Windows Virtual Desktop now in the Wild – Public Preview Now Available

The Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) product and strategy announced last September is finally here in public preview.  Something near and dear to my heart for the last 6 months.  I’ve been in private preview and had to keep a lid on it 🙂 Yea!!

What is it?

Simply put, it’s multi-session Windows 10 experience with optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops. It means users can deploy and scale Windows desktops on Azure and on-premise quickly.

The service brings together single-user Windows 7 VDI and multi-user Windows 10 and Windows Server RDS and is hosted on any of Azure’s virtual machine tiers or what you could call DaaS (Desktop as a Service) in a way.

Licensing

Microsoft is pricing WVD aggressively by charging only for the virtual machine costs; the license requirements for the Windows 7 and Windows 10 based services will be fulfilled by Microsoft 365 F1/E3/E, Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5, and Windows VDA subscriptions. The Windows Server-based services are similarly fulfilled by existing RDS client access licenses. This means that for many Microsoft customers, there will be no additional licensing cost for provisioning desktop computing in the cloud.

The virtual machine costs can be further reduced by using Reserved Instances that commit to purchasing certain amounts of VM time in return for lower pricing.  All of this just means simpler licensing for Office and Windows as opposed to the crazy license models of the past.  I am not saying that crazy licensing models are gone but have gotten much simpler.

What’s the deal with Windows 7 and Support?

The new service will be available to the production environments in the by June before Windows 7 support ends in January 2020.

But, there is a big incentive, Windows 7 users will receive all three years of Extended Security Updates (ESU) at no extra cost. This should ease the cost of migration to the service; this is in contrast to on-premises deployments that will cost either $25/$50/$100 for the three years of ESU availability or $50/$100/$200, depending on the precise Windows license being used.

WVD and O365

WVD will also provide particular benefits for Office 365 users. In November last year, Microsoft bought a company called FSLogix that develops software to streamline application provisioning in virtualized environments.

Outlook (with its offline data store) and OneDrive (with its synchronized file system) represent particular challenges for virtual desktops, as both applications store large amounts of data on the client machine.  This data is expected to persist across VM reboots and redeployments. FSLogix’s software allows these things to be stored on separate disk images that are seamlessly grafted onto the deployed virtual machine. WVD will use this software for clients running Office 365, but this can be optional.

Liquidware and WVD

The technology of ProfileUnity and FlexApp only complement what Microsoft includes with FSLogix.  But do understand, if you need a simple soution for Profile Disk, then FSlogix is the way to go and save yourself some money. Over my next few blog posts, I plan to show how to set up WVD and a full walk-through of FSLogix running with WVD.

Sizing WVD?

Liquidware has a product called Stratusphere UX. It’s an EUC monitoring tool that allows you to properly size your Azure environment for WVD. This helps make smart decisions on migrations to WVD.  It doesn’t stop there, Stratusphere provides ongoing metrics and alerting that help IT Pro’s to continue to maintain a high performing WVD environment into the future.

How do I get it?

Azure Market Place 🙂 The preview is available in the US East 2 and US Central Azure regions; When GA is announced, it will be available in all regions.

In Microsoft’s eyes, its time to kickass and take names 😉

Check out my next post on WVD and FSLogix.

Until next time, Rob

The Microsoft Cloud: A Complete Picture

If you’re looking to learn more about Microsoft cloud, including how your organization could benefit from it, you’re in the right place. This comprehensive guide covers the basics and beyond, from “What is Microsoft cloud?”, to services and security.

Feel free to skip to the parts you’re most interested in by using the table of contents below. If you have any questions after reading, don’t hesitate to get in touch—I’m happy to provide clarification and answer any of your questions.

Continue reading

Azure Stack 101: The Definitive Introduction

Azure Stack

Microsoft’s Azure Stack is an excellent toolset that allows enterprises to run a hybrid cloud right in their own datacenters, giving them additional cloud options.

But to really use it to its best advantage, IT pros should know the ins and outs of Azure Stack so they can use it within their business IT infrastructures to better manage, speed up and control their Azure cloud deployments and workloads.

A good place to start is with a primer on Azure Stack itself to give business users a broad look at what’s under the hood of their IT infrastructure.

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When Is Azure Hybrid Cloud a Good Fit?

For enterprises that are getting into cloud computing for the first time, or jumping in deeper after getting some cloud experience, the Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud can be a great fit to bring it all together. Continue reading

Simplify Software Defined Networking (SDN) Across Private and Public Clouds

Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides the speed, agility and flexibility enterprises need to successfully implement digital transformation initiatives.

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Until next time, Rob

Windows Admin Center: Tutorial and First Impressions

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For more information, check out my blog post on Windows Admin Center: Strengths, Weaknesses, Enterprise Readiness and Everything Else You Need to Know or go to the Windows Admin Center site for details on how to get started.

Until next time, Rob