@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

RDS with VDI is still full RDS, just used as a gateway to VDI. VDI exists totally separately from it. Even at at licensing level, there is no connection.

So you're saying you can use RDP to connect to those VDI sessions and pay no RDS licensing?

Of course, users do this every day. You don't have RDS to connect to your desktop. RDS is only needed for accessing a Windows system by more than one user. VDI by definition is single user. So RDS never applies.

So you are saying my example listed above, of just running 10 dedicated windows 10 instances on Hyper-V or Xen would be legal from a licensing perspective?

@scottalanmiller Was referring to running VDI instances of Server 2016 (similar to what Amazon Workspaces does because of Windows 10 VDI licensing limitations) I was curious as to whether each instance then needed a 2016 server license.

Whats frustrtating to me is, you can have 10 Windows 10 Pro instances running in a rack on 10 servers, and be fine to offer everyone their own desktop to access over RDP. But if you merely want to combine that onto a slightly more powerful server for VDI, the licensing isnt available or ends up costs many times more.

~Andy

@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@scottalanmiller we dont have existing desktops. Everyone has a laptop or will be issued when so it leaves things where theres.... no where to remote into LOL

Weird. So this is all theoretical, there is no existing workflows today?

No, but the existing method is that you go back to the office and work through files. You may browse and search through a lot of revisions to find what you are looking for when you are at a cellular site, for example.

Since we are splitting off from the people who were most resistant to change we are finally able to take a fresh look at how we would like to set things up.

Pesonally I also like Terminal Services for controlling access to systems and being able to easily lock a terminated employee out. I will probably contain everything to TS sessions (data, IP based access to our voice network switches, VSAT software, etc)

But I can do a lot of that regardless now, it just prevents certain secure systems from being accessed remotely. Which systems is necessary and an on-call employee has to drive in to troubleshoot a 2am issue.

@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@Dashrender Yup, but obsiously the VDI Server 2016 instances wouldnt be an option

Why not?

On Vultr I would assume not because they use KVM...

And to flip things all around, as I have been testing sync solutions. Obviously OneDrive for Business is trash. it seems Onedrive Personal is miles ahead because ODfB still uses sharepoint libraries.

Google Drive and Dropbox work okay. I have been happy so far with my testing of NextCloud. What would you go for if you werent using RDS in a situation like this?

@Dashrender Yup, but obsiously the VDI Server 2016 instances wouldnt be an option, just Session Hosting or Terminal Services or RDSH or whatever they want to call it now.

And then, then I think Office 365 licensing doesnt work for Office. May have to VL the Office 2016 licenses. Will have to check on that now too...

@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

What do you users have today? Do they have a desktop today? If yes, then just give the users a laptop, setup an RDS gateway, and have all of the client desktops register with it and you're done. Remote access to Windows Pro is included.

Don't need RDS if you don't want, either. But RDS does the job well.

Connecting to a Windows 10 PC over a local network uses RDS, so I'm not sure how you avoid it.

IF you're talking about the licensing needed to do RDS to a RDS server or VDI, I'm not sure it's required if you are only using an RDS Gateway feature to desktops, and not to a RDS (TS) or VDI solution. Again, I don't know the licensing requirements.

And actually that brings me back to @scottalanmiller's first post about this. Would that be a bettter option than the traditional terminal servers session and would it not require additional licensing?

@Dashrender I was going to run a test network on Vultr before ordering servers. Trying to decide what instance I should pick.

The CAD will work, and mostly used for looking at drawings not actually doing CAD. Not sure how well running CAD would be, I have seen it work will with Citrix but never just Windows Server.

@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@scottalanmiller The way Microsoft calls everything RDS now I am not sure it is clear what I am saying.

Not sure what you mean. there is only one thing called RDS that I know of.

Used to be Virtual Server, Hyper-V and Terminal Services. Now they sort of refer to it all as Remote Desktop Services and say there is "Session Based" "VDI" "Dedicated and Pooled".

@scottalanmiller we dont have existing desktops. Everyone has a laptop or will be issued when so it leaves things where theres.... no where to remote into LOL

@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

That sounds like a bad way to run IT, eh.. whatever you want end user.. we'll just give it to you.
lol

Are you referring to our old way or the Terminal Services way? If the former, things just like this ultimately lead to the split, and I would like to have some standardized practices in place as we plan to grow.

If the latter, I am open to suggestions.

@Dashrender What would be a good way for this use case? I am not really set in my way, I dont see any other config

As I am looking at this, I am also looking at running a Windows Server on Vultr. In 2012 you had to deploy a session broker, etc and a DC.

Is it possible, outside of AD, requirements, to run 2016 RDSH on a single server. Or does it still require the second server for the connection broker and other stuff that showed up in 2012?

@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

If you don't have Windows Desktops today, then you have to look to options... do you give everyone a desktop (perhaps these people aren't in the office, they don't have cubes for a desktop) or setup RDS. The question is, will your application run in RDS server setup?

And there is I think the key question between VDI and RDSH, right? Will the app work. Does the work environment require occasional user access to admin/install apps or finicky software.

In our case, we are splitting a company in two, and I am going to have to buy stuff. So its a bit of a "start from scratch" scenario. In the past, the problem was never truly solved. Lots of selective syncing, VPN, whatever each man wanted.

@scottalanmiller The way Microsoft calls everything RDS now I am not sure it is clear what I am saying.

But regardless, its definitely a remote access issue. An issue where multiple people in different places need to access a larger amount of data. So Remote Desktop Session Host (terminal services) is what will solve the problem. Or are you suggesting something else.

The VDI question was more out of curiosity should I want to try something more graphics intensive.

@Dashrender I'd prefer terminal over vdi, just to be clear.

Yes all users are mobile especially when they need to access the data most.

So rdp in and access server where files are immediately accessible to network share, versus cloud sync to every remote user.

VPN is much slower in this case than remotely browsing and viewing files through rdp

My use case is that I hoped to give our employees Surface Pro's and use Office 365 for everything. But, onedrive can't handle syncing all the data. Everyone needs to be able to quickly browse a few hundred GB of cad files at a moments notice.

The alternative is syncing several hundred thousand files to everyone computer, which even Dropbox warns against.

We are all very mobile, and I do like that I can remote in and get to my desktop from my iPhone or wherever I may be without my laptop.

@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:

So you prefer terminal services over VDI?

Of course, VDI is just a kludge for situations where you are stuck running bad software that doesn't behave properly with the operating system. You never "want" VDI, it's always a brute force fallback to fix other problems. And it is a unique problem to the Windows world, there is a reason that no other ecosystem talks about VDI... because only Windows software is considered acceptable to have been written so poorly.

While I'm sure this thinking is incorrect, at the same time, when has Apple ever had a server based solution like this at all? I've never personally seen another solution besides RDS or VDI both involving windows... but I know 'nix can do this, just never seen an actual use of it.

Linux has had it for at least 20 years

I 100% agree about VDI, it's always about software that can't run on a terminal session.

Do you do a lot of terminal services? I can't help but to call it that still. I once though it was the future, thin clients and TS.

Is there a way to avoid running separate servers for the session gaelteway stuff that started in 2012

Also can it be run solely with Azure AD? It's gonna be a nice little Saturday of Vultr and RDS

Gonna

Also when I am in a RDP session with my windows 10 box I notice sounds, graphics work pretty well. I wander how 2016 terminal services will compare and assumed their might be some multimedia benefit.

Searching for that $32 license...