Three years back I wrote a blog post on Deploying Windows 8 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on Windows Server 2012 that has been wildly popular and received lots of blog comments. With the release of Windows 10 anticipated within the next month, I felt it would be appropriate to do an update to this blog post. This time, I will show how to deploy Windows 10, using NVIDIA GRID K1 graphics cards, RemoteFX, and Windows Server 2016 (not the official name, still being called ‘Technical Preview 2’). The Windows Server 2016 host is an HP DL380 Gen8 server with two GRID K1 cards and will act as my Remote Desktop Virtualization Host. For the RDS Connection Broker/Gateway server, I’ve deployed Windows Server 2016 into a virtual machine that will be externally facing.
To get started, I’ll show the experience of installing Windows Server 2016 (Technical Preview 2 build 10074) bare metal.
Very nice, thanks for the post!
Where did you find drivers that are compatible with the OS? The latest Nvidia drivers on the Nvidia site don’t install on Server 2016 Tech Preview 3. There is an error that pops up and says the current driver is not compatible with the OS.
Never mind I found a version that works Nvidia Driver Version 347.52 works.
Thanks,
Nice write up… Any specific customization for Windows 10 in VDI environment such as disk alignment, disabling unwanted services ect ect…
I’ve not yet done a deep enough analysis on tuning and optimizing Windows 10 for VDI. I presume many similar factors will apply as Windows 8.1 tuning and optimizations, but I’ve not done a full analysis yet.
Thanks,
–youngtech
Thanks Dane… It works well in our vWorkspace setup with Hyper-v.. just few things I tweaked such as unwanted services, Themes and disk alignment…
Dane,
Great post. I had trouble sysprepping in windows 8.1 and found after extensive research it is related to all the metro apps. I have also been testing VDI with Win10 and Server 2016TP3. I successfully sysprepped my Windows 10 VM VDI Template by issuing these two powershell commands (make sure you run powershell as admin). You will run these on the Windows 10 VM itself.
Get-AppXProvisionedPackage -online | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage
After these commands were issued I successfully sysprepped with this command:
Sysprep /generalize /shutdown /oobe /mode:vm
These powershell commands remove the apps (metro apps). This is all well and good if you don’t need the metro apps. If you do need some then that is a different story. Hopefully this helps.
I had trouble sysprepping win 8 originally and the same issues with win10. this is because of the “apps”. they need to be removed in order for sysprep to finish without error. I had success with these two powershell commands.
Get-AppXProvisionedPackage -online | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage
Dane,
Have you had any trouble with profile disks on Server 2016? I’m testing VDI with a windows 10 image and profile disks just doesn’t work. Any thoughts? I’ve set it up in Server 2012 R2 RDS and it works no problem.
I am having the same problem profile disks not working in win10 on 2016
Dear Dan,
From your configuration if user01 is assigned to a VDI (eg: Win10-01) and logged on, will another user (eg: user2) able to connect to WIn10-01 in future when user01 has logged out? We sometimes met the problem that the collection cannot be created because of some apps or sysprep error and we are thinking how to get rid of the problem, but our VDIs need to be shared freely by any AD users.
Secondly, if you need to apply patches or install new software, do you need to do it for each VDI manually? Is it possible to all VDIs in batch?
Thanks,
Patrick
Having trouble with the Nvidia GRID driver: most of the ones I’ve tried say “wrong operating system”; the one that did install doesn’t work: Device Manager reports (paraphrasing) “driver stopped working with Code 43”. The screenshot clearly shows you’re using 347.52, but which “flavor”?
The Nvidia driver search at http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us shows two “product series”: “GRID Series” and “NVIDIA GRID vGPU”. The latter then offers support for XenServer and vSphere but not Windows Server; the former offers Server 2012 but not 2016.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
BTW, at least in TP4, there’s an option during install to include the graphical shell.
Hey Steve,
I found that the 347.52 Quadro/Grid Nvidia driver works. Shoot me an email if you cant find it online and Ill send it over to you.
will@marlonblackwell.com
Use the windows 10 driver on server 2016. It worked for me with the GRID K2
Thanks Ryan, William! I’ve tried out the 347.52 Windows 10 driver, with the same lack of result. Planning to double-check the power connection, and if that doesn’t work then try it in another machine. Will let you know!
Breakthrough! Turns out the drivers fail when you have more than a terabyte of RAM! Pulled have the memory boards, and voila! it’s happy again.
Thanks everyone for your help!
Wow, ha…
I would have never thought of that. That is a pretty rare limitation to have!