
Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available - indigodaddy
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/30/microsofts-windows-virtual-desktop-service-is-now-generally-available/
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chime
I came across FSLogix a few months before MS bought them and have been
entirely impressed by how fantastic the product is. If you have ever dealt
with roaming profiles and huge amount of junk in C:\Users\username folder,
FSLogix is a blessing. In simplest terms, once installed on Windows (physical
or VM, doesn’t matter), the entire user folder lives as a single VHD file on a
network drive but appears to the local machine as a regular user folder. This
means browser temp files do not need to be synced upon log off. In fact there
is no syncing. Everything is accessible using just one network file stream. As
someone who manages 200 users on Citrix, it is beautiful. Their Office plugin
does the same with user’s Office profile, including Outlook. I haven’t played
with the integrated FSLogix/MS offering but the pre-MS stuff is nothing short
of a relief for sysadmins.

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Cyder
There's still large areas just 35 miles from DC that don't have high speed
internet. The cloud is STILL just for people who never leave the range of high
speed internet.

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crazygringo
First of all, offices virtually always do have high speed internet, which is
the primary use case here.

But even if you're working from somewhere else, remote desktop doesn't need
"high speed" anyways. It sends intercepted OS-level draw commands rather than
bitmaps, so as long as you're not doing Photoshop it's closer to terminal
bandwidth than YouTube bandwidth.

For the vast majority of business apps over remote desktop, whether your
internet is high speed or not is a complete non-issue.

And the basic latency (e.g. for typing text or clicking a menu) is the same as
terminal latency too.

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snagglegaggle
RDP quit forwarding rendering commands some time ago,[1] it turns out to be
faster to just send a compressed image. On very low bandwidth links effects
are turned off and a limited color pallet is used.

You're still right -- the performance is good, and using normal UI controls
you will typically not notice even a very poor connection. But this is because
UI changes are an "eventually consistent" deal, and although the Windows
terminal services implementation _does_ send bitmaps it optimizes drawing for
sending the resulting bitmap. Contrast to scrolling text on a terminal that
may not update in a manner that allows you to react to it.

[1]: Somewhere on the FreeRDP mailing list. Sorry :(

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tinus_hn
Not to mention the fact that just about no program uses the old Win32
rendering commands anymore for anything relevant. They are just far too
limited.

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ghego1
I can see the security benefit of a virtualized desktop, and in some
industries I understand that that's enough to justify this kind of solution.

Aside from that, I don't see so many benefits. The company still needs to
provide to each employee a device, and training. I don't see many savings on
this side. Companies going for cheap devices will still go for cheap devices,
while those looking for higher end devices won't settle for cheap
alternatives. Besides, SSD and CPU are now very cheap, so you can get very
good configurations for cheap. On the other hand, batteries are still
expensive, and virtualization might drain them more than using the local CPU
depending on the use case.

If the added value is the easier configuration phase and maintenance for IT
(software side, as devices still need maintenance), then ChromeOS seems like a
much better approach. Instead of delegating to a third party the whole OS
(virtualized), the customer only transfers the management of the services. And
to be fair, if security here is the main concern, then ChromeOS seems still
better positioned, both because data is on the cloud, and because of how the
OS is "restricted".

At the end of the day, WVD seems like a way to sell (also) azure services on
top of windows. So I wouldn't be surprised if companies evaluating this option
will see an increment in costs.

At this point I wonder if it's really worth, especially considering that if
for any reason the company cannot keep paying Microsoft for the service, or
it's cut off from the service (e.g. non us company -> sanctions), basically
the whole company is back to paper in a matter of minutes, while with non-
virtualized solutions there's a much bigger safety net.

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bronco21016
As someone who spends significant amounts of time on the road, a setup like
this can be a godsend.

You mention more CPU, more SSD, more memory, just keeps getting cheaper and
you’re right. You can get a pretty amazing laptop for not much more than an
iPad Pro and it will handle nearly any workload. The problem is now you have
to carry that and all of the batteries and accessories around. It’s so much
easier for me to bring my iPad Pro 11” with a keyboard case and remote into a
desktop environment for those workflows that either require a high end machine
or Windows. I imagine a Surface would be even better.

