WVD Group Assignments – PowerShell

Windows Virtual Desktop is a great way of publishing remote desktops to your users. In contrast of Remote Desktop Services (RDS) you do not have to manage the infrastructure of brokers, gateway etc. the WVD service will manage all of this to you.

I have been working with WVD for several months now and I have created some PowerShell scripts to make WVD life easier. At time of writing assigning user by user to a WVD hostpool is the only method of assigning users to hostpools. There is no method to assign an AzureAD group or WSAD group to a hostpool. Because managing the user (upn) assignments of hundreds of users is not very convenient I created a PowerShell script to make this easier.

The PowerShell script read a Windows Server Active Directory (WSAD) group, takes out the UPN of the members and assigns them to the HOSTPOOL. It is a one-way sync with add and remove.

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Create a WIM file from the WVD VHD file.

Microsoft has a new Virtual Desktop to host desktops managed by Microsoft running on Azure. At time of writing the Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktops is not available as ISO file, so running SCCM or MDT to build your own WVD “Golden Image” is not that easy. Combining some techniques allows me to create a WIM file of the VHD that Azure delivers. The WIM file can be used to do an MDT OS Deployment.

What do you need?

  • Microsoft Azure subscription (https://portal.azure.com)
  • MDT Server
  • An up and running Windows Virtual Desktop environment

Steps to get the WIM file.

  1. Create an Azure VM with the correct Windows 10 version.
  2. SYSPREP the VM and shutdown/deallocate.
  3. Download the VHD file
  4. Convert the VHD to WIM with a few PowerShell lines
  5. Import the WIM file in MDT for a regular OS deployment task sequence.

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