Start VM on connect starts Public Preview!
For all early birds who want to start testing, keep in mind that we have the following limitations: You can configure the setting on validation pool only (we will update this post when you can enable on non-validation too) You can apply this setting for personal host pools only. You can access this setting from PowerShell and RestAPI only. Please review carefully the additional pre-requisites and set-up guidance here in our documentation. We are working to make the setting available for you through the Azure portal. Later in preview you can expect support for pooled hostpools and support for remaining Remote Desktop clients. We will keep you updated in this forum. Please share your feedback by commenting to this post or create a new post.Azure Virtual Desktop: The flexible cloud VDI platform for the hybrid workplace
When we launched Windows Virtual Desktop nearly two years ago, no one predicted a global pandemic would force millions of workers to leave the office and work from home. Organizations around the world migrated important apps and data to the cloud to gain business resilience and agility. And to support the newly remote workforce, many of you turned to Windows Virtual Desktop to give remote users a secure, easy to manage, productive personal computing experience with Windows 10 from the cloud. It has been humbling to work alongside you as you pivoted your operations to meet new challenges – from supporting frontline healthcare workers at NHS to engineers at Petrofac to educators and students. Going forward, organizations will need to support an evolving set of remote and hybrid work scenarios. To help our customers and partners meet these new hybrid work demands, we are expanding our vision to become a flexible cloud VDI platform for nearly any use case – accessible from virtually anywhere. A modern VDI platform needs to be secure, scalable, and easy to manage, while delivering a seamless, high-performance experience to end users. It should also empower organizations with the flexibility to customize and build solutions with its core technology. To support this broader vision and the changing needs of our customers, today we are announcing new capabilities, new pricing for app streaming, and changing the name of the Windows Virtual Desktop service to Azure Virtual Desktop. New platform capabilities for security and management We are continually adding new capabilities to the core Azure Virtual Desktop platform. Today we are also pleased to announce the public preview of new features that will help you onboard and better manage your Azure Virtual Desktop deployment. Enhanced support for Azure Active Directory (coming soon in public preview): Azure Active Directory is a critical service used by organizations around the world to manage user access to important apps and data and maintain strong security controls. We are pleased to announce that you’ll soon be able to join your Azure Virtual Desktop virtual machines directly to Azure Active Directory (AAD) and connect to the virtual machine from any device with basic credentials. You’ll also be able to automatically enroll the virtual machines with Microsoft Endpoint Manager. For certain scenarios, this will help eliminate the need for a domain controller, help reduce cost, and streamline your deployment. While this is a major milestone, it’s just the beginning of the journey towards full integration with Azure Active Directory. We will continue adding new capabilities such as support for single sign-on, additional credential types like FIDO2, and Azure Files for cloud users. Manage Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session VMs with Microsoft Endpoint Manager (available now in public preview) - Microsoft Endpoint Manager allows you to manage policies and distribute applications across devices. You can now enroll Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session Azure Virtual Desktop virtual machines in Microsoft Endpoint Manager and manage them in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center the same way you manage shared physical devices. This simplifies management and provides a centralized view across both physical devices and virtual desktops. Read the Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session documentation to learn more. Deploy in minutes with new Quickstart experience (coming soon in public preview): We are pleased to offer a streamlined onboarding experience for Azure Virtual Desktop in the Azure portal. 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. You will find this new experience under “Quickstart” in the Azure Virtual Desktop blade in the Azure portal. New pricing option for remote app streaming Many organizations are using Azure Virtual Desktop to stream apps to their own employees who are covered by existing license entitlements. But many organizations also want to use Azure Virtual Desktop to deliver applications “as-a-service” to customers and business partners as well. Today we are pleased to announce a monthly per-user access pricing option for organizations to use Azure Virtual Desktop to deliver apps from the cloud to external (non-employee) users. For example, this would enable software vendors to deliver their app as a SaaS solution that can be accessed by their customers. In addition to the monthly user price for Azure Virtual Desktop, organizations also pay for Azure infrastructure services based on usage. Here's what one ISV had to say about the new pricing option: “Sage is trusted by millions of customers worldwide to deliver innovative business solutions to manage finances, operations and people. Streaming applications with Azure Virtual Desktop makes it easy to streamline user access to our solutions on the Azure cloud for a great online customer experience.” James Westlake, Director of Product Management, Sage Try it during our promotional period The new per-user access pricing option will be effective on January 1, 2022. To help organizations get started now, we are pleased to offer a special promotion with no charge to access Azure Virtual Desktop for streaming first-party or third-party applications