Windows Virtual Desktop.
Gotta have it, don't know how to do it,
don't know why you want it, but you know it's important?
Well, rest assured, I got all the answers,
coming up for you right now.
Hello, everybody.
My name is Adam Gordon, an edutainer here at ITProTV,
back with another episode in our ‘What Is Azure?’ serial.
We're going to be focusing
on Windows Virtual Desktop in this episode.
And as we continue our conversations
about all the interesting, new, and innovative technologies
and features that Microsoft's making available
on the Azure platform, we always answer three questions.
What is the technology or feature we're examining?
Why would you want to use it?
And of course, how do we actually deploy it
and get it up and running?
Let's begin by talking about
what Windows Virtual Desktop actually is.
It's actually old technology.
It's been around for some time, conceptually, anyway.
The idea of being able to provide virtual desktop experiences
for remote users in a variety of different situations
and circumstances is not new.
It's not new to Azure.
It's not new to Microsoft.
As a matter of fact, it's not new at all because many companies,
some of the biggest technology companies we think of,
have been providing virtual desktop experiences.
And Microsoft has been among them for decades now.
Citrix, certainly VMware, Microsoft,
and many others have been doing this kind of capability,
providing it, making it available to us for a very long time.
But moving it into the cloud, making it available in Azure
is definitely something newer for Microsoft.
And when we think about the reboot
that Windows Virtual Desktop really implies
as we move the older remote desktop capabilities
that Microsoft had in their on-premises servers available to us
to be able to provide virtual desktop
and remote application session support
and move it into the cloud combining
the idea of remote desktop or virtualized desktop interfaces,
what we call VDI, along with remote application sessions,
we now get the capability to have full desktop
and remote app support made available
but provisioned through Azure.
And so Windows Virtual Desktop is all about combining
this idea of providing the desktop
and the remote applications that go with it
and making them available
as a consumable service through the Azure platform.
Now, we want to understand that when we do this,
we're actually going to be splitting
our responsibilities and our focus.
And what I mean by that is,
you can see at the top of each of our areas here,
part of the solution is going to be provisioned,
managed, and set up initially by us.
Managed by you.
When I say managed by you,
what I mean is you are going to make the decisions
about what kind of desktop operating system
you want to provide your end-users
that are going to use this service.
You're going to provide and decide
on what kind of remote applications
you are potentially going to serve up and virtualize.
Maybe it's the Microsoft 365 application space
that you want to virtualize.
Maybe it's something else.
And you're going to have management and policy oversight
and capabilities that allow us to control that,
create user access control around
who gets to use these environments,
what kind of networking
is going to be available to support them.
All of that is going to be done by you
as you make your initial choices.
But then there's a part that's going to be managed by Microsoft,
and provided and hopefully, overseen by them.
And because we have this split in responsibility,
we now can really begin to understand
and answer the second question,
why would we want to actually use Windows Virtual Desktop?
Well, we know we can provide
virtual desktop remote application experiences.
But because the complexities associated with doing so
can be very problematic we want to understand
that this split in responsibility
is really going to let us streamline the complexities
and really make it simple for us to do this
and think about doing it at scale
with the backing of the Microsoft Azure fabric
and the cloud data centers
that are regionally distributed globally around the world,
bringing remote desktop capabilities
and remote app capabilities
to any and all of your users everywhere they are.
And Microsoft takes over the most difficult elements of this
really makes it seamless for us.
You're going to see exactly just how easy it is
when we answer our third question,
how do we do it, in just a few minutes,
and I walk you through the setup initially
of how we make the choices around
what kind of clients we're going to support,
what management, diagnostics capabilities we bring to bear.
The broker service, the gateway,
and of course, our load balancing elements,
many of these are defined by us initially
during the setup wizard we go through to create our host pool,
one of the key elements that's very important for us
to work with, with Windows Virtual Desktop.
And then once we set that up,
Microsoft takes over that complexity and manages it all for us.
We get to leverage
and use all the things we're already familiar with
and used to in the Azure platform,
our compute storage and networking capabilities.
But again, they're provisioned and overseen by Microsoft
so that we don't have to worry about
the complexities associated with understanding
the health and diagnosing problems
and load balancing our traffic
for these virtual desktop environments.
Microsoft does all that for us.
We like the fact also that we're given choices here.
One of the other compelling reasons
why we may want to use Windows Virtual Desktop,
like for you, and maybe very important,
is to think about the operating systems,
as you can see I'm pointing to them here,
that we have options to use.
Windows 10 Enterprise is going to be one
that is probably going to be very important for us
in the modern environments we operate in.
Many of our end-users,
whether they're in an office or these days,
because of all the disruptions we see in the world,
many of us are working remotely.
But Windows 10 is a standard solution
for many corporate environments today.
We like the fact we can use Windows 10
with or without the Microsoft 365 apps already bundled in
and made available as part of the virtual machine
that we're going to create and serve up
in what we call a multi-session solution.
That multi-session designation is very important
because the operating system image
that we use to serve up the virtual machine
that becomes the launching pad for all these full desktop
and remote application experiences
must be multi-session to support lots of users connecting.
