User Profile
TomHickling
MicrosoftJoined 7 years ago
User Widgets
Recent Discussions
Windows 365 now supported in Mexico and Spain
Today I am pleased to announce that we have enabled Windows 365 in Spain and Mexico. You can now deploy your Cloud PCs into Spain, in the Spain Central region and in Mexico, in the Mexico Central region. Within a provisioning policy if you select the European Union geography, you can then select Spain Central. This increases the number of regions available in the European Union region grouping to six. The Mexico Central region is available from within the new Mexico Geography. Whilst you can select each region specifically we always recommend you select the “Automatic” option to take advantage of more of the benefits the SaaS nature of Windows 365 provides now and in the future. Spain Central: Mexico Central: In the future we will be making some exciting improvements to the provisioning of Cloud PCs by simplifying the region and network selection within your provisioning policies. This expansion increases the number of Azure geographies that Windows 365 supports, giving you more choices for locating your Cloud PCs. This means you can place them closer to your user estate, reducing latency for users in these locations. We are committed to providing more choice and flexibility for your Cloud PCs by enabling new Azure regions over the coming years. This ongoing expansion demonstrates our dedication to evolving the service into a truly global service by growing into existing and new Azure geographies, ensuring you can provide the best service to your organization. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to enhance Windows 365 and bring it to more locations worldwide.Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop sessions at the Microsoft Technical Takeoff
The next iteration of the Microsoft Technical Takeoff is coming up quick. Four days of in depth sessions, demos, roadmap and Q&A are coming up on Monday March the 3rd to Thursday the 6th. This is a great learning event where we in the Microsoft engineering and product groups go deep on a whole host of topics, from Windows, Azure Virtual Desktop, Intune and Windows365. For those specifically interested in Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop then this is the ultimate short list of sessions. Please click on the link for the session below and then click on the Attend button, (times below are in PST). To access the full site with the entire agenda and session list just visit: aka.ms/TechnicalTakeoff Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop Monday, March 3, 2025 8:30 AM - The path ahead: The roadmap for Windows in the cloud 10:30 AM - Understanding security and management on Windows 365 Link 11:00 AM - Unlocking productivity on the frontline with Windows 365 Tuesday, March 4, 2025 10:30 AM - Skill up! Cloud PC management and reporting 11:00 AM - Get to know Windows security and resiliency in the cloud Wednesday, March 5, 2025 9:30 AM - Enhancing resiliency with Windows 365 10:30 AM - Delivering like-local Windows experiences from the cloud Thursday, March 6, 2025 7:00 AM - Azure Virtual Desktop app management 7:30 AM - Azure Virtual Desktop hostpool management at scale 11:00 AM - Windows cloud migration and deployment best practicesWindows 365 now supported in Japan West
Today I am pleased to announce that we have enabled a second region in Japan to deploy Windows 365 Cloud PC’s. You can now deploy your Cloud PCs into the Japan West Azure region in addition to the existing Japan East region. Within a provisioning policy if you select the Japan geography, you can then select Japan West. This increases the number of regions available to the Windows 365 service when you select the “Automatic” region option of Japan. We always recommend using the Automatic region option when using the Microsoft Hosted Network network type. In the future we will be making some exciting improvements to the provisioning of Cloud PCs by simplifying the region and network selection within your provisioning policies. This expansion increases the number of Azure geographies that Windows 365 supports, giving you more choices for locating your Cloud PCs. This means you can place them closer to your user estate, reducing latency for users in these locations. We are committed to providing more choice and flexibility for your Cloud PCs by enabling new Azure regions over the coming years. This ongoing expansion demonstrates our dedication to evolving the service into a truly global service by growing into existing and new Azure geographies, ensuring you can provide the best service to your organization. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to enhance Windows 365 and bring it to more locations worldwide.Windows 365 now supported in Israel
Today I am pleased to announce that we have enabled Windows 365 in Israel. You can now deploy your Cloud PCs into Israel, specifically the Israel Central region. Within a provisioning policy if you select the Middle East geography, you can then select Israel Central: This expansion increases the number of Azure geographies that Windows 365 supports, giving you more choices for locating your Cloud PCs. This means you can place them closer to your user estate, reducing latency for users in these locations. We are committed to providing more choice and flexibility for your Cloud PCs by enabling new regions over the coming years. This ongoing expansion demonstrates our dedication to evolving the service into a truly global service by growing into existing and new Azure geographies, ensuring you can provide the best service to your organization. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to enhance Windows 365 and bring it to more locations worldwide.Re: Different AVD Gateway Region
The service is actually designed to always get the best gateway. It is based upon latency and existing user load evalutated at the connection time. You're right there maybe some networking issues etc, that mean that a connection is directed to a g/w that is geographically further away than another one you expect, but you are being connected to that one because at that point in time it was the most optimalAnnouncing new regions for Windows 365.
