Microsoft has launched a new Quality of Life feature for Windows 365. If a Cloud PC is deprovisioned by accident because the license was not renewed in time, you can now recover that Cloud PC even if it’s not present any more in your Windows 365 environment.
I’ve seen this happen before as customers start to play around with Windows 365 and hold a Proof of Concept (PoC). They are impressed by the functionality and ease of use, but then forget to renew their licenses. This typically happens when the auto-renewal option in the license portal has been manually disabled to control the POC costs.
As Cloud PCs are often used in a personal context. Users tend to put a lot of data on them, they like the concept and start using it as a production machine. So a user is not happy if their machine is removed suddenly and they have to reconfigure everything.
In all fairness, there are a lot of controls available to prevent this scenario. Admins are notified and end-users see a message if they connect to a Cloud PC that’s in a grace period.
Requirements and how to Recover a Cloud PC
This feature has some requirements:
- It only works on Windows 365 Enterprise, not on Frontline
- If you renew the expired Windows 365 license, it has to be exactly the same SKU as before
- The provisioning policy must still exist
- The original (and impacted) user must still be assigned to said provisioning policy
- The user must still exist in your tenant.
- The recovery takes place within 28 days meaning there are still Point-In-Time snapshots available
If the requirements are met and if the new license is activated it will provision a NEW Cloud PC. Don’t worry, the previous restore points will be mapped to the new Cloud PC and an admin, or user can initiate the restore using the restore functionality.
Download a restore point
While it’s unfortunately not possible to recover a Cloud PC after a user has left the organization to retrieve data from its disk, you can proactively download restore points for offline usage. This could be an additional step to include in your offboarding or data retention procedures. I covered this process in one of my previous blogposts if you want to read more about this.
Wrap up
It’s a small feature for a user, but a big one for an IT admin. It also adds even more value to Windows 365 overall. Have you ever faced a situation where you needed to recover a lost Cloud PC or virtual desktop? Feel free to share it in the comments.
Leave a Reply