Overview of the Cost Estimator

As the name suggests, the Cost Estimator allows an MSP to estimate your customers' costs of running AVD environments using Nerdio Manager. The Cost Estimator is a calculator that asks a series of questions and generates an estimate based on the information entered. The estimate includes a detailed breakdown of the costs.

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Create a New Cost Estimate

Nerdio Manager allows you to create Cost Estimates, as needed, based on your customer's requirements.

To create a new Cost Estimate:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Cost Estimator.

2. Enter the following information:

   • 1. Let's start with desktop information: Personal desktops, pooled desktops, and desktops that require GPU cores. When adding a host pool, the system defaults to E4s_v5.

     

   • 2. Servers: These are the virtual machines you will run in the customer's environment. These VMs are in addition to the VMs that are needed for serving AVD desktops. For example, if customer needs to host QuickBooks or needs to run SQL Server on a VM. You can add multiple data disks for each server VM you add.

     Note: For several of the required parameters, you may filter the available choices by using the Resource Selection Rules. For example, you may filter the Instance Size or OS Disk choices for Intel RAM-optimized VMs only. See Resource Selection Rules Management for details.

     

   • 3. Licensing options: Nerdio Manager allows you to select the right Microsoft 365, Office 365, Windows 10, and SQL Server software licenses required to run your virtual desktop environment in Azure. You can also purchase Microsoft Defender for Endpoint licenses for your networks to prevent, detect, investigate, and respond to advanced threats. You can opt for either Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 or Plan 2. A new Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management add-on is available for Plan 2.

     

     Note: Nerdio Manager also offers you Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing for SQL Server, which is better for smaller deployments (2 core).

     

   • 4. Other Features: These are features you can take advantage of.

     

     • In-region Backup: This includes backup of servers, AVD desktops, and Azure file shares. We include costs of backing up the minimum session hosts (the ones that will be on all the time) even when FSLogix storage is set to 0 GB and there are no servers. The system can calculate average backup costs for up to 10 years. Users can select the required duration. The default is 1 year and the maximum is 10 years.

       

     • Site-to-site VPN: A site-to-site VPN, if one is needed between Azure and the on-prem location.

     • Include hosting costs: For running the Nerdio Manager portal in your (MSP's) Azure environment.

     • Entra Domain Services: Managed domain service from Azure.

     • Additional storage:Select the tier, redundancy type, and quantity of additional storage.

   • 5. Cost Assumptions: Miscellaneous costs to be used in our calculations. These include the following:

     

     • FSLogix Profile Size: Storage costs of profile containers for AVD desktop users.

     • Bandwidth: Data egress costs.

     • Storage operations: For S and E class storage.

     • Log Analytics Workspace: Storage costs for app insights and AVD diagnostics information.

   • 6. Discounts: Optionally, calculate discounts as part of your estimate.

     

     • Discounts: Select to change the discount's description.

     • Show discounts on results: You may show the discounts on the results page. Alternatively, you may hide the discounts if you are sharing the estimate with a customer.

   • 7. Margin: Optionally, add your margins to the cost estimate. The margins are added to the per-user per-month cost.

     

3. Once you have entered all the Cost Estimator inputs, select View costs.

   The Cost Estimate is created.

   

4. Optionally, select Turn off rounding to stop rounding the costs up.

5. At the bottom of the Cost Estimate, select Save.

   

6. Type the Name and Description and then select Save.

   Note: The Cost Estimates that you save to the library are accessible to everyone in your organization that has access to the Cost Estimator. That includes users with the role MSP Admin, MSP Billing Admin, and MSP Sales.

7. Optionally, from the action menu, select Export to JSON to download the Cost Estimate as a JSON file.

8. Optionally, from the action menu, select Print to print the Cost Estimate as a PDF.

Manage Cost Estimates

Once a Cost Estimate is created, you can edit, clone, export it, and more.

To manage cost estimates:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Cost Estimator.

2. Towards the top of the Cost Estimator page, select saved Estimates.

   

3. Alternatively, when you are viewing a Cost Estimate, at the bottom, select Manage estimates.

   

4. Locate the Cost Estimate you wish to work with.

5. From the action menu, select one of the following actions:

   

   • Print: Generate a PDF of the detailed Cost Estimate.

   • Edit: Change the Cost Estimate.

   • Clone: Create a duplicate of the Cost Estimate.

   • Pin/Unpin: Pin or unpin the Cost Estimate to/from the top of the Cost Estimates table.

   • Export to CSV: Generate a CSV file with a list of Azure and Microsoft resources in the Cost Estimate.

   • Export to JSON: Generate a JSON file with a list of Azure and Microsoft resources in the Cost Estimate.

   • Delete: Delete the Cost Estimate.

     Note: It is not possible to recover deleted Cost Estimates.

6. Select Add estimate to create a new Cost Estimate.

7. Select Import to import a .txt file that contains a Cost Estimate that was exported in the JSON format.

Cost Estimator Settings

There are several important settings that allow you to control your Cost Estimator experience.

To manage the Cost Estimator settings:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Cost Estimator.

2. Select View costs and then at the bottom select Manage estimates.

3. Towards the top of the Cost Estimator page, select the gears icon.

   

4. Change the following Cost Estimator settings:

   • Show mine only: Toggle this option on to only show Cost Estimates you created. Toggle this option off to show Cost Estimates created by everyone in your organization.

   • Default to manage: Toggle this option on to take you to the Manage Estimates page when you start the Cost Estimator. Toggle this option off to initially take you to the Cost Estimate page.

Manage Cost Estimator Defaults

Nerdio Manager allows you to manage various Cost Estimator defaults. This includes configuration settings, discounts, and markups.

To manage the Cost Estimator defaults:

1. At the MSP level, navigate to Settings > Environment.

2. In the Cost Estimator Default tile, select Edit.

   

3. Enter all the desired defaults.

   • Custom discount: Select to change the discount's description. In addition, from the drop-down list, select whether to apply a percent or fixed amount discount.

   • Show on results page: Select the option to show the markups on the results page.

4. Once you have entered all the desired information, select OK.