Windows Virtual Desktop ? anybody using it ?

[woodham]

Has anybody got this setup as it looks like it could be quite useful and if you did how long did it take please?

 

 

thank

[Norphy]

This has been my life for the past few days.

 

What with all of the COVID 19 nonsense going on, the schools in our MAT started telling all 600 members of staff that they could use our Remote Desktop system in the event of the schools shutting. Uh, no. That thing is designed for 30 people max, it’d keel over and die if more people than that used it. So I’ve been looking at WVD as well.

 

It was pretty easy to deploy but it does require you to be reasonably comfortable with PowerShell. It’s very much a v1 product where not everything is doable in the Azure GUI right now.

 

Other than that, it seems to work well. I’ve got my network connected to Azure via an IPSEC tunnel, I’m managing all of the WVD VMs using my on prem SCCM and it’s all working like you’d want it to. The HTML interface is identical to the one introduced with Server 2016 and you can use the standard RDP apps that come with windows or the ones that are available in the MS, Apple and Google app stores as well.

 

When this crisis is over, I think there’s a good chance we’ll replace our on premise RDP farm with this, depending on how well it copes during the crisis. Now I just need to unleash it on my staff...

Edited March 17, 2020 by Norphy

[mukz]

This has been my life for the past few days.

 

What with all of the COVID 19 nonsense going on, the schools in our MAT started telling all 600 members of staff that they could use our Remote Desktop system in the event of the schools shutting. Uh, no. That thing is designed for 30 people max, it’d keel over and die if more people than that used it. So I’ve been looking at WVD as well.

 

It was pretty easy to deploy but it does require you to be reasonably comfortable with PowerShell. It’s very much a v1 product where not everything is doable in the Azure GUI right now.

 

Other than that, it seems to work well. I’ve got my network connected to Azure via an IPSEC tunnel, I’m managing all of the WVD VMs using my on prem SCCM and it’s all working like you’d want it to. The HTML interface is identical to the one introduced with Server 2016 and you can use the standard RDP apps that come with windows or the ones that are available in the MS, Apple and Google app stores as well.

 

When this crisis is over, I think there’s a good chance we’ll replace our on premise RDP farm with this, depending on how well it copes during the crisis. Now I just need to unleash it on my staff...

 

Out of topic but what instance did you choose? E.g B2ms

Also will you be able to PM me on what your rough costs are please? I am looking into this and if someone already has it, I’m all ears!

[Norphy]

We’re using 19 Standard D4s v3 which are supposed to be capable of handling 300 concurrent users. I don’t really have an idea of how much it’s going to cost for the month as we’ve only been running it for a few days. The forecast is saying about £3k for the month at the mo but we’ll see.

[Norphy]

I’ve also found out today that there’s an issue with browsers built on the latest version of Chromium where they sometimes refuse to connect to the farm. The workaround is to use a browser not based on chromium or to set some browser flags.

 

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-virtual-desktop/wvd-web-client-connection-errors-in-google-chrome-and-microsoft/m-p/1233810

[mukz]

We’re using 19 Standard D4s v3 which are supposed to be capable of handling 300 concurrent users. I don’t really have an idea of how much it’s going to cost for the month as we’ve only been running it for a few days. The forecast is saying about £3k for the month at the mo but we’ll see.

 

Thanks buddy! I will message you later in the month. We only have about 50 staff who need concurrent access.