Windows365 and Azure Virtual Desktop are “virtual PC’s”. And the technical information always starts and ends with “You need a licence”. Evidently big business is buying these licences and using the products.
But what kind of client computer do they need? Do you start with an (unlicensed?) Windows computer, and just configure AVD as the user? If you aren’t ‘big business’ is their any advantage, or even any meaning, to Windows365 or it’s brother AVD?
While they are indeed running on virtual PCs, that’s not really what makes them important. What’s important is that the virtual PC is not running on your local computer, but on some server out there on the Internet. You are just basically plugging your monitor, keyboard, and mouse into Microsoft’s computers, with your computer just being the part that connects them.
In theory, a regular user might want something like this, but these services are tailored toward businesses. They run business applications. However, there are similar services for regular users. They tend to focus on gaming, as that’s something you might not have the hardware to handle on your own computer. The earliest one people knew about was called Gamefly, but it shut down. Now we have Google Stadia, Nvidia Now, PS Now (Playstation), Xbox Cloud, etc. The main issue with these is input lag, due to the distance.
As for what do you run these services on? Any device you already have that is compatible. It’s more akin to paying for Netflix. You just need an app that can connect to the service. The server on the other end does all the heavy lifting.
When you buy Windows xx, or buy a computer with it already installed, you are not buying the system but buying a licence to use it. W10 is the background software that enables your computer to run other software like a web browser (Chrome, Edge etc)
You can buy a cut down version of Microsoft’s Office (Home and Student version) but if you want all the bells and whistles of Office, you pay an annual fee for Office 365. Any computer that can run W10 will run Microsoft Office.
I’ve done some research and set up virtual machines on Azure and other services.
If you want a VM, Azure is not in fact the best option, though I initially thought it would be. Their technical interface is extremely messy, and their pricing is not transparent. You can easily find yourself being billed for extras that you weren’t made aware of.
With Azure I also kept feeling frustrated when trying to figure out how to do simple things. There are umpteen menu options, and each one has umpteen sub-menus and the sub-menus have sub-sub-menus. When you get to the right menu item, there are various possible actions and options. There’s plenty of online documentation, but it’s often out of date and the interface has changed, so the instructions don’t work.
I tried Google Cloud too, but it wasn’t much better.
I recommend Amazon Lightsail if you want to try out VMs. It’s very straightforward to use, and their pricing is simple, clear and up front.
If you want to play with virtual machines, Lightsail is offering a 3 month free trial. And after that you can get a basic machine for $3.50/month (Linux) or $8/month (Windows). A reasonable and useful machine will cost more, though.
Signing up with Amazon Lightsail is painful, however. They require an email verification, a phone verification, and a credit card, and there are about five captchas during the process.
But once you’ve signed up, their virtual machines, databases, etc. are a pleasure to set up and use.
What do you need to have (at home or at the office), to make this work?
You don’t need anything! That’s the beauty of it.
You can log into a Windows VM using Windows Remote Desktop – which is present by default on all Windows machines – and work on the VM as though it was it a physical machine in front of you.
Lightsail has a browser interface as well, but RDP is better.
For Linux you need PuTTY or some similar SSH client.
So you need some ‘Windows machine’. Would it have to have Windows installed on it?
Or some Linux machine — I don’t see how SSH would be enough for Windows365, surely you’d have to have a RDP client? And is that what business uses?
Or can you run Win365 from a raw hypervisor?
This is the question I’m asking: apart from the licence, what do you need to make it work?
Yes, the VM will have an OS installed on it. Everything is installed and set up and ready to use.
For Windows, Lightsail offers a choice of Windows Server 2019, 2016, or 2012 with various configurations of RAM, disk drive, and number of processors. The licencing of the OS is included in the cost.
For Linux you have a choice of several operating systems.
If you want several people to use the same Windows VM simultaneously with RDP, then you need a Client Access Licence (CAL) from Microsoft.
I don’t have any information about Office 365 on VMs. That’s a separate issue altogether, and you would need an Office 365 licence.
No, I’m not interested in what is installed in the VM. I don’t care what licences you need for the VM or or what VM’s are available.
Yes, I’m interested in what HOSTS are required, and what HARDWARE is required, and what hosts and hardware are commonly used.
There are no special requirements. You can use any desktop or laptop machine.
Your local machine can be a very basic machine, as long as you have a reasonable internet connection. The VM is doing all the processing, and all your local machine needs to handle is screen sharing.
Windows 365 and AVD are essentially virtual workstations. What this means is that YOUR local PC is just used to perform the user input/output (i.e. displaying, keyboard, mouse, printing). Everything else is done remotely on the virtual workstation.
So in terms of local hardware, they don’t take much at all- just a machine beefy enough to do the user input/output. Which in computer terms means one about as beefy as Steve Rogers before the super soldier serum.
Maybe I’m not understanding the functionality that is supposed to be the goal here, but to my understanding (I’ve never used Lightsail) it represents itself as a VPS (a virtual private server) mainly intended for smaller commercial deployments in place of a physical server. For a VM just to play with or to have on your system for the convenience of running another OS, a great choice is VMware Player which is a free and fully functional version of VMware Workstation (free for personal non-commercial use). I have it installed on several computers and I love it. It even has a mode where it can take over the whole screen so that for all intents and purposes the virtual machine OS looks like a native OS. And it supports shared folders with the host system, USB devices, and lots more. It’s great as an isolated sandbox for testing.
Sure. Or you could use Oracle VirtualBox, which is free and open source, and has been around longer. There are large numbers of VirtualBox images available for different operating systems.
