Windows Virtual Desktop announcements & news from Ignite 2019!

I attended Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando Florida, a global Microsoft conference which, with over 26.000 attendees, is sold out. In this post I want to share some of the awesome news that was announced on Windows Virtual Desktop!

As Microsoft MVP’s we had the privilege of hearing about the announcements under NDA prior to the event and starting today the news became public. There is a great lineup of sessions covering Windows Virtual Desktop at Ignite this year. For a great overview check out this guide!

Today Scott Manchester presented his Windows Virtual Desktop Overview session in which he highlighted all the announcements. Throughout the week many sessions provided deeper dives into the announcements:

• A big announcement: Windows Virtual Desktop workloads are coming to on premises! A Preview of Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack Hub was announced! This means that the management plane (the WVD infra roles like Connection Broker, Web Access, Gateway et cetera) remains in Azure, while the Host Pools running workloads (Session Hosts) run on Azure Stack Hub! This is a huge step in providing hybrid scenarios! The diagram below shows what this looks like from an architecture standpoint. As you can see it’s very similar to a full Azure Cloud setup, only in this case the RD Session Hosts are running on premises on Azure Stack Hub.

The slide below shows some considerations to be aware of.

Sign up for the Azure Stack HUB preview here: aka.ms/azswvd

• Windows Virtual Desktop extends to Linux! Windows Virtual Desktop now includes support for MSIX app attach and support for Linux devices through Microsoft’s ecosystem partners. Hardware partners like IGEL and others are also providing new devices to provide a satisfying Windows Virtual Desktop experience for users.

• Coming soon is Azure Files with native Active Directory support! What this allows is a full PaaS based storage solution for MSIX app attach and FSlogix Profile Containers!
• As we speak the Azure region Japan is being enrolled as a new management plane region! In fact, when running your Host pools in Validation Work, sessions launched from that region should already connect to the Japan region. Furthermore, the regions Brazil, Asia Pacific, India and Australia are already on the road map!

• Not new but emphasized during the session today is that approved partners and value-added partners provide a huge drive and additional functionality towards Windows Virtual Desktop. The picture below shows an overview. Here is a link to the continuously updated WVD partner list!

• I have created a blog post covering this topic in more detail here, but wanted to emphasize this again that the MSIX app attach preview is open for sign up! Go to this page to sing up today!
• As you might know a preview Web UI has been available for some time now. Eventually, management of WVD will be performed directly from the Azure Portal. During Ignite an early preview was presented in a live demo, which looked amazing! Below some screenshots to give you an idea. Also, Christiaan Brinkhoff captured the GUI Portal demo during the Mechanics sessions and its available here. The session was also recorded entirely and should be available on demand soon as well!

• A great graphic about Security for WVD was also shared during one of the sessions:

• A very early preview of a new version of the WVD client was shown where you can select which monitors you want to use for your WVD session from within the client, very cool!

• Impressive demo’s were shown of a new version of the display drivers used comparing 1809 on the left and 2003 on the right.

• Also a peek into the future with a new feature that Microsoft is working on called Multi Media redirection which causes a huge drop in CPU needed for video playing within WVD.

• Windows Virtual Desktop has been added as a Azure Migrate Key Scenario which means you can migrate your RDS / VDI Hosts to Azure using Azure Migrate. This is based on Lakeside Software who is one of the WVD ecosystem partners.

• Personal Desktops in Windows Virtual Desktop can now be direct assigned! I’ve been waiting for this feature becauseup until now Desktops are assigned on the fly as users log on. The PowerShell command update for Set-RDSSessionHost to direct assign should become available next week!

• A migration from User Profile Disk (UPD) to FSLogix Profile Containers was shown! This will become available for preview soon! The picture is hard to read, but the CmdLet Convert-UPDProfile. A preview will soon open!

• A live demo of MSIX app attach (preview) was shown live by Randy Cook and Joydeep Mukherjee! In that session they announced that MSIX app attach will be part of Windows starting from March 2020! Great news! If you are not familiar with MSIX app attach, it allows full separation of applications and OS by “mounting” MSIX applications from a central storage location. If you want to join the preview visit go here: aka.ms/msixandwvd

An awesome WVD architecture poster has also been released to help you plan, build, and run your Windows Virtual Desktop environment it’s available for download here!

This is just the beginning! Ignite is over, but as more news on these announcements come out you can expect me publishing about it here or on themicrosoftplatform.net

This content was originally posted here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/windows-virtual-desktop-announcements-news-from-ignite-freek-berson