Microsoft Kills Its Classic Azure DaaS, Because It Isn't Really Azure

Microsoft will deprecate the classic edition of its Azure Virtual Desktop desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) and has given customers three years to keep using the service before they'll need to find an alternative. From a report: The software giant seems to have spent years trying to confuse cloudy DaaS users, as it has offered two products called Azure Virtual Desktop, with varying degrees of integration with Azure.

The "classic" service has a management GUI that's not part of the Azure Portal and isn't addressable with the Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Microsoft's main deployment and management service for its cloud. The successor to Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) classic is called -- wait for it -- "Azure Virtual Desktop." This from the innovative minds that suddenly and inexplicably renamed Azure Active Directory as "Entra" and kept the name "Active Directory" for on-prem directories.

Don't know about AVD..

[Junta]

But azure active directory and "plain" old active directory was causing confusion, as the two approaches offered pretty disjoint capabilities. So at least making them different names wasn't exactly a terrible idea.

Re:

[DarkOx]

This - they are very distict products but they also have some functional over lap and most organizations that are using Azure are using both.

I have heard a lot of people complaining about the name change, but I agree it is helpful. I was having the something similar to following conversation probably twice a day for the better part of a year.

PM: Its authenticating against AD.
Me: AD or Azure AD?
PM: I don't know they didn't say.
Me: ...

Re:

[EvilSS]

But azure active directory and "plain" old active directory was causing confusion, as the two approaches offered pretty disjoint capabilities. So at least making them different names wasn't exactly a terrible idea.

This. Not super fond of the new name but glad they took "active directory" out of it. I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, you can't just rip and replace your on-prem AD with Azure AD.

Re:

[guruevi]

Azure AD has LDAP/Kerberos connectors which makes it pretty indistinguishable from either Azure ADDS or on-prem AD.

Then again, the confusion gives people room to move on to other services altogether that combine the open source Samba with OAuth and other modern systems.

Microsoft's motto should be:

[big-giant-head]

When you need software really bad, we have really bad software. I can't really seem to think of one thing they make that I can't live without.. except for HALO.. in what 40+ years , 1 good product?

Re: Microsoft's motto should be:

[drinkypoo]

Flight simulator is also good, even now. I first played 1.0. They didn't write that, but then, they didn't write Halo either.

I have a suggestion

[CEC-P]

Anyone stupid enough to use this/these/??? service(s) should get cheaper, slower internet. Then use that monetary difference to buy some damn desktops. You'll get less lag. Cloud desktops are a glitchy, unmanageable mess for moron CTOs who are stuck in 2010 where cloud-everything was the "modern thing to do." Our laptops run for 4-5 years here and have Ryzen 5 or i5 or faster CPUs, SSDs, and 16GB of RAM. They cost $850. Divide that out. And we have 10 separate branches very far away from each other. Still not really a big problem.

This is the same exact thing as "desktops are expensive so do terminals and VMs and save ALL OF THE MONEYZ!!!!1!" in the early 2000's. I know an American call center that did this day 1 from scratch and went out of business a few years later after going through 3 CIOs in 5 years. Turns out if you're an American call center and you have razor thin margins, maybe you shouldn't skimp on your computers and networks because then the phrase "can I put you on hold while I look that up in the computer system" gets said the magic 10,000th time and it summons the staffing hours cost bankruptcy fairy.

And I think "entra" is a stupid, confusing, bad name and I speak both Spanish and English!

Re: I have a suggestion

[drinkypoo]

If you're running a call center you should skimp on desktops and do everything through a web interface. Then if you have a problem with a user's terminal or whatever you just swap one in while working on the other. But then you can't skimp on the servers. Nothing happens in a call center that can't be done in a browser.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Well, to be fair, a lot of companies their "work from home" consists of an RDP session to a terminal server anyways.

I know a company where you either used their laptop or if you were accessing it from your own PC, it opened an RDP session on a terminal server to access resources. So if you brought home your laptop you could work from home normally, but if you didn't and you got snowed in, you would have to work on a remote desktop session.

Cloud Desktops make less sense inside a company, but they make a lot

Two "Remote Desktops" too

[laughingskeptic]

Microsoft also has 2 client programs it refers to as "Remote Desktop" -- The original that implements the commonly used Remote Desktop Protocol (mstsc.exe - blue computer icon) and the new one used to connect to Azure Virtual Desktops (msrdcw.exe - red circle icon). Bonkers.

What's old is new again

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

About 15 years ago, CEO wanted on prem MS Exhcange. Uh ok... so I get Microsoft rep to come sell us Exchange. The licensing model was so complicated it took over an hour just to review the various options and implications of each. The whole thing was so wild, I let the rep design a system for us which came out to over $100k just in software costs which I then showed to CEO who promptly killed the project as I hoped.

And now today they do similar shit with cloud. Because you see this cloudy thing has the

Re:

[Tablizer]

Did MS hire the pricing "experts" away from Oracle?

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Hah, my Oracle adventures!

Much less complicated than MS Exchange.

1) We can have Oracle enterprise db for free but only if we move from Amazon to oracle cloud which can't support our app.
2) We can use no-enterprise and pay based on cpu count which would have been about $4m a year and growing as we grow.
3) We can have unlimited enterprise with a complex system of licenses and support which appeared to be less expensive than cpu count but they changed terms on every call so who could say?

We kept using MySQL.