Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@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.
As far as I know, Citrix only put in a RDS protocol replacement which is more efficient than the RDS protocol. So the actual running of an app is less a concern, but network bandwidth is an issue.
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@bigbear 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?:
@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?
What was Scott's original recommendation?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@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...
I'm pretty sure O365 now allows us on RDS servers (terminal Servers). But why does this matter?
Only use TS for the CAD stuff, and use other options for normal word documents.
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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?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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?
Considering the nature of CAD files, I don't think any sync solution are what you want. Remote searching of a repository would be best, then download that file and open it.
But even that could be slower than you want... so having two solutions might be your only choice. RDS (TS) for CAD stuff, and Sharepoint for the Word/Excel stuff.
Do you need to sync the Word/Excel stuff locally? If not, have you used the online Sharepoint searching options to see if that works for you? It integrates directly inside Office apps and is mostly transparent to users vs network shares.
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@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?
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@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?
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@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
Does Vultr have fully licensed Windows systems now? I'm asking because I have no clue.
Always has.
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@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...
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@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.
No it doesn't. I think you are confusing RDP with RDS.
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@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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.
Any use of RDS components requires RDS CALs and licensing. Doesn't matter if you use only one piece of it, if you don't have an RDS server, if you use XenApp.... everything needs it.
Except RDP, that's just a free protocol.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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.
Any use of RDS components requires RDS CALs and licensing. Doesn't matter if you use only one piece of it, if you don't have an RDS server, if you use XenApp.... everything needs it.
Except RDP, that's just a free protocol.
Aww.. ok.
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@bigbear 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?:
@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".
No, that's still RDS and really is RDS. VDI exists without RDS. Hyper-V exists without RDS. TS is renamed RDS, that's all. None of those other things are RDS. RDS is just one thing, that is often used in conjunction with those other things, but they are not included in it. 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.
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@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.
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Scott - not using a RDS gateway would mean having to do a bunch more painful solutions to get access to multiple PCs behind the firewall (VPN, or one IP per machine, or port mapping to each PC, etc)
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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.
If by Citrix you mean XenApp, that is basically just an enhanced RDP replacement that is a bit more efficient. If it works on XenApp, it'll work on Windows Server since that's what XenApp runs on.
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@Dashrender said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
Scott - not using a RDS gateway would mean having to do a bunch more painful solutions to get access to multiple PCs behind the firewall (VPN, or one IP per machine, or port mapping to each PC, etc)
OR it could just mean running an alternative that is no more complex. RDS isn't super simple, I doubt it is even the simplest option. Guacamole does this for free, for example.
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As most shops just assume that any use of RDS requires VPN, the VPN solves this issue, too. Use any VPN product and voila, the needs for the RDS gateway vanishes, too.
Lots of simple ways to skin that cat.
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@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
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@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?
