Single service comparison

Huawei Cloud Workspace is a turnkey DaaS product where Huawei owns both the control plane and the per-user desktop instances, billed per desktop specification and duration (monthly or pay-per-use). AVD instead leaves session-host compute in the customer's subscription: you provision host pools, manage VM lifecycle, scaling plans, and image updates, while Microsoft only brokers connections. Workspace exposes desktop-scenario bundles and open APIs for provisioning, but lacks the host-pool/application-group control-plane primitives, so fleet templating and drain-mode host management must be reimplemented around desktop objects.

Identity and access models diverge sharply. AVD is tightly coupled to Entra ID and Conditional Access, with per-user access pricing and M365 licensing as prerequisites; session hosts can be Entra-joined or AD-joined with FSLogix or Azure Files for profiles. Workspace authenticates users through Huawei Cloud accounts and optional enterprise identity federation, with platform-provided two-factor auth, peripheral control, watermarking, and audit, but no equivalent FSLogix-style profile roaming layer; persistent desktops carry personal disks and pooled scenarios rely on SFS/NAS shares you configure yourself.

Scaling, HA, and operational responsibility differ. AVD customers design availability sets/zones, scaling plans, and health probes, and consume Azure Monitor and Log Analytics for diagnostics. Workspace concentrates lifecycle O&M in Huawei's managed desktop console with batch deployment and backup via CBR, but predictable multi-session scale-out, GPU profiles, and deep RDP-shortpath network tuning are less granular than AVD's host-pool scheduler. Cross-region DR and interconnect egress must be engineered with Direct Connect/VPN rather than being inherent to the brokering plane.

Start with assessment, not lift-and-shift: inventory AVD host pools, app groups, session count, GPU/multi-session needs, and Entra ID dependencies, then decide whether Workspace persistent desktops cover the workload or whether pooled desktops plus SFS are needed for shared-state scenarios. Document every integration that has no Workspace analog (Entra Conditional Access, FSLogix profiles, MSIX app attach, Azure Files), because these become rework items, not direct ports. Do not assume a one-click migration exists; Huawei does not publish an AVD-to-Workspace migration tool.

Re-architect identity and data layers first. Map Entra groups to Huawei Cloud IAM and enterprise federation, and plan profile handling: replace FSLogix/Azure Files with Workspace per-user persistent disks or an SFS Capacity file share, validating that roaming personalization and logon times meet your baseline. Rebuild application packaging on Windows Server images from the Workspace image catalog, and retest printing, USB redirection, and certificate-based access patterns against the HDP client rather than the Windows/Desktop RDP client.

Migrate desktops in waves with parallel validation. Stand up a target Workspace tenant, replicate the AVD host-pool configuration as a set of Workspace desktop groups, and run a pilot cohort against regression checks: logon latency, GPU/CPU headroom, peripheral and audio behavior, and audit/diagnostics coverage compared with AVD Insights. Treat cutover as user-by-user reassignment, never a DNS flip, because connection URIs, feed discovery, and client software all change.

Rebuild the cost and governance model before production. AVD charges compute as Azure VM runtime plus per-user access/M365 licensing; Workspace charges per-desktop specification plus storage and bandwidth, with seat or pay-per-use offers. Recompute TCO against peak concurrency, retention, backup, and DC/VPN interconnect traffic, and add IAM plus Cloud Bastion/CBH for privileged access since AVD's built-in RBAC does not map directly. Confirm regional availability and quotas in the target Huawei region before committing the production cut.