I have an (end-user-oriented) application I'd like to run, that only runs on Windows. I don't own a Windows machine and don't really want to buy a license for Windows just so I can run it in a VM. So, I'm thinking of running the application in a Windows VM instance on a cloud-hosted server. (Is there a standard name for this service that can be used for finding services that offer this? A Windows VPS?)
I'm guessing I can use a Windows VPS for this. Are there any specific features I need the VPS service to provide, so this will work? RDP? Do I need to make sure it uses an end-user version of Windows, rather than Windows Server? Do I have to worry about VPS providers giving me a server-grade version of Windows that won't let me run an end-user Windows application?
I'm not asking you to recommend a service, product, or VPS provider. Rather, I'm looking for information about how to evaluate a provider for this purpose, and what features to make sure the VPS supports, if I want to use it to run a Windows application in the cloud.