to external users. This promotion is effective from July 14, 2021 to December 31, 2021. Pricing for monthly user access rights effective on January 1, 2022 will be: $5.50 per user per month (Apps) $10 per user per month (Apps + Desktops) This promotion only applies to external user access rights. Organizations would continue to pay for the underlying Azure infrastructure. Organizations should continue to use existing Windows license entitlements, such as Microsoft 365 E3 or Windows E3 and higher, for app streaming to their employees. Visit our web page for more details. Expanding partner ecosystem As a cloud VDI platform, we work closely with our partners and empower them to build solutions that meet your needs. For example, Citrix and VMware provide desktop and app virtualization solutions that leverage the Azure Virtual Desktop platform capabilities, such as Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session, and allow you to maximize your existing investments and use the tools and solutions with which you are already familiar. We are also proud of our ecosystem of hundreds of partners who build custom solutions and provide technical consulting to help you deploy with confidence. Visit Azure Marketplace for more information on partner solutions, and Advanced Specialization page for certified deployment partners. Getting started My team and I look forward to partnering with you to take full advantage of our flexible VDI platform in the cloud and unlock new end user computing possibilities. We appreciate your ongoing support and welcome your feedback. Join us on our Tech Community to connect with my team and other customers and partners to share your feedback and suggestions. To learn more about these announcements, please sign up for our upcoming webinar.PUBLIC PREVIEW: Announcing public preview of SSO using AD FS
We are excited to announce the public preview of single sign-on (SSO) using Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) for Windows Virtual Desktop. This feature allows customers who use AD FS to configure their host pool to enable a single sign-on experience, removing the second credential prompt for the session host. This functionality is supported when using the Windows and web clients. Getting started: The documentation to configure AD FS single sign-on will guide you through the key steps needed to enable this functionality including: Configuring your certificate authority to issue certificates Configuring your AD FS server with a relying-party trust Configuring your Windows Virtual Desktop host pool to enable SSOWhat's new in Windows Virtual Desktop for April 2021
We have just updated our What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop document for changes made to the service in April 2021. Use the Start VM on Connect feature (preview) in the Azure portal You can now configure Start VM on Connect (preview) in the Azure portal. With this update, users can access their VMs from the Android and macOS clients. To learn more, see Start VM on Connect. Required URL Check tool The Windows Virtual Desktop agent, version 1.0.2944.400 includes a tool that validates URLs and displays whether the virtual machine can access the URLs it needs to function. If any required URLs are accessible, the tool will list them so you can unblock them, if needed. Learn more at our Safe URL list. Updates to the Azure portal UI for Windows Virtual Desktop Here's what changed in the latest update of the Azure portal UI for Windows Virtual Desktop: Fixed an issue that caused an error to appear when retrieving the session host while drain mode is enabled. Upgraded the Portal SDK to version 7.161.0. Fixed an issue that caused the resource ID missing error message to appear in the User Sessions tab. The Azure portal now shows detailed sub-status messages for session hosts. April 2021 updates for Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop Here's what's new for Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop: Added hardware acceleration for video processing of outgoing video streams for Windows 10-based clients. When joining a meeting with both a front facing camera and a rear facing or external camera, the front facing camera will be selected by default. Resolved an issue that made Teams crash on x86-based machines. Resolved an issue that caused striations during screen sharing. Resolved an issue that prevented meeting members from seeing incoming video or screen sharing. MSIX app attach is now generally available MSIX app attach for Windows Virtual Desktop has now come out of public preview and is available to all users. Learn more about MSIX app attach at our TechCommunity announcement. The macOS client now supports Apple Silicon and Big Sur The macOS Windows Virtual Desktop client now supports Apple Silicon and Big Sur. The full list of updates is available in What's new in the macOS client.What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop for March 2021
We have just updated our What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop document for changes made to the service in March 2021. Updates to the Azure portal UI for Windows Virtual Desktop We've made the following updates to Windows Virtual Desktop for the Azure portal: We've enabled new availability options (availability set and zones) for the workflows to create host pools and add VMs. We've fixed an issue where a host with the "Needs assistance" status appeared as unavailable. Now the host will have a warning icon next to it. We've enabled sorting for active sessions. You can now send messages to or sign out specific users on the host details tab. We've changed the maximum session limit field. We've added an OU validation path to the workflow to create a host pool. You can now use the latest version of the Windows 10 image when you create a personal host pool. Generation 2 images and Trusted Launch The Azure Marketplace now has Generation 2 images for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session. These images will let you use Trusted Launch VMs. Learn more about Generation 2 VMs at Should I create a generation 1 or 2 virtual machine. To learn how to provision Windows Virtual Desktop Trusted Launch VMs, see our TechCommunity post. FSLogix is now preinstalled on Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session images Based on customer feedback, we've set up a new version of the Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session image that has an unconfigured version of FSLogix already installed. We hope this makes your Windows Virtual Desktop deployment easier. Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop is now in General Availability Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop is now generally available to the public. This feature is an automated service that monitors your deployments and lets you view events, health, and troubleshooting suggestions in a single place. For more information, see our documentation or check out our TechCommunity post. March 2021 updates for Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop We've made the following updates for Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop: We've improved video quality performance on calls and 2x2 mode. We've reduced CPU utilization by 5-10% (depending on CPU generation) by using hardware offload of video processing (XVP). Older machines can now use XVP and hardware decoding to display more incoming video streams smoothly in 2x2 mode. We've updated the WebRTC stack from M74 to M88 for better AV sync performance and fewer transient issues. We've replaced our software H264 encoder with OpenH264 (OSS used in Teams on the web), which increased the video quality of the outgoing camera. We enabled 2x2 mode for Teams Server for the general public on March 30. 2x2 mode shows up to four incoming video streams at the same time. Start VM on Connect public preview The new host pool setting, Start VM on Connect, is now available in public preview. This setting lets you turn on your VMs whenever you need them. If you want to save costs, you'll need to deallocate your VMs by configuring your Azure Compute settings. For more information, check out our blog post and our documentation. Windows Virtual Desktop Specialty certification We've released a beta version of the AZ-140 exam that will let you prove your expertise in Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure. To learn more, check out our TechCommunity post.Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop is generally available!
Today, we are thrilled to announce that Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop is now generally available! Building on top of Azure Monitor, Windows Virtual Desktop Insights provides IT administrators with a 360° view of their environment’s health. With Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop, you can find and troubleshoot problems in the deployment, view the status and health of host pools, diagnose user feedback and understand resource utilization. General availability comes with many improvements, including the following: Improved data collection and new guidance to help you optimize for cost Updated setup experience with easier UI, expanded support for VM set-up, automated Windows Event Log setup, and more Relocated Windows Virtual Desktop agent warnings and errors at the top of the Host Diagnostics page to help you prioritize issues with the highest impact Accessibility enhancements Workbook versioning: GA release is Version 1.0.0 For our existing users- if you used Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop in public preview, we have made some updates to our guidance and default configuration to help reduce your Azure Monitor Log Analytics cost in GA. If you haven’t already, you must take action to implement these revised recommendations. See our blog post for instructions. We are incredibly excited about this major milestone and are looking forward to continuing to provide updates and expand scenario support in our monitoring journey. As always, we welcome your comments and feedback below! Best, Logan Silliman Learn more about Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop: Get started with Using Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop Estimate and manage your Log Analytics storage costs with Estimate Azure Monitor costs Review terms and concepts in our glossary If you encounter a problem, check out our troubleshooting guide for helpUpdated guidance on Azure Monitor for WVD
Hey Tech Community! If you are currently using Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop, we have made some updates to our guidance and default configuration to help reduce your Azure Monitor Log Analytics cost. You must take action to implement these revised recommendations: We have removed 5 per-process performance counters from the default configuration, which has a minimal impact on UI and should reduce data ingestion by over 80% depending on your environment size and usage: Process(*)\% Processor Time Process(*)\% User Time Process(*)\ Thread count Process(*)\ IO Write Operations/second Process(*)\ IO Read Operations/second Existing customers must disable these counters manually to see reductions in data ingestion. To do so, follow the steps in Configuring performance counters to manage your agent configuration. If you rely on these counters, you can keep them enabled and monitor them in the Host Diagnostics: Host browser. We have also updated our Configuration Workbook to improve checks on your Windows Virtual Desktop workspace diagnostic settings. Use the Configuration Workbook to ensure that your environment is set up correctly. To do so, you can follow instructions in our How-to guide. We recommend using a designated Log Analytics workspace for your Windows Virtual Desktop session hosts to ensure that performance counters and events are only collected for the virtual machines in your Windows Virtual Desktop deployment. To set up a new Log Analytics workspace, see Create a Log Analytics workspace in the Azure portal. We are continuing to investigate ways to optimize and improve your experience with monitoring Windows Virtual Desktop. We’re always eager to hear your thoughts- please leave comments and questions in the responses below! Best, Logan Learn more about Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop: Get started with Using Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop Review terms and concepts in our glossary If you encounter a problem, check out our troubleshooting guide for helpWhat's new in Windows Virtual Desktop for February 2021
