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Comment by esens | Hacker News Reader

This makes sense. It is a competitor to Amazon's Windows Desktop environments. Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing.

I can see this working for a lot of places where you want good information security. You can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot.

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> Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing.

Not necessarily. They have already had a similar service. This seems to be a simplification of that service? Maybe it's sort of like Amazon offering Lightsail as an alternative to EC2? After clicking around the site for a half hour trying to figure out pricing for Azure Virtual Desktops, I gave up. I figured if you have to ask how much it is, then I can't afford it. Now they are launching a service seemingly directed to users like me, but they still can't give us prices. I assume they will in time for launch, but I'm getting really sick of hunting for prices on Azure. Every minute I have spent on that site has been wasted.

I doubt they would beat AWS on pricing. The AWS instances appear to be really well priced relative to what you could get if you tried to do the same with EC2. I couldn't see MS being as cheap. From what I remember, Azure is generally more expensive across the board.

Microsoft's secret weapon here is that if you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business/Enterprise (which is a prereq for this according for what they've said), they include a Windows license that can be ran on Azure for VDI. On AWS, you have to buy CALs and licensing for the instances (Windows VDA licenses? I last looked into that years ago). Or you can buy the licenses from AWS but I'm sure that's not the rate you'd pay getting them directly from Microsoft (and then you often have to use Windows Server which doesn't have things like WSL2).

That's not a gigantic barrier if you're an enterprise, but figuring out licensing for Workspaces if you don't have a couple smart Microsoft admins and money to burn is really hard. This is easy, since all of the license entitlements are enforced through their portal. (if you can start an instance you are licensed)

If you want an AWS instance, it's not much more complicated than pick your instance and go. Of course, we're talking about the AWS console here, which is not so easy if you aren't used to it. If you know your way around, then it's about the same as getting anything else AWS. You don't have to deal with licenses at all.

The pricing is really cheap. Looking at the pricing of instances on EC2, I don't know how they get so cheap. I'm sure the answer is in the details if I were to go digging (different hardware) but it's cheap.

I don't think the Asure alternative will be even close. While AWS makes Workspaces easy and affordable for just about any individual, that person is probably still not the target for MS. I'm guessing this new offering is simply the same service as they already offer, for businesses which want systems for less than 100 people, and are still able to dish out a load of cash.

The benefit to Azure is that it's Microsoft. They aren't going to compete on pricing for anything. If pricing is your main concern, then you don't to Azure (or even Google Compute.) If your boss says you have to use Azure, then that's when Azure has the advantage. ;)

> around the site for a half hour trying to figure out pricing for Azure Virtual Desktops

Pricing for Azure Virtual Desktop starts with a hundred users minimum. (available at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/)

The service is free (you need Microsoft E3/E5 license), you just pay for the VMs, which you can customize any way you want.

> Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing.

I don't see the obvious connection here. Software is easy to install. But Azure is not really close in scale of deployment to AWS.

It is the "next closest" right?

Sure - they won't be much disadvantaged. But I meant that if they went Azure only or tried to be the only provider, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I completely expect them to want a good experience on AWS hosted desktop. Maybe not the best, but I don't expect them to have a significant advantage. (apart from possible integrations)

And until now at least, workspaces seemed nicer than Microsoft VDI. I presume this changes it. Look forward to testing

> good information security

> You can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot.

pick one

100% guaranteed, cast-iron, watertight security is impossible - but VDIs could potentially prevent whole classes of attack. It's about increasing the barrier against realistic threat models.

I completely agree - many attack vectors are more difficult, and some are impossible. However, saying "you can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot" is, first of all, untrue, as other means exist, and second, preventing access to data is not the most important security aspect of such a system.

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