In NX AVD, use it to create a secure network infrastructure, allowing safe and reliable communication.

FSLogix enhances and enables user profile management for Windows remote computing environments. It lets users roam between remote computing session hosts, minimize sign-in times for virtual desktop environments, and optimize file I/O between the host/client and the remote profile store. For information about FSLogix profile containers, Azure Files, and Azure NetApp Files best practices, see FSLogix configuration examples.

Microsoft Entra ID provides on-premises directory synchronization and single sign-on features. Use Microsoft Entra ID to manage and authenticate users, providing seamless access to NX AVD from the Remote Desktop App.

Remote Desktop client lets you connect to Windows desktops and apps over a network by using the Remote Desktop Protocol. Connect to Windows hosted in the cloud from Azure Virtual Desktop, to Remote Desktop Services on-premises, and to remote PCs.

Terminology

Session hosts are GPU-enabled Azure virtual machines. Host pools are a collection of Azure virtual machines that are registered to Azure Virtual Desktop as session hosts. All session host virtual machines in a host pool should be sourced from the same image for a consistent user experience.

A session host configuration is a subresource that specifies the settings for session hosts in a host pool. The configuration persists for the host pool's lifecycle and aligns with its session hosts.

An application group controls access to a full desktop or a logical grouping of applications that are available on session hosts in a single host pool. Azure Virtual Desktop supports multiple application groups, a collection of session desktops, NX remote applications, Microsoft 365 apps, or other CAD applications. Users can be assigned to multiple application groups across multiple host pools, which lets you vary the applications and desktops users can access. When you create an application group, choose one of these types:

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

A workspace is a logical grouping of application groups. Each application group must be associated with a workspace for users to see the desktops and applications published to them. They're displayed in the Remote Desktop application. An application group can only be assigned to a single workspace.

Network security groups are used to limit access to subnets within the Azure network. For NX AVD deployment, use network security groups to secure the network infrastructure, ensuring that only authorized traffic can access the NX AVD and session desktop.

A cloud admin creates a VM image of the OS that has the required NX software, user profile data, and other necessary files. Use the VM image to create session hosts. Create an image from a VM and then use it to create multiple VMs. For images stored in an Azure Compute Gallery (formerly Shared Image Gallery), use VMs that already have accounts (specialized), or generalize the VM before creating the image to remove machine accounts and other machine-specific information. To generalize a VM, see Generalize a VM.

Validate NX on AVD

Testing

Get the NX applications, NXATS (NX Automated Test Suite), and NXCP (NX Certification Pack) from Siemens Support. To validate NX on AVD, use NXATS in manual or automated mode, and NXCP in automated or interactive mode.

Get test suites and installation instructions from GTAC (Global Technical Access Center).

Workloads

Run different types of workloads on session host virtual machines. Use the SKU recommendations section to estimate the virtual machine sizes needed for different workloads.

After you set up virtual machines, monitor usage and adjust their size. Scale the deployment up or down to use a bigger or smaller virtual machine. Some AVD multi-session scenarios are shown here:

Set NX preferences

Set your NX preferences, such as appearance, units, graphics and modeling options, toolbars, and menus. Save and import preferences for the session, assign and load user roles, and set user defaults and profiles through environment variables.

Map a shared drive in NX AVD

Map a shared drive in NX on AVD so multiple designers can save and access files from a central drive instead of a CAD engineer's local hard disk. Store model and drawing files on the shared drive.

Considerations

A set of guiding tenets that can be used to improve the quality of a workload. The following considerations align to the pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework:

Performance

Performance efficiency is the ability of your workload to scale to meet user demand efficiently. Use GPU-accelerated solutions to optimize cost and performance for cloud-hosted engineering workstations. These workstations are available on demand, globally, and are securely accessible through Azure Virtual Desktop VDI.

Measure latency between the end user and the RDP session before production goes live. Measuring latency helps ensure that when NX AVD users interact with maps or perform measurements and edits, interactive edits and tooltips appear quickly. Use the Azure Virtual Desktop Experience Estimator to assess connection round-trip time (RTT) from your location through the Azure Virtual Desktop service to each Azure region where you can deploy virtual machines.

When you use a remote Windows session, your network's available bandwidth greatly affects the quality of your experience. The following table lists the minimum recommended bandwidths for a smooth user experience. These recommendations are based on the guidelines in Remote Desktop workloads.

For more information, see Performance efficiency pillar overview.

Scalability

Scale this architecture in many ways. Scale VMs for back end or desktops (CPU and GPU), scale out, scale up, or scale down. Deploy Azure Virtual Desktop on individual VMs or multi-session VMs. Azure Virtual Desktop can scale to hundreds of VMs. Use multi-host sessions, where multiple VMs run in a host pool and the system distributes session load by breadth-first or depth-first allocation.

For more information, see Windows 10 or Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session remote desktops.

Reliability

Reliability ensures that your application can meet the commitments you make to your customers. In general, consider Availability Zones or Availability Sets based on requirements of multisite implementations.

For more information, see Reliability pillar overview and High availability and disaster recovery for IaaS apps.

Security

NX on AVD limits access to authorized users through multifactor authentication and role-based access control. Assign users specific roles and permissions to manage AVD resources and NX software. Protect data to prevent sensitive information from leaving the AVD environment and reduce the risk of unauthorized file access. Implement a robust backup and recovery strategy for NX data and models.

Azure Security provides assurances against deliberate attacks and the abuse of your valuable data and systems. Only assigned users in Microsoft Entra ID can access the NX AVD application.

For more information, see Security pillar overview.

Cost optimization

Cost optimization is about looking at ways to reduce unnecessary expenses and improve operational efficiencies. If your workload requires more memory and fewer CPUs, use a constrained vCPU virtual machine size to reduce software licensing costs charged per vCPU.

The Azure calculator helps you estimate and optimize costs. For an estimated cost of the baseline architecture, see estimated cost. Your estimates might differ based on your NX AVD implementation.

Use the SKU recommendations section for guidance on selecting the right virtual machine SKUs. Contact the Siemens support team for the latest NX on Azure certification matrix and detailed SKU recommendations.

For more information, see Cost optimization pillar overview.

SKU recommendations

The following table provides SKU recommendations for different workload types in NX on AVD:

Single-session recommendations

Single-session scenarios are when there's only one user assigned to a session host virtual machine at any one time. For example, if you use personal host pools in Azure Virtual Desktop, you're using a single-session scenario.

The following table provides examples for single-session NX AVD scenarios:

Multi-session recommendations

Multi-session scenarios are when there's more than one user signed in to a session host at any one time. For example, when you use pooled host pools in Azure Virtual Desktop with the Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session operating system (OS), that's a multi-session deployment.

The following table provides examples with five test multi-session users for multi-session NX AVD scenarios:

Related resources

• Siemens and Microsoft bring AI-enhanced NX X to Azure for advanced product engineering.
• Watch the on-demand webinar Accelerate your cloud-based digital transformation with NX X to learn more about accelerating innovation with NX X on Azure.