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samvanderjagt's avatar
samvanderjagt
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Aug 14, 2020

Introducing the Windows Virtual Desktop QuickStart

Introducing the Windows Virtual Desktop QuickStart

Note: The WVD QuickStart is a free community tool with no implied support from Microsoft. It is not and should not be treated as an official product from the Windows Virtual Desktop team.

 

 

Hi WVD Community! We are pleased to announce the WVD QuickStart! The WVD QuickStart solution simplifies and automates the WVD deployment process leveraging the power of Azure DevOps. It can deploy a full WVD environment for you with the click of a button.

 

Microsoft takes care of managing part of the WVD solution with customers responsible for their own Azure Subscription and the compute and storage elements (VMs and Profile Storage). Each element of your environment comes with its own challenges and complexity, sometimes leading to deployment issues or a higher barrier to entry for some. Through this WVD QuickStart solution, we have taken much of the complexity away, simplifying and automating the deployment process leveraging the power of Azure DevOps. making the platform more accessible to all skill levels.

 

As a WVD-centric end-to-end solution, the QuickStart addresses potential blockers or pain points, empowering IT professionals to get started with WVD in a matter of clicks. This makes it the perfect solution to set up demo or proof-of-concept environments that showcase the power of WVD. For customers new to WVD, it’s a great way to get an initial experience of what WVD has to offer. To learn more, please visit the QuickStart website at https://www.wvdquickstart.com.

 

How does it work?

To understand how the WVD QuickStart works, let’s walk through a conceptual overview. As stated above, the WVD QuickStart takes much of the WVD deployment complexity away, simplifying and automating the process, making the platform more accessible to non-expert users. How exactly does the QuickStart achieve that? The diagram below shows a high-level conceptual overview of the deployment process:In short, the QuickStart requires you to have some prerequisites - From which it will, in a fully automated way using Azure DevOps, deploy a functional WVD environment with two virtual machines running Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-Session, build 2004, with Office 365 and Microsoft Teams installed. Additionally, the virtual machines will be configured with FSLogix for user profile management. Upon completion, a test user can login to the environment and experience the best of what WVD has to offer.

 

Resources

In short, the deployment with the WVD QuickStart consists of two main parts:

  • An Azure Resource Manager (ARM) portal deployment that deploys several supporting resources and creates an Azure DevOps (ADO) automation pipeline
  • An Azure DevOps pipeline, created by the above deployment, that will automatically deploy a WVD environment for you

After clicking the "Deploy to Azure" button on the QuickStart website, the first of the two can be kicked off after providing some limited user input. Following the completion of that deployment, the DevOps pipeline will automatically start and deploy a WVD environment for you. The diagram below gives a good overview of all components of the QuickStart, as well as all the resources that are deployed in the process.As can be seen in the image, the DevOps automation will deploy a host pool, a desktop application group, a workspace and virtual machines, that upon completion of the pipeline will be ready for use through either the web client or from the native client on your device with the test user account that gets created in the automation.

 

Getting Started with the WVD QuickStart

The WVD QuickStart can be used with both a new, empty Azure subscription or an already existing native AD or Azure AD DS setup. To get started, you can deploy the QuickStart here!

 

 

  • ash0ka's avatar
    ash0ka
    Copper Contributor
    Thanls for this. I'm settimg up a new prospect this weekend. Good timing. I'll give this a go.
  • dsheffer's avatar
    dsheffer
    Copper Contributor

    samvanderjagt This looks great. Do you know if the QuickStart tool will work with the Fall ( Classic) WVD version. We have had a lot of issues with Fall because of one of our clients is in the Central India region and WVD is not available there. Thank you!

    • PieterWigleven's avatar
      PieterWigleven
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      dsheffer The wvdquickstart only supports spring update (ARM) based deployments. There are no plans to support WVD Classic.

  • NormanEUCa's avatar
    NormanEUCa
    Copper Contributor

    samvanderjagt Great work on this, thank you! Can you add South Africa North as a permitted resource location? Regards, Norman

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