Personally, I just don’t want to carry a massive laptop to get compute if I
can access it remotely just fine. So that’s what I do. I have multiple VMs
running Windows or Ubuntu on a high end Ryzen machine with multiple Nvidia
GPUs. That’s significant more power than I could ever hope to bring with me on
the road. For me the only major setback is screen real estate. Hoping one day
some of these HMDs can fix that.

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russellbeattie
If Stadia and xCloud really do solve the latency issues inherent in
client/server computing - and show that it's economical - one could almost
imagine Microsoft launching a consumer version of this with a "terminal" that
was little more than a screen, keyboard and network connection... Like Sun
Microsystems reborn.

The whole concept would, of course, enrage certain sections of the populace
including most of HN's readership, but I can see it happening.

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thrower123
How do you beat the speed of light? That's ultimately what we're up against
here. High-frequency traders lay down special fiber lines between the
exchanges to get the absolute fastest possible ping times, at enormous
expense[1]. That gets a 13 ms ping time from NYC to Chicago.

My experience with a Steam Link, hardwired on a local ethernet makes me
skeptical that any of these cloud gaming platforms will really be practical.

[1]
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfin...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10736960/High-
frequency-trading-when-milliseconds-mean-millions.html)

~~~
nerdbaggy
A lot of traders are actually switching to wireless links since RF travels
faster than light in a fiber. But some fun stuff happens then
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/this-
heat...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/this-heat-wave-s-
so-bad-it-s-even-slowing-down-u-s-stock-trades)

~~~
teddyc
It travels faster because it travels "as the crow flies" instead of snaking
through all the conduit for a fiber connection.

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hbcondo714
I must be missing something. It's not immediately clear to me, even after
reading the article, how this is different from just procuring a Windows OS VM
in Azure. Pricing?

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nickthemagicman
Was wondering the same thing. Is this Azures version of AWS Workspaces?

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dsalzman
And the cycle restarts as we head back towards thin clients...

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rb808
I have a friend who works at a big Corporation (100k employees) where everyone
has a thin dumb client and windows desktop running on a server. It works
great, except video stutters if not small sized. Way of the future? Its an
efficient way to pool resources, and prevents people physically stealing data.

~~~
jm4
Been running a setup like that for over 6 years. It’s great. Support is
ridiculously easy. Desktop refreshes aren’t bad either and that’s one of the
most difficult projects for an IT department to pull off. We’ve done a couple
of them now - once to add RAM, disk and CPU and another to change the desktop
image. Deployments and big jobs like opening new offices or big moves are
simple.

The video is easy to fix with a fast network or Apex PCOIP accelerator cards,
although those are being replaced by expensive server-side GPU’s these days.
We have some google earth users and a few others with gpu tasks. A couple Apex
cards in a couple of the servers took care of that.

The only thing that completely sucks is USB storage devices. They are
painfully slow. Most people accept it because they are rarely used in our
environment and everything else is faster than any other system they’ve had.

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hobs
Printing with terminal services still kind of sucks and for large print jobs
there's still third party print services, but otherwise I'd agree.

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jm4
It’s not terminal services. We are using VMware horizon. Printing is fine. USB
scanning is a little slow but most people don’t seem to notice.

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rcarmo
I pretty much live inside Remote Desktop, and the only fault I can find with
this is that it starts at 100 users (in the Azure pricing calculator). Having
something like this for SoHo (1-5 users) would be a killer app in my neck of
the woods.

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tomc1985
So... this is Terminal Services as a Service?

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Thorrez
I wonder how it compares to AWS Systems Manager Session Manager.

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DeepYogurt
How does app installation work? ie. If I have a license for some software, can
I rent a virtual desktop to run it on?

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nickthemagicman
Is this Azures version of AWS Workspaces?

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Jemm
Did anyone even test the process. It has failed a dozen times in different
way.

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torgian
“Generally “ available? So does that mean it’s available sometimes, but not to
everyone or not always?

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muststopmyths
"General" availability means available to the general public, basically. as
opposed to beta/insiders etc.

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torgian
Thanks, was wondering about that

