Management baseline considerations for an Azure Virtual Desktop

Achieve operational excellence and customer success by correctly designing your Azure Virtual Desktop environment with management and monitoring in mind.

Platform management and monitoring

Review the following considerations and recommendations for platform management and monitoring of Azure Virtual Desktop.

• Explore how to Use Azure Virtual Desktop Insights to monitor your Azure Virtual Desktop deployment.

• Configure session host data settings to collect information on your Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts.

• Review the guidance for designing a Log Analytics workspace architecture to make informed decisions on how you set up your Log Analytics workspaces. Plan for Log Analytics workspaces to be used across Azure Virtual Desktop deployments and make special note of any regional data requirements that apply to your organization.

• Configure diagnostic settings to send monitoring data to a storage account if there's a need to go beyond the two-year retention period. For configuring diagnostic settings at scale, consider using Azure Policy Additionally, read about data retention and archive policies in Azure Monitor to help you configure retention intervals for session host data.

• Determine performance objects of interest and plan for appropriate retention intervals for session host data. Learn how to set up the correct workspace performance counters.

• Enable monitoring of connection quality to maintain good user experience management. Read Monitor connection quality with Azure Log Analytics.

• Consider estimating the usage of Azure Virtual Desktop, allowing you to prepare for any cost implications. Explore how to estimate Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring costs.

• It's recommended to set up the Azure Virtual Desktop Insights configuration workbook to ensure your configuration is correct and to stay updated when there are new product updates that require new settings.

• For more troubleshooting insights, collect the following Windows event logs into the Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace.

  Windows Event Log name

  • System
    • Application
    • Microsoft-Windows-TerminalServices-LocalSessionManager/Operational
    • Microsoft-FSLogix-Apps/Operational
    • Microsoft-Windows-TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager/Admin
    • Microsoft-FSLogix-Apps/Admin

Read more about creating data collection rules in Azure Monitor.

• Use Azure Virtual Desktop Insights for ease of configuration.

• Assign application groups to user groups to ease your administration overhead.

• Application groups can be segregated in many ways. We recommend separating them based on which department or user type (for example, power, engineering, or general) the user is.

For a glossary, data storage cost estimations, and more troubleshooting guidance, see Azure Monitor next steps.

Infrastructure management and monitoring

Review the following considerations and recommendations for infrastructure management and monitoring of Azure Virtual Desktop.

Design considerations

• Collect and log session host performance counters.
• Use network performance monitoring for user experience management.
• Set up an alerting model for the collected logs and metrics.
• Use Windows Update Management for the session hosts between feature updates.

Design recommendations

• Use the same Log Analytics workspace that you use for the Azure Virtual Desktop platform.
• Use a centralized Log Analytics workspace in the region that contains your session hosts.
• Configure diagnostic settings, events, and performance counters by implementing an Azure Virtual Desktop Insights workbook.
• Set up Network Performance Monitor in the same region as your Azure Virtual Network and session hosts.
• Incorporate Azure policies and governance for enterprise-scale into the Azure Virtual Desktop landing zone.

Next steps

Learn about business continuity and disaster recovery for an Azure Virtual Desktop enterprise-scale scenario.

Business continuity and disaster recovery