Today I am pleased to announce that we have enabled two new regions for Windows 365. You can now deploy your Cloud PCs into Italy and Poland, specifically the Italy North and Poland Central regions. Within a provisioning policy if you select the European Geography, you can then select Italy North or Poland Central: This increases the number of Azure regions that Windows 365 supports enabling you more choice as to where you locate your Cloud PCs and enables you to place them closer to your user estate in those locations, reducing the latency for users in those locations. We will continue to enable new regions over the coming years to provide more choice and flexibility for your Cloud PCs, providing the maximum choice of global Azure regions. Over the coming years new Azure regions will be announced and we will be enabling Windows 365 from these as they become available. This also demonstrates our commitment to our customers to continue to evolve the service to grow into existing and new Azure regions, so that you can provide the best service to your own organization.Re: Azure Virtual Desktop can't assign users to VM's
Have you made the assignment before this? Go the the Application Group in question within this host pool, then clik on Assignments. Add users or groups. This first step doesn't do the actual assignment, but enables the users you assign here to then be assigned to the actual VMs in the screen shot you addedARM templates updated to support availability zones
On October the 10th 2022 we announced the ability to equally distribute your Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts across availability zones during the host pool deployment process. Further information is available in this blog post making that announcement. In that blog post we stated that we would update the ARM templates in GitHub after two weeks. This was to allow anybody who references these templates directly using their URI's in their own deployment scripts and who was making use of the old availability zones reference which was using an integer to update their scripts to use this new array. In the template we have updated the availability zones to use this new Array function: This is the section that you will need to modify if you want to continue referencing them directly. This post is to announce that the templates will be updated in the Azure Virtual Desktop GitHub repository on Monday the 24th of October.Azure Virtual Desktop service limits are now included in the Azure service limits documentation
After listening to customer feedback, we have listed the Azure Virtual Desktop service limits in the Azure service limits documentation. Many customers have asked us for a simple way to view the limits of Azure Virtual Desktop. We have listened and now include service limits in the existing documentation along with similar limits for other Azure services. This information is often essential when architecting an Azure Virtual Desktop solution. Customers are already using the Azure service limits documentation when architecting and deploying other Azure services. This is an essential document that many customers make frequent use of. If you haven't already used this document then we highly recommend you make use of it here. The Azure Virtual Desktop product team has added the current limits of the Azure Virtual Desktop service into the documentation. The direct link is available here. For reference, the current Azure Virtual Desktop object limitations are: Azure Virtual Desktop Object Parent Container Object Service Limit Workspace Azure Active Directory Tenant 1300 HostPool Workspace 400 Application group Azure Active Directory Tenant 500 1 RemoteApp Application group 500 Role Assignment Any Azure Virtual Desktop Object 200 Session Host HostPool 10,000 1 If you require over 500 Application groups then please raise a support ticket via the Azure portal. We will keep these details up to date to reflect any changes made to the service as it grows over time. One such change was actually made recently. My colleague Vidya Nagarajan announced that we have increased the Application Groups per Azure Active Directory tenant from 200 up to 500. This will make it easier if you are managing large and complex deployments. As always, we encourage your feedback. Please feel free to submit that hereAnnouncing the public preview of the Azure Virtual Desktop metadata service in Japan.