But I’m looking at setting up a system for a small/medium-size client, using a cloud database. When I said ‘play’ I meant explore the uses and possibilities of cloud VMs.
Even if you just want to try something out on a different OS for development work, it may be quicker and easier to create an instance of a cloud VM – especially if you want to share that instance with someone else.
For anyone interested, there’s a good demo of Windows365 on the ExplainingComputers Youtube channel.
The answer to the OP’s specific question is that you can access the virtual Windows instance from a browser on any platform, or using the latest - Win365 compatible - version of the Remote Desktop Client which runs on Windows, MacOS, iOS and (I think) Android.
But the answer is none, because you don’t host either one. Microsoft does. They have the equipment. You just connect to it.
I mean, we could try and guess what hardware Microsoft uses, but it’s really not useful for the consumer. You don’t need to buy any of it. You just run the software on your already existing Windows PC, Mac PC, Linux PC, phone, or tablet. If it can display video and you can type on it, you can probably make it work.
If you want to make your own virtual computer-based cloud system, you’ll need to use other software.
And, yes, if you just want to run a virtual PC on your own computer, then you’ll need different software, like VirtualBox or VMware. The hardware requirements is a computer with virtualization support (pretty much all modern computers) and enough memory that you can give to the virtual PC.
That is, unless you want to play 3D games. Then you may wind up also needing a dedicated graphics card.
Short answer - anything.
There are RDP clients available for iOS - I have connected to a remote desktop with an iphone, back in the day. And on a iPad. It helps to have a bluetooth keyboard (and with an iPhone, really good eyesight).
There are also RDP clients for assorted Linux and MacOS.
The RDP protocol is pretty standard (RDP = Remote Desktop Protocol). It might be harder to connect today, I assume there is more encryption, you’ll need a VPN client or something perhaps.
Essentially what RDP does is send your keystrokes and mouse movement to the server, and relay the screen back to you so your client software can draw the screen on your device. (For iOS, your finger is the mouse. Tap to click) Depending on what options are enabled on the server, I believe you can upload/download files from local, print to a locally attached printer, connect a local thumb drive onto the remote session, etc.
So as others have pointed out, the local hardware does not have to be very advanced. It means that you can keep using your 10-year-old PC, but just as a terminal.
They do in fact sell “smart terminals” that essentially just do RDP (or the Citrix client version, or VMware’s Horizon desktop client - which are competing protocols from other virtual desktop companies). However, the electronics to do this are almost as expensive as a low end PC so why bother?
The main point is that, even if your computer is horribly infected, it cannot infect the remote virtual PC (unless you actually upload and execute the virus on the remote - and most service providers ensure their VM’s are heavily protected via AV software and locking down security. )
Windows saves your individual settings from your logon session. For virtual machines, Windows has the facility to save this “profile” data separately, on a file server. This you can logon to any different virtual desktop (or real desktop) and if it is so configured, it will fetch you userid’s profile from the server. This includes things like “Documents”, “favorites”, your email settings, recent files, etc. etc.
this means a server need only run as many VM’s as there are people logged on, instead of one for every person.
Bill gates however still wants his pound of flesh - a Windows license - for every instance of windows running, real or virtual. Did you expect anything less?
As others have mentioned, to invoke the built-in Windows RDP client, search/type “mstsc”.
For iOS, search the app store for “RDP Client”. Some are free, some are paid. I assume the same applies for Android and the Play store.
For Mac or Linux, Google is of course your friend. And your manual. I’ve had no problem finding free-to-use clients. Just be sure you are downloading from a reputable site. Downloading software from the internet should be done with caution.
Since RDP client is of course a simple program, you can run it on any machine, including a virtual machine. Years ago, standard access involved tech support having a hole in the firewall - if the RDP connection is coming form the tech support IP address, let it in to access one specific machine (dedicated from tech support). then we’d run the client on that machine, the main virtual server, to connect to other VM’s. Even more complex, I’d RDP from home (based on my IP address) to my work computer, and then RDP from that to the other company’s virtual server, and then to whichever client needed support for me to fix their problem.
The main difference - a windows server allows multiple RDP sessions. (Two for regular Windows server, many if you buy the “Terminal Server” option. If you connect to a Windows 10 (or 7, 8, Vista ,etc.) you steal the screen from whoever has it and they just see a blank, even on a physical PC.
(Oh, did I mention you can RDP into a physical PC too, if the RDP “service” is enabled to allow you?)
there are alternative programs that instead allow you to “shadow” a session - essentially look over the user’s shoulder, while they demonstrate a problem or watch you fix it. Not the same thing as RDP.
You can run the virtual machines without any local hardware? Charles Redheffer would be pleased.
Personally, I need a host for every client, and hardware for every host.
Based on the few people here who attempted to answer the question, it’s just a better way of doing roaming profiles: I still need a full local operating system.
To be more specific, you need something capable of running:
a) a web browser, or
b) the Windows365-compatible version of the RDP client.
Oops yes. There are also RDP clients that run as a program inside a browser (IIRC, they use HTML5, so a fairly newer browser). This would require the additional software config of a web host that serves up the RDP client - does not have to be the same machine as you connect to with RDP after that.
To ensure it’s clear… for RDP terminology can be confusing.
The host is the machine (usually VM) to which you connect. Your local hardware (you need something with screen) is the client running RDP client software.
Often there are multiple VMs to act as hosts running on a Windows Server. (or a Citrix server, which itself does not run Windows). But then that server could be described as the “host” and it hosts one or many VM’s running as “clients” on the server.
Plus, if there is a web site serving the RDP client as an active web page, instead of local software installed on your machine, that is a web server hosting a web site.
So depending on which aspect of which software you are talking about, the terminology can be different.