Windows Virtual Desktop: Public Preview Available

As of today, Windows Virtual Desktop is available in Public Preview! Having been part of the private preview since the early releases of RDmi, it’s great to see it being available for everyone to test drive as part of the public preview!

To get started, follow this link for more information: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/03/21/windows-virtual-desktop-public-preview/

We can now also share some more details on the licensing of Windows Virtual Desktop. If you want to use Windows 10 Multi Session as the operating system, you can do so based on either of the following licenses

· Microsoft 365 E3/A3
· Microsoft 365 E5/A5
· Microsoft F1, Business
· Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5
· Windows 10 Education A3/A5
· Windows 10 VDA per user

You can also use the Windows Server as a “traditional” RD Session Host role for Windows Virtual Desktop. What you only need in that case is

· Remote Desktop Services (RDS) CAL

To get started with Windows Virtual Desktop, check out this page: http://aka.ms/wvdpreview If you have questions or if you are looking for help setting up Windows Virtual Desktop, feel free to reach out!

You can expect follow up articles here on setting and using up Windows Virtual Desktop!

If you are not yet familiar with Windows Virtual Desktop, the explanation below is how Microsoft describes the service.

“…Windows Virtual Desktop enables you to create a full desktop virtualization environment in your Azure subscription without having to run any additional gateway servers. You can publish as many host pools as you need to accommodate your diverse workloads. You can use the Windows Virtual Desktop PowerShell and REST interfaces to configure the host pools, create app groups, assign users, and publish resources. Once assigned, users can launch any Windows Virtual Desktop client to connect to their published Windows desktops and applications. Users are securely established through reverse connections to the service, so you never have to leave any inbound ports open. For ongoing maintenance of your Windows Virtual Desktop environment, you can use built-in delegated access to assign roles and collect diagnostics to understand various configuration or user errors…”

Source: Windows Virtual Desktop Guide.