And we can have hundreds of users simultaneously
in these systems working because of that scalability.
But notice, we also have Windows 7.
Windows 7 Enterprise,
that is probably a little unusual for many of us,
thinking that we already know
that Microsoft's really moved away from Windows 7
and has come out and said definitively support
is essentially over,
even though they are providing free initial
and additional security updates during the transition period.
But we do provide Windows 7
for backwards compatibility and special-use cases
in environments where you still need Windows 7 to run.
And as a result of that, we can use that
and still have that capability
and we get those enterprise security updates
that Microsoft's committed to making available
to keep this environment secure.
And we have server operating systems as well.
Server 2012 R2 or greater, meaning when we think about this,
Server 16, Server 19,
all the modern infrastructure servers we need
and are running to provide file services, directory services,
name resolution services, web services, database services,
the list goes on, all of them are available here
and can be made available as virtual environments
that can be fully equipped and made ready for our users.
So when we think about
the "you versus Microsoft" conversation,
we really see the value proposition in
why this is such a compelling technology
because we get the ability to specify what our users want,
how we want it to be managed,
give some basic information on Microsoft,
and then that complexity is abstracted away
and all we have to do is then just envision our users
using the platform and maintain it going forward.
So as we combine these areas together
and we put them together,
what we ultimately get as a result of this
is the ability to run multiple users
connecting through into this area,
we'll just put some users over here,
whoever they are, whatever they're doing,
all of them connect into this environment
and can all use this platform at scale hundreds at a time,
if necessary.
I'm going to show you how we deploy this next.
And once we get done taking a look
at how you'll have all the answers to all the questions
about why Windows Virtual Desktop
is such a compelling proposition for you.
All right, everybody.
So it's time for the ‘How?’.
Let's roll up our sleeves and get right down to it.
Windows Virtual Desktop, it's one of the services
that's provided in the Azure portal.
I've already logged in and made it available so we can select it.
We can simply go in and either search for it
right up top in the search box or if it's one of your shortcuts
because you're already using it,
just simply select it and we can jump in.
Unlike some of the others we've looked at across
the ‘What Is Azure?’ serial already
where we have to first configure it, install it, and set it up,
we start with the Windows Virtual Desktop service available
but it's really just that,
a shell that has a bunch of stuff we have to configure.
And so what we see under Manage is that we have Host Pools,
Application Groups, Workspaces, and Users.
All the raw building blocks and elements we need.
And we're invited to create a Host Pool
right over there on the right.
And the Host Pool is the very first thing we have to do
because that's going to provide the infrastructure
and all of the information we need to then allow Workspaces,
Application Groups to be bound to that,
and ultimately, users to be assigned
so they can get their Windows Virtual Desktop.
So we're going to go in.
I'm going to start by creating a Host Pool right here.
We're going to have a wizard.
It's a tabbed interface.
We're used to seeing this and working with it
and many of the areas we go through,
provide some basic setup information
like the name of the Host Pool, what location,
and what data center around the world from Microsoft
we want to put it in, what resource group.
And then we'll go ahead and we'll add our virtual machines.
We'll specify what image we want, Windows 10, or whatever.
We'll set up our workspace.
And then we'll be able to go ahead
and take a look at what a finished solution looks like
because this takes a couple of minutes to set up.
I'm going to create a brand new resource group for this.
I'm going to call it the AdamWVD.
As long as we get that green check
that indicates we're good, we'll click OK.
I'm going to give the Host Pool a name.
Call that the AdamWVDpool1.
Again, as long as we get a green check, we're good.
Regional Location Association for the data center,
choose whatever works for you.
Validation Environment is interesting.
We can set up an environment
that's like a pre-staging environment
where we can test the changes we're about to roll out,
maybe a new application's being deployed
or something like that.
Or we can decide we just want to push everything directly
to the users and not have any testing.
So you choose Yes or No here as necessary.
And we see it doesn't change anything
but it gives us that additional capability in terms of the setup.
So we know that.
And then we have Host Pool Type down at the bottom.
And we have two options here.
Let me just pull this down so you can see this.
And you'll see right there we have Personal and Pooled,
which is shared.
Means that users will be able to access all of their user data,
personalization, etc.,
as Microsoft points out, using something called FSLogix,
an additional application capability we have to bring in
and configure as part of that.
So we can set this up.
Most companies will probably choose Pooled.
That's the traditional way we do this.
And then if we choose Pooled,
we have to set a Max Session Limit for number of users.
Let's go in and say, we'll set that to 16.
And we specify a Load Balancing Algorithm.
And the Load Balancing Algorithm,
Breadth-first or Depth-first, just so you can see that.
It's specifying whether or not we're going to try
to spread the user sessions across the hosts that are available
or pile them all up on one host till we're almost full
and then go to the next one, kind of filling them in as we go.
It's really a question of how we choose to optimize
and deploy our solution.
We'll go with the default of Breath first and just leave it for now.
We're going to click Next, go to our Virtual Machine tab.
Now we can Add Virtual Machines into the pool right now
or we can do it afterwards.
