A range of considerations and complications can come into play when planning for a deployment of shared devices. This collection of reports discuss a range of licensing and technology considerations that organizations may want to take into account to ensure their shared devices are properly licensed and ideally deployed.
Although Subscription Activation provides limited value to organizations today, it may become required as Microsoft pushes organizations to Windows subscription licenses.
Extended Security Updates (ESUs) can provide security patches for select Windows, Windows Server, and SQL Server versions that are otherwise no longer supported by Microsoft but vary in their duration and type of updates offered.
ESUs can provide security patches for select Windows, Windows Server, and SQL Server versions that are otherwise no longer supported by Microsoft, but their costs and duration depend on the platform used to host impacted workloads.
Illustration compares features of Windows 10 offerings that target organizations.
Per Device subscriptions that provide security updates and bulletins for Windows 7 Enterprise and Professional through Jan. 2023, three years after Windows 7 left Extended Support.
A Microsoft-hosted service that provides key infrastructure for managing server-based desktops running within VMs hosted on Azure; its use is most commonly covered via Windows Enterprise- and RDS-related user licenses, plus ongoing service fees for the Azure VMs, storage, networks, and other infrastructure that hosts desktops and user data.
Extended Security Updates (ESU) subscriptions provide security updates and bulletins for old versions of SQL Server, Windows Server, and Windows.
A Microsoft-hosted service that provides key infrastructure for managing server-based desktops running within VMs hosted on Azure; its use is covered via Windows Enterprise- and RDS-related user licenses, plus ongoing service fees for the Azure VMs, storage, networks, and other infrastructure that hosts desktops and user data. Renamed, See Azure Virtual Desktop for in-depth entry.
Device-based subscriptions that provide at least three years of security updates and bulletins for legacy versions of Windows Server and SQL Server, as well as Windows 7, once versions have left the Extended Support lifecycle phase.
