Windows Virtual Desktops costs and specs with per user Business Premium license

Question

Good evening!

We are looking to move away from AWS and take advantage of Microsoft's Virtual Desktop. Based on the content at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-desktop/ I believe the Windows 10 Enterprise instances are free. I had a couple of clarifying questions that I need to round out our business plan.

DaaS is offered with the following license offerings on a per user basis:
• Microsoft 365 E3/E5
• Microsoft 365 A3/A5/Student Use Benefits
• Microsoft 365 F3
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5
• Windows 10 Education A3/A5
• Windows 10 VDA per user

For this no extra cost offering, what are the specifications of the Virtual Desktop? If we did need to add more RAM or cpu power to the instances, how can I go about computing the cost? Would it just be through the pricing calculator or are there other factors since we have the Azure licensing?

I'm used to the AWS offering where we use an application to access the desktop instance. Does Microsoft offer a similar app, or is it all browser based?

I think that's it for now. I appreciate the time!

Answer 1

@Michael Melanson

Thanks for the ask and also for reaching us using the Microsoft Q&A.

Your understanding is correct on the License entitlement, any user licensed with an eligible license (User Subscription License, such as the list you shared) is licensed for using W10 on WVD. On resources of the VDI we have the Azure Compute portfolio. This allows you to select a VM type that suits your needs. The Azure Pricing calculator is the right tool for an initial estimate. Depending on a Personal or Pooled deployment model, one can select the required resources on a per VDI / per User basis.

The cost of a WVD solution is based on:

• Access license - The minimum is VDA per user if you are accessing a Windows Client (7, 10) or RDS CAL per user if you are accessing a Windows Server (2012 R2+). The VDA or the RDS call is a pure access license so it's not including Office 365 apps (if you need also office you can use M365 license that is including VDA).
• Virtual Machine sku - The cost is based on how many vcpu, ram, disk... Like any other Azure VM but you need to calculate it using "linux rates" because the Windows license is always included no matter if we are talking about Widows Client or Server. If you need to increase your resources, you can do that changing the actual VM sku or adding another disk...
• You need also to calculate the networking egress cost based on your usage (if you are doing lot of video calls or you are using 4k monitor the cost in higher than in a more "standard" situation)
• You need also to consider the cost of Azure Files or Azure NetApp for the storage of user profiles if you are using FSLogix
• Other key components are Backup, Monitoring, etc

In the Azure Price calculator we have a section dedicated to Windows Virtual Desktop that has two attention points:

• You can calculate the price only for a minimum of 100 users
• In the Windows Virtual Desktop section you are calculating only the cost of VMs so if you want to calculate everything you must add to the Azure calculator, other sections for storage, network egress, backup, log analytics.

For this question "I'm used to the AWS offering where we use an application to access the desktop instance. Does Microsoft offer a similar app, or is it all browser based?" the answer is that we provide a number of way to consume WVD:

Windows MSI
Windows Store App
MacOSx
iOS
Android
Linux SDK (used by IGEL OS Thin Clients)
HTML 5.0 Browsers

For any WVD specific queries you can also reach to WVD Microsoft Tech Community here where the product team actively responds on CX queries and feedbacks.

Hope the provided information is helpful.

Please 'Accept as answer' if it helped, so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

Answer 2

I think I answered one of my questions. Looks like the standard machine:
Standard D2s v3 2 vCPUs, 8 GiB memory