Windows Virtual Desktop LAB on Hyper-V (on-premises)

First let me explain what the new hype is all about. Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop is an Azure-powered service that lets users access a multi-session Windows 10 experience from anywhere. The service comes with Office 365 ProPlus integration for enterprise customers, as well as support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services. The idea is that businesses can easily deploy and scale their Windows desktops and apps quickly and easily through the power of Azure.

Read more here about Windows Virtual Desktop, how to set it up on Azure and all the features.

So basically this is a Remote Desktop Session Host but running on Windows 10 and not on a server OS.

As you probally have guessed by now, this cool Virtual Desktop is only available on Azure.

Installing Windows 10 1903

On my Hyper-V test lab I created a new Virtual Machine and connected it with an internal network. To give all my VM’s internet connectivity and still keep my entire lab separated from my home network I’am using pfSense. pfSense is a free and opensource firewall and router which is really easy to setup.






## Converting to the Virtual Desktop edition

Now the cool part of this blog! All the credits goes to Christoph Kolbicz which posted a tweet about how to convert the default Windows 10 installation to the Virtual Desktop edition!

Even though in my test lab I couldn’t activate Windows 10 because of the KMS key, after the reboot different features were added and the result was the Windows 10 Virtual Desktop edition.



After this error I just rebooted the Windows 10 VM to see Windows installing updates and features.



## The result

So after the reboot I was able to logon again to the Windows 10 VM. And quickly checking the edition gave me Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktop.


So this looks like we could use this Windows 10 VM as a Session Host. I already have an domain controller running in my test lab so the first thing I wanted to do is to make sure the VM is domain joined and add the Domain Users to the Remote Desktop Users group to allow them to logon to this VM.

Now it’s time to see if we can logon with multiple users and explore the world of Windows 10 Virtual Desktop.