Of course after all these years listening to the doomsday fanboys that every year would be the year of VDI, people got tired of that joke. Knowing the EUC industry likes a good joke, Microsoft had to come up with something.
So for your amusement, Ladies and Gentlemen, Microsoft brings you Windows Virtual Desktops! WVD for short or just Windows Virtual Delusion as I decided to call it.
If you follow the right people on Twitter, you will notice that my ol’pal Steve Greenberg tweeted this:
” Well Thin Client/Server Based Computing has come full circle. Excessive application resource requirements and various compat issues, mostly with OS patches, are introducing scalability issues and stability problems on shared server OS pushing VDI to be increasingly preferable “
Translating this to plain English, he is implying that due to compatibility issues and patches in a SERVER OS platform (i.e. Window Server 2016, Windows Server 2019), VDI is growing. We can logically imply that if VDI is being used for that, this means VDI has way less compatibility issues AND is virtually immune to OS patches. This is not my analysis though; this is simply what is written in that tweet.
Now, where is the problem? First of all, if you are using Windows 10, you probably noticed the damn thing is updated more often then you recharge the battery on your Windows 10 device. In other words, a nightmare for users (and therefore, to IT). Sure you can stick to Windows 7 for VDI, Assuming you do that, then the compatibility issue should be either bogus or non-existent as the apps in this case are so old that it is almost certain people already found ways to run these apps on a Server OS either by using something like App-V or by fixing whatever had to be fixed with the stupid app.
But what about Windows 10 and app compatibility? If we leave Office out of the picture for now, most LOB apps were NOT developed specifically for Windows 10 and should either work just fine on Windows Server multi-user or require minor tweaks to get it working.
Regarding resource requirements, Windows Desktop OS or Server OS should not matter. Worst case I simply give a single server VM to the user, what VDI does. Simple.
Now bringing Office to the picture, the story changes. Before we get to that, let’s take a look at the whole WVD thing that by now you know it is an Azure thing only.
If you remember, a couple years ago Microsoft brought us another joke: ARA. If you are not aware of what this is, you can stop reading here and close this post. Azure RemoteApp (ARA) was Microsoft’s attempt on having an Azure based service to host applications for companies out there. When it was being planned, many people in the industry (mostly Microsoft MVPs), when asked by Microsoft about their thoughts regarding it, explicitly told them it would fluke. It would fail like the Titanic did.
Thinking that most MVPs are idiots, Microsoft told us (at the time I was an MVP) we were wrong and that ARA was the next big thing. In ways they were right. It was the next big thing that would fail miserably, pretty much a cloud-based Microsoft Bob.
Fast forward to 2018, with Microsoft and a pile of other companies trying to shift their revenue model to a cloud-based one, Microsoft now brings us WVD. With it, it brought requirements/limitations that force people to use Azure. First, it is only available on Azure. Secondly, do you need Office 365? Guess what, Office 365 will no longer run on multi-user Server OS (RDSH) but wait, it runs on multi-user Desktop OS (WVD). What means, you have to go for Azure.
The bottom line is, they cannot fail one more time with a solution to deliver Windows apps and desktops on Azure. ARA was ugly enough. If they screw it up again, I can bet many people will be invited to work for Amazon or Google.
The beauty here is, no matter what you and I think, you have no option. Cloud will be pushed down your throat and you will have to use WVD, like it or not. At least based on what we know today. If there is enough push back on this, maybe and a HUGE maybe, we may see WVD (multi-user Windows 10) as an option for on-premises deployments. But do not count on that.
Now on the Office topic: Office and Office 365 are different beasts but in many cases these are treated as the exact same thing. Most LOB apps as we know, could not give a bigger shit if I can save crap to OneDrive or not. Or if Microsoft Teams is available. For LOB apps, Office means Excel, Outlook or Word integration. Everything else is irrelevant. This probably means Windows Server 2019 with Office 2019 should still be able to work just fine with the LOB apps, assuming these do not have specific ties/requirements for a particular Office version. Of course for users not using these LOB apps, and simply relying on Microsoft Office as they know on their own devices, Office 365 may be what they want/need. What leads us to the right tool for the job. Two platforms, one delivering the LOB apps, one delivering Office 365, what is just fine with me.
So before you put the nail on the RDSH coffin, please remember ARA. Take a minute of silence remembering how many hours of PMs, developers and marketing that died in vain. And keep in mind that WVD may be the next ARA.
Resuming: be careful about the boat you decide to board. The Titanic was all pretty and shiny and we know what happened with it.
CR
Claudio, you know too much about things, how they work, how to make them work. But old style admins like you (and me) are rare now. Look around, many companies allow byod, they don’t even push GPOs and kixstart scripts anymore.
The “task worker” now is different too, it’s not a guy you used to know who wear an old cardigan and his LOB app is an electronic time card.
New “task worker” has an iPhone half of his life, he prefers same day delivery to a neighborhood store, he wears piercing and he used to have a new shiny features on his devices often, he works from home and we here hope he uses Surface. Nice Surface with a new Windows that gives you a new cool feature every other week. Office 365 that is updated with new ways to collaborate more often than SCCM scan your server for inventory.
You can’t afford this speed of change on the server. I mean you can, but it’s rare. You been to the RDSH space longer than me, I’m sure you had this fight before, many companies around still treat RDSH as a server, with all these policies, with staged patch testing, scary “app compat issues” and other “complexity”. But in reality, session host is just another user PC with Windows. And guess what? We want our customers to have a consistent experience, no matter where they use Windows. Having the exactly same OS on the home PC and corporate server helping us to achieve this goal. Last time Windows Server had a feature parity with Windows client was in XP/2003 times, beginning with Vista, session host was always a poor copy of your home laptop.
But you know, VDI is expensive, having a dedicated cloud desktop for a user that barely work between coffeeshop and barbershop is twice costly. That’s where multisession Win10 comes handy.
Do you want it on-premises? Yes, you are, but you know how stuff works, you can make it work. I know you can fine tune RDSH and tweak it enough to pretend that it is still alive and desirable.
But while you doing this, we will have same-day delivery for every new cool Windows feature right here, on Azure.
Denis is on Microsoft/AWS payroll or just VDI “*expert*”. For sure he holds all certifications to prove his knowledge.