What is Azure Virtual Desktop classic?

Azure Virtual Desktop classic is a desktop and app virtualization service that runs on Azure.

Important

Azure Virtual Desktop classic has been superceded by Azure Virtual Desktop. For more information, see Azure Virtual Desktop (classic) retirement.

Here's some of the key highlights:

Deliver a full Windows experience remotely.
Offer full desktops or use RemoteApp to deliver individual apps.
Present Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise and optimize it to run in multi-user virtual scenarios.
Install your line-of-business or custom apps you can run from anywhere.
Deliver Software-as-a-service (SaaS) for external usage.
Replace existing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) deployments.
Manage desktops and apps from different Windows and Windows Server operating systems with a unified management experience.

Key capabilities

With Azure Virtual Desktop, you can set up a scalable and flexible environment:

Create a full desktop virtualization environment in your Azure subscription without running any gateway servers.
Flexible configurations to accommodate your diverse workloads.
Bring your own image for production workloads.
Reduce costs with pooled, multi-session resources. You can greatly reduce the number of virtual machines and operating system overhead while still providing the same resources to your users.
Provide individual ownership through personal (persistent) desktops.

You can deploy and manage virtual desktops and applications:

Publish a full desktop or individual applications from a single host pool, create individual application groups for different sets of users, or even assign users to multiple application groups to reduce the number of images.
As you manage your environment, use built-in delegated access to assign roles and collect diagnostics to understand various configuration or user errors.
Only manage the image and virtual machines you use for the sessions, not the infrastructure. You don't need to personally manage the supporting infrastructure roles, such as a gateway or broker, like you do with Remote Desktop Services.

Connect users:

Once assigned, users can connect to their published Windows desktops and applications using Windows App or the Remote Desktop client. Connect from any device through either a native application on your device or using a web browser with the HTML5 web client.
Securely establish users through reverse connections to the service, so you don't need to open any inbound ports.

Here are some other articles to learn about Azure Virtual Desktop: