{"id":7412,"date":"2021-12-09T07:17:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T07:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/?p=7412"},"modified":"2021-12-09T07:17:11","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T07:17:11","slug":"windows-virtual-desktop-renamed-to-azure-virtual-desktop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/insights\/geek-speak\/modern-workplace\/windows-virtual-desktop-renamed-to-azure-virtual-desktop\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Virtual Desktop Renamed to Azure Virtual Desktop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On&nbsp;June&nbsp;7<sup>th<\/sup>, 2021&nbsp;Microsoft&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/blog\/azure-virtual-desktop-the-desktop-and-app-virtualization-platform-for-the-hybrid-workplace\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">announced<\/a>&nbsp;a name&nbsp;change&nbsp;of what we previously knew as Windows Virtual Desktop to Azure Virtual Desktop&nbsp;(AVD).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The service is run&nbsp;in Azure VMs as an enterprise&nbsp;VM solution for enterprises\u2019 end users.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With AVD, you can configure a multi-session&nbsp;environment, allowing users access to a fully featured Windows 10 experience.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The AVD client can run on Windows, macOS, iOS and is supported on HTML5 web browsers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 40px; border-bottom: 1px solid #F37237; color: #F37237;\"><span>THE HISTORY OF THE NAME <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft first announced&nbsp;Windows Virtual Desktop&nbsp;back in&nbsp;2018 at the Ignite conference.&nbsp;MS originally had the following names for the product before settling on AVD:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Windows 10 Enterprise for Remote Sessions&nbsp;<\/li><li>Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktops&nbsp;<\/li><li>And of course, Windows Virtual Desktop&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I tend to wonder if AVD will be the final settling place for\u00a0Microsoft, as we\u2019ve seen name changes before.\u00a0However, Microsoft\u00a0is\u00a0interested\u00a0in building\u00a0their Azure\u00a0brand, so I think it makes sense they\u2019re embracing the Azure name over Windows, especially as more people are relying on the cloud to perform their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 40px; border-bottom: 1px solid #F37237; color: #F37237;\"><span>WHAT\u2019S NEW WITH AVD  <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>With the announcement of the name change, there are a few features that are now available.\u00a0We\u2019ll go through a few of them below:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Azure Active Directory\u00a0(AAD)\u00a0support<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/azure\/active-directory\/fundamentals\/active-directory-whatis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">AAD<\/a>&nbsp;is the underlying&nbsp;identity and access management solution for all things Microsoft&nbsp;365&nbsp;(M365)&nbsp;and Azure.&nbsp;Microsoft&nbsp;promise you\u2019ll soon be able to join AVDs to AAD.&nbsp;This is a huge benefit to administrators, as the requirement to join AVDs to on-premises AD will no longer be required.&nbsp;With this,&nbsp;should come the benefits of simpler&nbsp;Single&nbsp;Sign-On&nbsp;and simplified networking, since AVDs&nbsp;joined to AAD won\u2019t need a&nbsp;vNET&nbsp;configured to connect to on-premises AD.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Personally,\u00a0this is my favorite\u00a0new\u00a0feature\u00a0from those which were\u00a0announced. I like\u00a0how\u00a0businesses now have the choice of either joining their AVDs to on-premises AD or directly to AAD via Azure AD Join.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Manage Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-Session Machines with Microsoft Endpoint Manager\u00a0(MEM)<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/mem\/endpoint-manager-overview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">MEM<\/a>&nbsp;now&nbsp;gives you the ability&nbsp;to&nbsp;manage&nbsp;multi-session machines.&nbsp;Microsoft has a nice and concise article about managing multi-session&nbsp;AVDs&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/mem\/intune\/fundamentals\/azure-virtual-desktop-multi-session\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">here<\/a>.&nbsp;As of June 25<sup>th<\/sup>, 2021, the feature is still in public preview. From the article,&nbsp;Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session is exclusive to AVD and comes with the below&nbsp;attributes:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>Allows multiple concurrent user sessions<\/em>\u00a0<\/li><li><em>Users have a familiar Windows 10 experience<\/em>\u00a0<\/li><li><em>Supports per-user M365 licensing<\/em>\u00a0<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The\u00a0ability to manage multi-session machines through MEM will be another feature administrators\u00a0will be happy to\u00a0use.\u00a0This will allow for simplified management of the\u00a0AVD\u00a0image\u00a0and deploying policies and conditions across the board to AVD.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>QuickStart Deployment of AVDs<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Microsoft describes it:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This new experience will validate requirements, kick off an automated deployment, and will also implement best practices. With only a few clicks, you can set up a full Azure Virtual Desktop environment in your Azure subscription.<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like the sound of this. The ability to quickly deploy an end-user VDI\u00a0which\u00a0automatically sets up\u00a0a fully featured\u00a0Windows 10 AVD\u00a0will in some cases, simplify the onboarding processes for new employees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 40px; border-bottom: 1px solid #F37237; color: #F37237;\"><span>WHAT\u2019S NEXT <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Since these features are still in&nbsp;public preview, you can start playing around&nbsp;with&nbsp;the new updates to AVD,&nbsp;however&nbsp;those do come without an SLA&nbsp;from MS.&nbsp;I would just treat this as testing and not as production.&nbsp;Now&nbsp;is&nbsp;the&nbsp;time to become familiar with&nbsp;these features,&nbsp;so once they become generally available by Microsoft, you can feel confident in&nbsp;your ability to deploy them in your organization.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you would like more information about these new features, or about AVD in general,&nbsp;Insentra&nbsp;would be happy to setup a call with you to start road mapping your journey into the AVD VDI world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On\u00a0June\u00a07th, 2021\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0announced\u00a0a name\u00a0change\u00a0of what we previously knew as Windows Virtual Desktop to Azure Virtual Desktop\u00a0(AVD).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":7414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[128,76,77,44,202,59,60,133,198,201,200,96,199,196],"class_list":["post-7412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-modern-workplace","tag-aad","tag-azure","tag-azure-ad","tag-azure-virtual-desktop","tag-mem","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365","tag-microsoft-endpoint-manager","tag-vdi","tag-virtual-desktop","tag-virtualisation","tag-windows-10","tag-windows-virtual-desktop","tag-wvd","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7415,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions\/7415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}