WVD Teardown Guide

This article covers the removal of VDS and NetApp control while maintaining WVD end user access. Going forward management would be with native Azure/Windows administration tools. After this process is complete it is recommended to contact VDSsupport@netapp.com so that NetApp can clean up our back-end and billing systems.

The CW Agent runs on every machine in the environment. The service that starts this process should be uninstalled with the following command on every VM in the environment. CWMGR1 can be skipped as that VM will be shut down and eventually deleted in most cases. Ideally this action would be run via scripted automation. The video below shows it done manually.

The previous uninstall removed the service that launches CW Agent but the files remain. Delete the directory:

The startup items directory contains two shortcuts to files deleted in the previous step. To avoid end user error messages, these files should be deleted.

There are three GPOs implemented by VDS. We recommend un-linking two of them and reviewing the content of the third.

Unlink:

Review:

With the GPO Changes applied we can now shut down the CWMGR1 VM. Once continued WVD functionality is confirmed this VM can be deleted permanently.

In extremely rare cases there is a need to maintain this VM if another server role is running (e.g. DC, FTP Server…). In that event, three services can be disabled to disable the VDS functionality on CWMGR1:

The Azure AD service accounts used by VDS can be removed. Login in the Azure Management Portal and delete the users:

Other user accounts can be retained:

Two App Registrations are made when deploying VDS. These can be deleted:

Two Enterprise Applications are deployed when deploying VDS. These can be deleted:

Before testing that the end users can still connect, confirm the CWMGR1 is stopped for a realistic test.

To confirm success, login as an end user and confirm functionality is maintained.