Microsoft tests ‘Reserve’ cloud PCs for disaster recovery

You can’t spill coffee on a PC that’s in the cloud. For IT outages ranging from drink accidents to security incidents, Microsoft is previewing a 10-day loaner for when a user’s typical PC is on the fritz.

Microsoft released on August 11 a public preview of Windows 365 Reserve, a service providing access to cloud PCs. The offering, which Microsoft says is a “safety net” for companies facing threats like device failures and ransomware, had IT pros envisioning benefits and drawbacks of the new feature.

To protect and reserve. In the announcement, Microsoft said:

• The standalone Reserve option “provides temporary, secure, and dedicated Cloud PC access when a user’'s primary PC is unavailable, for up to 10 days per year.”
• Admins, according to the company’s details, can spin up cloud PCs configured with Microsoft 365 apps and access policies made via the company’s Intune cloud service.
• When users recover their primary device, admins can deprovision the cloud PC via Intune and preserve any remaining time from the 10-day license.
• Participation is currently limited, and orgs can contact Microsoft to take part in the preview.
• Reserve requires a network connection and is subject to scale limitations, including Azure capacity constraints.

In an email to IT Brew, Microsoft’s VP of Product Marketing Stefan Kinnestrand wrote that the goal of Reserve is to streamline endpoint provisioning without “maintaining a fleet of aging loaner devices.” According to Kinnestrand, early surveys with analysts and customers “indicated strong interest in the Windows 365 Reserve concept, even prior to its creation.”

“Everyone has a story—spilled coffee during a client call, a stolen backpack on the bus, or realizing too late that your laptop’s still in the airplane seat pocket. Sometimes it’s a critical bug or hardware issue that derails your productivity, or a new hire waiting days for their device to arrive,” he wrote.

Down and outage. According to a fall 2024 survey from cloud-native database company Cockroach Labs of 1,000 global senior tech pros and executives, organizations average 86 outages per year. The average outage lasts 196 minutes, the report claims. For companies with more than 1,000 employees and/or $500 million in annual recurring revenue, outage-related losses averaged $495,000 in a 12-month period. Expenses included regulatory fines, recovery costs, lost revenue, and data loss.

Sunil Kumar, senior director analyst at Gartner, sees the offering helping orgs that don’t use virtual desktops—or orgs that do, but may have trouble ramping up their virtual desktops at scale when an incident arises.

“​​If an organization does not utilize any virtual desktops today, this is a great way to utilize virtual desktops as a backup option for their endpoints, because it’s as a service,” he said, adding that the capability is Microsoft’s “biggest differentiator.”

But Justin Timothy, threat intelligence consultant at GuidePoint Security, expressed skepticism about the practical benefits of Microsoft’s Windows Reserve service for ransomware recovery. IT problems, he said, could arise when a personal device—now firing up a cloud PC— joins a network. The personal device could have malware or incompatible drivers.

“At that point, if you have an end user who’s trying to do their work but they can’t get their mouse to work, then they have to reach out to their corporate IT team,” Timothy said. “And that IT team is probably busy assisting with any forensics or recovery efforts. “

When asked about logging capabilities and if IT pros will have visibility into actions taken on a cloud PC, Kinnestrand, in his email, shared that admins can access “operational information through management tools integrated with Microsoft Intune,” and that “as Windows 365 Reserve is currently in preview, logging and reporting capabilities are in development.”