Restrictions when building a Windows 10 verification environment in Azure VM

Question

Please forgive me if the text is not correct in translation.

Currently, all of our verification environments are on-premise, which is limiting the number of locations we can set up in our office.

Therefore, we are considering the possibility of creating a Windows 10 verification environment on Azure.

We would like to make the environment as similar as possible to the on-prem environment, but we are aware that there are some parts that cannot be done, so please let us ask the following questions.

a. I am using a Windows 10 Pro license authenticated on a physical PC using MAK.

b. The PC in (a) is joined to an on-premises Active Directory (AD).

c. I am considering building an Azure virtual machine (VM) to replicate the setup described in (a) and (b) for validation purposes.

1. I came across information stating that when creating a client PC in Azure, I need to log in with an Azure AD account and perform license authentication. Is this information correct?
2. If the answer to question 1 is yes, can I assume that it is not possible to recreate the scenario of (a) and (b) where only the on-premises AD is involved? In other words, can I not reproduce the validation environment of (a) and (b)?
3. Currently, I am building physical PCs using MDT. Is it possible to use the same MDT to create Azure virtual machines? While PXE doesn't seem to be supported, is it possible to deploy from offline media, for example?
4. If MDT is not suitable, is there a way to deploy an existing PC image to Azure? It doesn't have to be a physical PC image; deploying from a Hyper-V virtual machine would also be acceptable.

Answer 1

Hi Tomoki,

1. You should be able to log into the Azure Win10 Client using the local admin you create during the vm creation process and use the MAK key you are using for your physical boxes.
2. If you have a site to site connection from virtual network gateway or some sort of NVA in Azure to your on premise infrastructure, then I believe you should be able to do the same validation as on prem.
3. I am honestly not too sure on this as I havent done much with MDT. This link is a bit older but may point you in the right direction: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/590440/how-to-setup-mdt-environment-on-azure
4. Yes, This I have done and it works well. Here is a great link explaining the process: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devtest-labs/devtest-lab-create-template

Let me know if I can elaborate on anything else. Best of luck!

Patrick