and use session virtualization and VDI where it fits best. You will likely have all three.
Notice that many times I talk about a well-managed desktop environment. Most
companies have good desktops and laptops that can run Windows 10, so just adopting
session virtualization or VDI to cut down on the management of the machine is a
huge waste of all the resources available on those desktops and laptops. Get the right
management infrastructure in place to patch the client operating systems, set up good
processes to deploy new operating systems, and use the user settings and
data/application virtualization to simplify the environment, and the desktops in your
environment will become far less of a help-desk headache.
This does not mean that you should never consider using session virtualization or VDI
for your desktops in the organization. What if your organization has not done a
desktop refresh for six years and the machines are running Windows XP but on
128MB of memory with a Pentium II processor? That hardware will not run Windows
7; in fact, it’s probably barely running Windows XP. I had an experience with a
company in just this position that wanted to move to a modern OS but had nowhere
near enough budget to refresh 5,000 desktop machines. They set up a farm of remote
desktop session hosts and replaced Windows XP with Windows Fundamentals for
Legacy PCs, which allows the machine basically to act as an RDP client, and
configured the OSs to connect to the new farm of remote desktop session hosts. Each
desktop got a new widescreen monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and now when the users
logged on, they got a Windows 7 desktop experience (even though it was actually
Windows Server 2008 R2; they couldn’t tell) and thought they had new PCs. They had
no idea they were using session virtualization and RDP. This is one scenario where
session virtualization can really save on hardware budget.
I should once again stress that whenever I talk about session virtualization, VDI, and
RDP, there are great partners such as Citrix and Quest that build on the Microsoft
solutions by offering their own session virtualization and VDI solutions. Look at what
Microsoft provides in the box with Windows Server 2016, and if that does not meet
your needs, then look at their partner offerings.
I also have not touched on the public cloud, since this is a book on Hyper-V.
Nevertheless, when considering your complete solution, leveraging the public cloud
may be the right choice. The public cloud can be leveraged in different ways, such as
using IaaS to host Remote Desktop Service–based solutions running in the public
cloud. The use of public cloud VMs is a prime reason that Personal Session Desktops
was added to Windows Server 2016, but it’s also possible to deploy regular Remote
Desktop Session Hosts. Additionally, there are actual offerings such as Azure
RemoteApp, which through a special client enables users to access published
applications directly from the Azure service. These applications can be from
Microsoft-provided templates, such as Office, or an organization’s own applications
enabled through a custom template uploaded to Azure. An organization that has a
geographically distributed workforce using Azure may make a lot of sense, or a
scenario where organizations are leveraging RDS in DR situations where it will not be