Quickstart: deploy a sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment (preview)

You can quickly deploy a sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment with quickstart (preview) in the Azure portal. Quickstart enables you to easily evaluate a Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session remotely and become familiar with the service before deploying it in production.

When you use quickstart, it deploys a small environment consisting of minimal resources and configuration. A user then signs into Windows App and connects to a full virtual desktop session. Deployment takes approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Quickstart deploys the following resources:

• A resource group.

• A virtual network and subnet with the IPv4 address space 192.168.0.0/24 and uses Azure provided DNS servers.

• A network security group associated with the subnet of the virtual network with the default rules only. No inbound rules are required for Azure Virtual Desktop.

• A host pool with single sign-on (SSO) enabled.

• A session host running Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session with Microsoft 365 apps preinstalled in English (US). It's a Standard_D4ds_v4 size virtual machine (4 vCPUs, 16 GiB memory) configured with a standard SSD disk, and is joined to Microsoft Entra ID.

• An application group that publishes the full desktop from the session host.

• A workspace.

You can see a detailed list of deployed resources later in this article.

Prerequisites

Before you can use quickstart to deploy a sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment, you need:

• An active Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account.

• An Azure account with the following role-based access control (RBAC) roles assigned to the subscription as a minimum. To learn how to assign roles, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

  Role	Description
  Contributor	Used to deploy all the required resources.
  User access administrator	Used to assign users you specify during deployment access to sign into a remote session.

• One or two user accounts that you want to assign access to the remote session. These accounts must be members of the same Microsoft Entra tenant as the subscription you're using, not guests. You can assign other users later.

• Available quota for your subscription for the Standard_D4ds_v4 VM. If you don't have available quota, you can request an increase by following the steps in Request VM quota increase.

• Internet access from the VM that gets deployed. For more information, see Required FQDNs and endpoints for Azure Virtual Desktop.

Register the Azure Virtual Desktop resource provider

To deploy Azure Virtual Desktop resources, you need to register the Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization resource provider on your Azure subscription:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. Select Subscriptions, then select the subscription you want to use.

3. Select Resource providers, then search for Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization.

4. If the status is NotRegistered, select the checkbox next to Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization, and then select Register.

5. Verify that the status of Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization is Registered.

Deploy a sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment

Here's how to use quickstart to deploy a sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment:

1. Go to the Azure Virtual Desktop options in the Quickstart Center. Azure Virtual Desktop is found in Deliver virtual desktops and stream remote applications.

   

2. Select Get started quickly with Azure Virtual Desktop, then select Create.

3. On the Basics tab, complete the following information:

   Parameter	Value/Description
   Subscription	In the dropdown list, select the subscription you want to use.
   Location	Select the Azure region where you want to deploy the resources.
   Local administrator account
   Username	Enter a name to use as the local administrator account for the new session host. For more information, see What are the username requirements when creating a VM?
   Password	Enter a password to use for the local administrator account. For more information, see What are the password requirements when creating a VM?
   Confirm password	Reenter the password.
   Assignment
   User assignment	Select Select maximum two users. In the pane that opens, search for and select the user account or user group that you want to assign to this desktop. Finish by selecting Select.

4. Select Review + create. On the Review + create tab, ensure that validation passes and review the information that's used during deployment.

5. Select Create to deploy the sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment.

6. Once the deployment completes successfully, you're ready to connect to the desktop.

   

Connect to the desktop

Once the sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment is deployed, you can connect to it using Windows App and sign in with one of the user accounts you assigned.

Select the relevant tab and follow the steps, depending on which platform you're using. We only list the steps here for Windows, macOS, and using a web browser. If you want to connect using Windows App on another device, such as an iPad, see our full guidance at Get started with Windows App to connect to desktops and apps.

Deployed resources

When you deploy a sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment using quickstart, the following resources are deployed, where <timestamp> is the date and time when you started the deployment:

Once the resource group is created, all resources are deployed to that resource group. All resource names and their configuration are predefined.

Timestamps are in the format yyMMddHHmm. For example 2501081128 is January 8, 2025, 11:28 AM.

Clean up resources

If you want to remove the sample Azure Virtual Desktop resources, you can safely remove them by stopping the virtual machine and deleting the resources in the resource group rg-avd-quickstart-<timestamp>.

Next steps

Once you deploy and connect to the sample Azure Virtual Desktop environment, here are some next steps you might want to take:

• If you want to publish individual apps as an alternative to the full virtual desktop, see Publish applications with RemoteApp.

• To learn more about Windows App and how to use it, see the Windows App documentation.

• If you'd like to learn how to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop with more configuration choices and programmatic methods that can be used in production, see the following documentation:

  • Deploy Azure Virtual Desktop.
  • Cloud Adoption Framework: Migrate end-user desktops to Azure Virtual Desktop.
  • Azure Architecture Center: Azure Virtual Desktop for the enterprise.