VMware delivers a load of updates for its Amazonian incarnation

VMware this week announced its virtualization stack for AWS will come to Hong Kong this quarter, one of a number of upgrades and improvements to the Amazonian edition of its core offerings. Introduced in 2017, VMware Cloud on AWS offers the virtualization giant's products in the Amazon cloud, under an arrangement that sees the …

[M_W]

Win 11 on AWS

Whilst being technically possible, annoyingly, isn't a supported configuration by Microsoft as it breaks the licence agreement :(

(The Windows 10 on AWS is a 'Windows 10 Experience' as it's delivered using Windows Server 2019. Also, Windows Server 2022 isn't great for RDS as the 'Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise' (what you all knew as 'Click to Run' Microsoft Office) isn't supported on Server 2022, cutting off people using Server 2022 as an RDS desktop in AWS when using MS Office unless you've bought perpetual licences before 2019....)

So Microsoft are seemingly wanting to force people down the road of 'Windows 10 / Windows 11 on Azure' only..

[Peter-Waterman1]

Re: Win 11 on AWS

You can always run Windows 10 on AWS Workspaces

https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/features/?nc=sn&loc=2

[43300]

Re: Win 11 on AWS

The Server 2022 thing with Office is also an issue when running on-prem session-based terminal servers.

The only longer-term session-based alternative for on-prem is Azure Virtual Desktop, but the only on--prem hypervisor that can be run on is Azure Stack HCI.

Or stick with Server 2016 or 2019 for now, but the office apps are only supported on those until Oct 2025. Or use Office 2019 or 2021 LTSC on Server 2022, but those Office versions are only supported for connection to the 365 cloudy services until Oct 2023 and 2026 respectively (and entail extra cost for the licenses). Will there be another one-off purchase version, and if so will it be supported on server OSs? In the case of at least the latter, I think we can guess!

Of course, all this pushing of customers towards Microsoft's own cloudy or cloudy-linked solutions is not at all anti-competitive behaviour.

Perhaps this could usefully be addressed in a full article on here as Microsoft has kept quiet about it - no mention of it in the "major change notification" emails which they send out very regularly to tell us about groundbreaking changes such as new emojis in Teams! And for any companies who run session-based terminal servers on-prem, hosted on non-Microsoft hypervisors such as ESXi, it's a pretty big deal.