Today I am pleased to announce the public preview of the Azure Virtual Desktop metadata service in Japan. This now adds Japan East into the metadata location list when choosing the object location within the host pool deployment process. This enables our customers to choose to locate their AVD objects within the geographical boundary of Japan. You have always been able to place your session host VM’s in the Japanese Azure regions, as well as all other regions. This announcement relates just to the metadata service. We guarantee that the metadata for this host pool object is only stored within the Japan geography. We replicate the data to the Azure paired region of Japan West for disaster recovery purposes. More detail regarding the Azure Virtual Desktop data locations is available in this article. Testing In order to test the new Japan East metadata location all that you need to do is create a new host pool in the Location drop down on the first “Basics” tab, select Japan East. Then continue to create a host pool as you normally would. This is a rolling change starting today and could take up to five days to appear for all customers. Azure Virtual Desktop is the leading virtual desktop solution, to securely deliver Windows desktops and applications from the planets most distributed hyperscale cloud. This is just another example of our commitment to making Azure Virtual Desktop a truly global virtual desktop service that provides the most extensive list of locations for geo-residency purposes and makes use of the growing number of Azure regions.What is new in Windows Virtual Desktop for November 2021
Here's what changed in November 2021: Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI is now in public preview. This feature is for customers who need desktop virtualization for apps that have to stay on-premises for performance and data security reasons. To learn more, see our blog post and the Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI documentation. Autoscale public preview We're pleased to introduce the new autoscale feature, which lets you stop or start session hosts automatically based on a schedule you set. Autoscale lets you optimize infrastructure costs by configuring your shared or pooled desktops to only charge for the resources you actually use. You can learn more about the autoscale feature by reading our documentation and watching our Azure Academy video. Azure Virtual Desktop starter kit for Power Automate Your organization can now use the Azure Virtual Desktop starter kit to manage its robotic process automation (RPA) workloads. Learn more by reading our documentation. Tagging with Azure Virtual Desktop We recently released new documentation about how to configure tags for Azure Virtual Desktop to track and manage costs. For more information, see Tag Azure Virtual Desktop resources.What is new in Windows Virtual Desktop for October 2021
Here's what changed in October 2021: Azure Virtual Desktop support for Windows 11 Azure Virtual Desktop support for Windows 11 is now generally available for single and multi-session deployments. You can now use Windows 11 images when creating host pools in the Azure portal. For more information, see our blog post. RDP Shortpath now generally available Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Shortpath for managed networks is now generally available. RDP Shortpath establishes a direct connection between the Remote Desktop client and the session host. This direct connection reduces dependency on gateways, improves the connection's reliability, and increases the bandwidth available for each user session. For more information, see our blog post. Screen capture protection updates Screen capture protection is now supported on the macOS client and the Azure Government and Azure China clouds. For more information, see our blog post. Azure Active Directory domain join Azure Active Directory domain join for Azure Virtual Desktop VMs is now available in the Azure Government and Azure China clouds. Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Intune) is currently only supported in the Azure Public cloud. Learn more at Deploy Azure AD-joined virtual machines in Azure Virtual Desktop. Breaking change in Azure Virtual Desktop Azure Resource Manager template A breaking change has been introduced into the Azure Resource Manager template for Azure Virtual Desktop. If you're using any code that depends on the change, then you'll need to follow the directions in our blog post to address the issue. Autoscale public preview Autoscale for Azure Virtual Desktop is now in public preview. This feature natively turns your virtual machines (VMs) in pooled host pools on or off based on availability needs. Scheduling when your VMs turn on and off optimizes deployment costs, and this feature also offers flexible scheduling options based on your needs. Once you've configured the required custom Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) role, you can start configuring your scaling plan. For more information, see Autoscale (preview) for Azure Virtual Desktop host pools.What is new in Windows Virtual Desktop for September 2021
Here's what changed in September 2021. Azure portal updates You can now use Azure Resource Manager templates for any update you want to apply to your session hosts after deployment. You can access this feature by selecting the Virtual machines tab while creating a host pool. You can also now set host pool, app group, and workspace diagnostic settings while creating host pools instead of afterwards. Configuring these settings during the host pool creation process also automatically sets up reporting data for Azure Virtual Desktop Insights. Azure Active Directory domain join Azure Active Directory domain join is now generally available. This service lets you join your session hosts to Azure Active Directory. Domain join also lets you autoenroll into Intune as part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager. You can access this feature in the Azure public cloud, but not the Government cloud or Azure China. For more information, see our blog post. Azure China Azure Virtual Desktop is now generally available in the Azure China cloud. For more information, see our blog post. Automatic migration module tool With the automatic migration tool, you can move your organization from Azure Virtual Desktop (classic) to Azure Virtual Desktop with just a few PowerShell commands. This feature is currently in public preview, and you can find out more at Automatic migration. Azure Virtual Desktop Agent update Version 1.0.3373.2600: This update was released September 2021 and has the following changes: General agent improvements. Fixes issues with restarting the agent on Windows 7 VMs. Fixes an issue with fields in the WVDAgentHealthStatus table not showing up correctly. Azure Virtual Desktop Client update Version 1.2.2459: This update was released in September 2021 and has the following changes: mproved client logging, diagnostics, and error classification to help admins troubleshoot connection and feed issues. Fixed an issue that caused the client to prompt for credentials a second time after closing a credential prompt window while subscribing. Updates to Teams for Azure Virtual Desktop, including the following: Fixed an issue in that made the video screen turn black and crash during calls in the Chrome browser. Reduced E2E latency and some performance issues by optimizing the GPU render path in the Windows Desktop client. To enable th new render path, add the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\IsSwapChainRenderingEnabled and set its value to 00000001. To disable the new render path and revert to the original path, either set the key's value to 00000000 or delete the key.What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop for July 2021