We have just updated our What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop document for changes made to the service in February. Here's what changed in February 2021. Portal experience We've improved the Azure portal experience in the following ways: Bulk drain mode on hosts in the session host grid tab. MSIX app attach is now available for public preview. Fixed host pool overview info for dark mode. EU metadata storage now in public preview We're now hosting a public preview of the Europe (EU) geography as a storage option for service metadata in Windows Virtual Desktop. Customers can choose between West or North Europe when they create their service objects. The service objects and metadata for the host pools will be stored in the Azure geography associated with each region. To learn more, read our blog post announcing the public preview. Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop plugin updates We've improved video call quality on the Windows Virtual Desktop plugin by addressing the most commonly reported issues, such as when the screen would suddenly go dark or the video and sound desynchronized. These improvements should increase the performance of single-video view with active speaker switching. We also fixed an issue where hardware devices with special characters weren't available in Teams.What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop for January 2021
We have just updated our What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop document for changes made to the service in January. Please bookmark: aka.ms/WVDWhatsNew, as the authoritative site for all changes, as well as the official road map at aka.ms/WVDRoadmap for dates of upcoming features. If you would like to see a new specific feature, suggest these on the WVD UserVoice New Windows Virtual Desktop offer New customers save 30 percent on Windows Virtual Desktop computing costs for D-series and Bs-series virtual machines for up to 90 days when using the native Microsoft solution. You can redeem this offer in the Azure portal before March 31, 2021. Learn more at our Windows Virtual Desktop offer page. networkSecurityGroupRules value change In the Azure Resource Manager nested template, we changed the default value for networkSecurityGroupRules from an object to an array. This will prevent any errors if you use managedDisks-customimagevm.json without specifying a value for networkSecurityGroupRules. This wasn't a breaking change and is backward compatible. FSLogix hotfix update We’ve released FSLogix, version 2009 HF_01 (2.9.7654.46150) to solve issues in the previous release (2.9.7621.30127). We recommend you stop using the previous version and update FSLogix as soon as possible. For more information, see the release notes in What's new in FSLogix. Azure portal experience improvements We've made the following improvements to the Azure portal experience: You can now add local VM admin credentials directly instead of having to add a local account created with the Active Directory domain join account credentials. Users can now list both individual and group assignments in separate tabs for individual users and groups. The version number of the Windows Virtual Desktop Agent is now visible in the Virtual Machine overview for host pools. Added bulk delete for host pools and application groups. You can now enable or disable drain mode for multiple session hosts in a host pool. Removed the public IP field from the VM details page. Windows Virtual Desktop Agent troubleshooting We recently set up the Windows Virtual Desktop Agent troubleshooting guide to help customers who have encountered common issues. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint integration Microsoft Defender for Endpoint integration is now generally available. This feature gives your Windows Virtual Desktop VMs the same investigation experience as a local Windows 10 machine. If you're using Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint will support up to 50 concurrent user connections, giving you the cost savings of Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session and the confidence of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. For more information, check out our blog post. Azure Security baseline for Windows Virtual Desktop We've recently published an article about the Azure security baseline for Windows Virtual Desktop that we'd like to call your attention to. These guidelines include information about how to apply the Azure Security Benchmark, version 2.0 to Windows Virtual Desktop. The Azure Security Benchmark describes the settings and practices we recommend you use to secure your cloud solutions on Azure.Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop public preview
Today, we are excited to announce public preview of Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop! Full observability is key to ensure your employees do not have any interruptions or performance issues with their virtual desktops. Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop provides a centralized view for with the monitoring telemetry and visualizations IT professionals need to debug and troubleshoot issues. With Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop, you can: View a summary of host pool status and health Find and troubleshoot problems in the deployment including top errors, connectivity issues, host diagnostics, performance issues, client information, and more Diagnose user feedback by looking at data per user Understand utilization of resources to make decisions on scaling and cost management To get started with setup instructions, relevant terminology and concepts, and troubleshooting see our How-to guide. While the feature today surfaces many top customer-requested data points, we are looking forward to continuing to improve our tools to meet your monitoring needs – please let us know your feedback by replying to this post!
