Got a lot of Cloud PCs that have been provisioned through group-based licenses (GBL) and direct assigned licenses? Check out this new capability: bulk resize. To meet IT admin scalability needs, we have made significant investments in the existing resize capability, which is available in Microsoft Endpoint Manager. It does what it's called, now admins can start resizing multiple Cloud PCs at the same time!
What's new?
The bulk resize capability can be found in the Bulk device action blade, and here's a list of what this capability can do:
Screenshot of the Bulk device action menu in Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center
- Resize Cloud PCs that have been provisioned with Group Base Licenses (GBL) as well as direct assigned licenses.
- Resize up to 5,000 Cloud PCs at once.
- New filtering capabilities will allow admins to select individual devices to resize, or select devices associated with members of an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) group.
Screenshot of the Select groups to include menu in the admin center
- Prechecks are also provided to ensure that the Cloud PCs are ready to resize or if there are any warnings the admin needs to be aware of.
Screenshot of the status for devices that are ready to resize under the Review + create tab in the Bulk device action menu
Resizing through Windows 365 Enterprise step-up licenses
IT admins can now purchase Windows 365 step-up licenses. The Windows 365 step-up licenses are lead status licenses available for Enterprise admins that have a direct Enterprise Agreement. A step-up SKU makes it easier for admins to migrate users from a lower-configuration license to a higher-configuration license without incurring the full cost of licensing two separate subscriptions of the product. It allows admins to cease to pay for lower configuration licenses they don't need anymore, lowering their total cost of ownership (TCO), to which they only pay the cost of the step-up license (cost of base license + delta in price between lower and higher license).
Without step-ups, admins with an enterprise agreement are required to wait for their annual review to true down licenses they don't need anymore. With the introduction of step-ups, they can purchase a higher configuration license of Windows 365 any time during the length of their EA while ceasing to pay for their original base license, eliminating the cost of ownership of two full licenses.
Note: For Windows 365, step-ups are available only for compute (RAM/CPU) and not for storage and scoped to upgrades and not downgrades of licenses. |
Leveraging step-up SKUs to resize Cloud PCs at scale on Intune:
When an admin goes through a step-up motion, the old license will be converted to a new higher-offering license. Those who decide to migrate their users to the new license can do so by performing a bulk resize action.
Bulk resize will enable IT admins to realize the full value of step-up licenses with an easy and scalable IT management flow on Intune. They'll be able to migrate their users from their current base license to the newly acquired step-up license without having to provision a new Cloud PC from scratch. This feature is currently in development and will go on public preview later in 23H1.
Additional resources:
For step-by-step instructions on bulk resizing, see Resize a Cloud PC (preview), or watch this quick demo.
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Updated Jul 12, 2023
Version 1.0Abraham_Pineda
Microsoft
Joined January 21, 2020
Windows IT Pro Blog
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