Microsoft announces end of support for Azure Virtual Desktop. Azure Virtual Desktop is still supported. Confusing? Don’t forget that Windows 365 Cloud PC is actually a variant of virtual desktops on Azure.

Microsoft wants to streamline its range of virtual computers offered via the cloud. To this end, the cloud giant announces the end of Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). This is confusing because Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) will still exist. After all, Microsoft has been offering two very similar services with the same name for years. Only the oldest variant of AVD will disappear and customers can migrate to the new one.

Despite the name, the original AVD service is not fully integrated with Azure. For example, the solution is not part of the Azure portal or Azure Resource Manager (ARM). Additionally, she hasn’t received any important updates in a while. In fact, the classic version of AVD is a legacy edition that offers VDI in the cloud but is not sufficiently integrated with Azure. This doesn’t really matter to customers, except that it can be a bit inconvenient. However, Microsoft maintains a separate infrastructure for AVD. By discontinuing the old version of AVD, the company is simplifying its own environment.

Three years for migration

As of September 30, customers will no longer be able to create new tenants, although Microsoft is now providing a possible exception for customers with more than 500 application groups or multi-tenant environments. Customers have until September 30, 2026 to migrate from AVD to the variant of AVD that is part of Azure. According to Microsoft, this migration can be done automatically, but a manual process is also possible.

The biggest difference between the old AVD and the remaining version is the ARM integration (the resource manager, not the chip architecture). To round out the story, we would like to point out that the successor to the old Azure Virtual Desktop is now also called Azure Virtual Desktop, but was known as Windows Virtual Virtual Desktop until the summer of 2021.

Finally, don’t confuse the solution with Windows 365 Cloud PC: another VDI solution that runs virtual desktops on Azure cloud infrastructure but is not part of Azure Virtual Desktop.

In summary

AVD will therefore disappear, while AVD will continue to exist alongside Windows 365 Cloud PC. We clarify one last time:

• AVD (the classic version) existed before and runs in the cloud, but is not seamlessly integrated into the real Microsoft Azure infrastructure. This version will disappear on September 30, 2026. Here you pay according to consumption.
• AVD (the version that survives) does much the same thing and is also based on a consumption model, but is integrated into Azure. This is more convenient for customers, who can manage the solution through the Azure portal and Azure Resource Manager, but also for Microsoft, which does not need to maintain a separate infrastructure.
• Windows 365 Cloud PC Functionally similar to AVD and also runs within Azure, but is simpler. Here you pay a fixed amount per user per month for a virtual desktop with a specified amount of computing power and storage space.

Microsoft and naming has been an interesting soap opera for some time. Just think of Microsoft 365, which used to be called Office 365, under which the Office applications run, or the renaming of the strong Microsoft Active Directory brand to Entra, but not on site, where Active Director remains.