It's really up to us to decide.
Microsoft gives us that flexibility.
If we choose Yes, we're then going to have to specify
the build information for the VM.
We have to specify where to put it.
It'll stay in the default Resource Group
along with the Host Pool unless we choose differently.
What size, memory, CPU storage, etc.
we want from a performance standpoint for the VM.
Can take the default or change that as needed.
And then once we've done all that,
we provide some additional information.
The Number of VMs that we actually want to deploy,
let's say we're going to deploy, oh, 25.
We can put up to 400 VMs into a pool at any one time.
A Name Prefix, that would be what gets appended
to all of the infrastructure that's created as part of the pool.
Then we have to specify for the host anyway,
we have to specify the Image Type.
And the Image Type
is where we get the operating system image for the VM.
We can do this from Gallery, meaning what's already available
in Azure Windows 10, for instance,
Server 2019, or a storage blob.
We may have our own custom image we've uploaded to Azure.
That's where that Windows 7 Enterprise option comes in
that we talked about at the lightboard.
We may want to use for an image
because maybe we still have applications
that are backwards compatible
that we need to provide and make available to remote users.
And we can do that ourselves if we choose to.
So we choose the Image Type.
I'm going to go with Gallery.
That allows me to then select an image from the prebuilt list
that Microsoft makes available to us.
Notice Windows 10 is there, Server 2019 Is there.
The older operating systems I said,
like Windows 7, are going to have to be uploaded
as a custom image if I want to choose them.
Notice also, we're using the multi-session version of Windows 10,
the enterprise multi-session version specifically,
that's only available through Azure.
That's available through the Gallery.
So we have to, again, note that.
And we have that option of just the OS
or the OS with the Microsoft 365 applications
already made available so we can configure them
and add them as part of our subscription,
rolling them out to users, making it much easier for them
to become productive immediately
when they start to use this desktop image.
And we like that.
That's a really good thing.
So we're going to go ahead and just choose our image,
whatever one we're going to use.
What kind of hard drive, Standard, Premium,
SSD backed or traditional spinning platter hard drive.
We'll make our choices there noting there may be an upcharge
depending on the nature of the storage we use.
Just be aware of that.
And then Network and Security.
Again, we're making choices here about the Virtual Network,
the Subnets the IP addresses, what are we providing.
Remember, I said Microsoft manages all this stuff for us,
abstracts away the complexity.
But I also talked about when we were answering the why
and the what questions at the lightboard,
the fact that we have to make those choices initially
as we set up in order to ensure
that Microsoft knows what we want them to do for us.
And we're seeing we can do all that right here.
So we have those capabilities right here.
We go through.
Down at the bottom, we need the Administrator Account,
we need our admin or AD Domain Join UPN,
whatever that will be.
We need our Password, and our password has to be confirmed.
We're not too worried about that right now.
But we'll go ahead
and we'll put in our
mike@ITProTVdemo.com.
That is our account.
We'll put in our password, whatever that password is.
And, oh, it needs to be right, I forgot.
Okay, so we got that.
And then we're going to click Next.
For Workspace, again, same option.
We can add a workspace later or add one now.
It's up to us.
If we choose Yes, we can use an existing one or add a new one.
Give it a brand new name.
Go in, do that, Adamwvdspace1, like that.
Click OK.
We then do Tags if we have any metadata tags.
We do Review and Create, wait for that to show up.
Validate. Good.
We would then go ahead and click Create at the bottom,
just seeing all the selections we made.
We'd be off to the races.
It would take a few minutes to deploy.
Everything would be good.
Now we're not going to deploy it
because we're not going to wait for it to finish.
But I already have one built.
So I want to show you
what that deployment would ultimately equal.
So let's go over here.
Let's go to our picklist.
And let's come down here and let's go to Resource Groups
because we want to see what this thing actually deploys for us
and what it looks like.
When we go to Resource Groups,
I'm going to come in here to my MS 900 resource group,
which is where I have all this deployed.
And right down below here,
let's just give ourselves a little more room on the screen
so we can see that, we get all of the stuff that gets done.
We get a workspace right there.
We get at least one, or perhaps more than one Virtual Machines
based on the choices we made.
The Network Interface, the storage disks associated with that,
and Availability Set to scale those VMs.
We also get, just scroll down
so you could see the bottom area there,
our Host Pool and our Application Group.
All of that is a result of the choices that we made
during the setup wizard.
And then we can start to manage these elements individually.
And speaking of managing them individually,
if you want to see more about how to do this start to finish,
really get under the covers and roll your sleeves up
and get into the details of this,
join me over at ITProTV, as I always invite you to do.
We go through how to set up Windows Virtual Desktop,
we show you all the ins and outs,
and we always make sure you know what to do
to become the most productive IT professional you can
while using the Azure resources
we focus on here in our ‘What Is Azure?’ serial.
I'll be back with more exciting opportunities,
talk to you about Azure services, solutions,
and really cool new things
Microsoft's always rolling out on the platform.
But until I come back with another episode,
I'm going to wish you happy Azuring, and I'll see you soon.