Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?
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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?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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...
They fixed that.
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@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.
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@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?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@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.
nothing changes with them, they are just normal servers. So yes, they all have to be licensed. But one datacenter license per server is all that you need. So they get much cheaper than traditional VDI very quickly. That's why Amazon uses them.
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@bigbear 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?:
@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?
Of course, as long as you license them for VDI - which is totally unrelated to anything RDS. People do this every day. That's what VDI is.
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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.
Not sure what you mean. If you want VDI, you license VDI which isn't cheap but you ONLY want it when you are using software that you are beholden to so you should blame your software vendors, not Microsoft. MS is just taken advantage of other bad decisions and bad vendors. And if you want RDS, it's pretty affordable.
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@scottalanmiller Somewhere along the way I picked up that Windows 10 Pro running as Virtual Desktop was not legal to license in any way. While it would not be a good solution at scale (to manage) running 10 on a server for my situation would be fine.
But maybe its still that Windows 10 Pro licenses can not be optained for this use outside of a large VL bulk purchase?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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.
How do they do this, though, if they have no machines at work?
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@scottalanmiller We have machines, as part of the split the old company is keeping the existing IT infrastructure. We are taking our data and leaving the premise IT with them.
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@scottalanmiller Somewhere along the way I picked up that Windows 10 Pro running as Virtual Desktop was not legal to license in any way.
That's what VDI licensing is. That's literally the only thing that it is. VDI licensing is for that one thing only, nothing else. Never has been.
On the tech side, VDI is one to one desktop virtualization. That's all.
On the licensing side, MS is the only vendor with VDI licensing and it only exists for the exclusive scenario of Windows desktops virtualized.
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
But maybe its still that Windows 10 Pro licenses can not be optained for this use outside of a large VL bulk purchase?
Not aware of anything like that. You can get them like one at a time.
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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?:
@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...
You mean that they don't provide GPU access? That they use KVM doesn't affect anything itself.
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@scottalanmiller You have an example link or SKU?
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@scottalanmiller So I virtualized server 2016 server (on Vultr) can run a VDI/RDS setup?
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
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.
The cost difference here would be you purchase VDI licenses for like $130/yr per session.
If you have 10 PCs that cost $1000/ea, that's 10K and includes the Windows `10 Pro license.
The question is, can you build a server that will run those same users for less than $10K. Thing to keep in mind, you'll pay $1300/yr for the Windows licenses.
Sure on the surface this looks like it might be more expensive, but when you consider many fewer power supplies, likely less power consumption, single device to manage, etc.. it might be worth it for you.
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@scottalanmiller You have an example link or SKU?
It's just the Software Assurance add on.
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@bigbear said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
@scottalanmiller So I virtualized server 2016 server (on Vultr) can run a VDI/RDS setup?
Of course. I mean... as long as you are the only user, it's VDI by default! RDS is just a role you install on top of that if you want that additionally.
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@scottalanmiller said in Has Windows 10 VDI Licensing changed yet?:
On the licensing side, MS is the only vendor with VDI licensing and it only exists for the exclusive scenario of Windows desktops virtualized.
lol - 'nix is free, so of course no cost here, and again, Apple only allows MAC OS to run on apple hardware, so a non option.
So while what you say is true, it puts MS in an unfair bad light.MS is moving everything they can to a subscription license. So while it would be better for customers, I'm not surprised when the license basically becomes divorced from the hardware in VDI, they only want a subscription service for this.
