Provision a Microsoft Entra tenant
Microsoft Entra ID is used for identity and access management in Azure Virtual Desktop. This includes access to remote sessions, administration elements, and user provisioning. Azure Virtual Desktop uses Microsoft Entra ID to authenticate any operation that interacts with services running in Azure, as well as for the apps and web sites users use to see what resources are available.
Use either Microsoft Entra Domain Services or Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) to authenticate at the service layer of Azure Virtual Desktop. All VMs in Azure Virtual Desktop are domain-joined. Microsoft Entra Domain Services or AD DS is used to authenticate users to the VMs.
We'll use Microsoft Entra ID in several of the steps to prepare for Azure Virtual Desktop.
Get Microsoft Entra tenant
To get started with Azure Virtual Desktop, you need access to a Microsoft Entra tenant environment with an account that has Azure subscription.
Microsoft 365 - If you're using any Microsoft 365 services, you already have a tenant you can use. Just sign in to the Azure portal using the credentials for your tenant. You can add the additional compute, storage, and networking services that you'll need for Azure Virtual Desktop. Be aware that you'll need to create an Azure subscription as these Azure services are billed separately from Microsoft 365.
New tenant - If you don't have a tenant or subscription that you can use to set up Azure Virtual Desktop, sign up for one at https://azure.microsoft.com.
Trial environment - For a smaller Azure Virtual Desktop test environment, you may be able to use a trial environment to save costs. Many of the services required to get Azure Virtual Desktop running aren't included with Microsoft 365 like storage accounts, and virtual machines. Create a free Azure account.