Here's what changed in July 2021: Azure Virtual Desktop images now include optimized Teams All available images in the Azure Virtual Desktop image gallery that include Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise now have the media-optimized version of Teams for Azure Virtual Desktop pre-installed. For more information, see our announcement. Azure Active Directory Domain Join for Session hosts is in public preview You can now join your Azure Virtual Desktop virtual machines (VMs) directly to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). This feature lets you connect to your VMs from any device with basic credentials. You can also automatically enroll your VMs with Microsoft Endpoint Manager. For certain scenarios, this will help eliminate the need for a domain controller, reduce costs, and streamline your deployment. Learn more at Deploy Azure AD joined virtual machines in Azure Virtual Desktop. FSLogix version 2105 is now available FSLogix version 2105 is now generally available. This version includes improved sign-in times and bug fixes that weren't available in the public preview version (version 2105). For more detailed information, you can see the FSLogix release notes and our blog post. Azure Virtual Desktop in China has entered public preview With Azure Virtual Desktop available in China, we now have more rounded global coverage that helps organizations support customers in this region with improved performance and latency. Learn more at our announcement page. The getting started feature for Azure Virtual Desktop This feature offers a streamlined onboarding experience in the Azure portal to set up your Azure Virtual Desktop environment. You can use this feature to create deployments that meet system requirements for automated Azure Active Directory Domain Services the simple and easy way. For more information, check out our blog post. Start VM on connect is now generally available The start VM on connect feature is now generally available. This feature helps you optimize costs by letting you turn off deallocated or stopped VMs, letting your deployment be flexible with user demands. For more information, see Start Virtual Machine on Connect. Remote app streaming documentation We recently announced a new pricing option for remote app streaming for using Azure Virtual Desktop to deliver apps as a service to your customers and business partners. For example, software vendors can use remote app streaming to deliver apps as a software as a service (SaaS) solution that's accessible to their customers. To learn more about remote app streaming, check out our documentation. From July 14th, 2021 to December 31st, 2021, we're giving customers who use remote app streaming a promotional offer that lets their business partners and customers access Azure Virtual Desktop for no charge. This offer only applies to external user access rights. Regular billing will resume on January 1st, 2022. In the meantime, you can continue to use your existing Windows license entitlements found in licenses like Microsoft 365 E3 or Windows E3. To learn more about this offer, see the Azure Virtual Desktop pricing page. New Azure Virtual Desktop handbooks We recently released four new handbooks to help you design and deploy Azure Virtual Desktop in different scenarios: Application Management will show you how to modernize application delivery and simplify IT management. In Disaster Recovery, learn how to strengthen business resilience by developing a disaster recovery strategy. Get more value from Citrix investments with the Citrix Cloud with Azure Virtual Desktop migration guide. Get more value from existing VMware investments with the VMware Horizon with Azure Virtual Desktop migration guide.What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop for June 2021
We have just updated our What's new in Windows Virtual Desktop document for changes made to the service in June 2021. Windows Virtual Desktop is now Azure Virtual Desktop To better align with our vision of a flexible cloud desktop and remote application platform, we've renamed Windows Virtual Desktop to Azure Virtual Desktop. Learn more at the announcement post in our blog. EU, UK, and Canada geographies are now generally available Metadata service for the European Union, UK, and Canada is now in general availability. These new locations are very important to data sovereignty outside the US. For more information, see our blog post. The Getting Started tool is now in public preview We created the Azure Virtual Desktop Getting Started tool to make the deployment process easier for first-time users. By simplifying and automating the deployment process, we hope this tool will help make adopting Azure Virtual Desktop faster and more accessible to a wider variety of users. Learn more at our blog post. Azure Virtual Desktop pricing calculator updates We've made some significant updates to improve the Azure Virtual Desktop pricing experience on the Azure pricing calculator, including the following: We've updated the service name to Azure Virtual Desktop We also updated the layout with the following new items: A Storage section with both managed disk and file storage bandwidth A custom section that shows cost-per-user You can access the pricing calculator at this page. Single Sign-on (SSO) using Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) The AD FS single-sign on feature is now generally available. This feature lets customers use AD FS to give a single sign-on experience for users on the Windows and web clients. For more information, see Configure AD FS single sign-on for Azure Virtual Desktop.
Recent Blog Articles
Announcing general availability of support for Azure availability zones in the host pool deployment
I am pleased to announce that you can now automatically distribute your session hosts across any number of availability zones. This enables you to take full advantage of the built-in Azure resiliency...
