Usage guide: Microsoft AVD essentials
This page outlines various ways to use the pack, including use case examples.
Administrators can refer to the Configuration guide: Microsoft AVD essentials to set up and customize the installed content.
The Microsoft AVD essentials library pack provides EUC teams with:
A Microsoft Azure virtual desktop monitoring dashboard that provides a centralized view of your Microsoft AVD environment.
Highlight VM status, reboot health, and registration, helping them make informed decisions and take timely actions.
In addition, this library pack offers preconfigured remote actions that can be used to invoke session host restarts, update GPO policies, log off VDI sessions, and end unresponsive processes running within a session, and a collection of pre-configured VDI monitors that hel administrators quickly detect and address key issues affecting performance and availability.
Library pack uses
Virtual machine monitoring
The Microsoft Azure virtual desktop monitoring dashboard acts as the starting point of this library pack. It provides a dedicated environment for managing the online/offline VM distribution, reboot health tracking, and registration insights into Micorosoft AVD machines.
Visibility into online/offline VM distribution
With the Summary tab on the provided Microsoft AVD virtual machine monitoring dashboard, you can quickly determine the online/offline status of your VMs, with breakdowns by desktop pool and VDI type.
Virtual machine performance overview
The Performance Overview tab on the Microsoft AVD virtual machine monitoring dashboard focuses on hardware load and resource utilization across your virtual desktop session hosts. It helps you identify infrastructure bottlenecks before they affect the end-user experience.
The tab's telemetry is organized into four health groups:
CPU/GPU: Normalized CPU queue length, overall CPU usage, and GPU utilization for graphics-intensive pools.
Memory: Available memory, available cache, and swap activity to reveal pressure and paging.
Storage: Disk queue length and read/write latencies to surface storage contention.
Network: Failed connections, slow connection establishment, and total traffic to highlight connectivity and saturation patterns.
Monitoring Microsoft AVD and AVD client applications
Monitor and manage your employees' experience with the following Microsoft applications:
Microsoft AVD application. This network application provides visibility into the connectivity and network usage of Microsoft AVD on devices, helping to identify any issues with this application.
Microsoft AVD client application. This hybrid web and desktop application provides insights into usage, performance, and stability, helping to identify issues with the application on devices.
More information on monitoring web and desktop applications can be found on the documentation page.
Triggering alerts for VDI-related issues
The installed VDI monitors from this library pack allow you to monitor and detect issues using the critical metrics specific to your virtual desktop infrastructure:
High percentage of disconnected sessions per desktop pool – Identifies frequent or unexpected drops.
High CPU usage per desktop pool – Flags potential performance bottlenecks.
High average latency per VDI client location – Highlights network-related delays by region.
High number of sessions per virtual machine – Prevents resource overutilization.
Alerts generated by the VDI library monitors appear in the Alerts overview dashboard for further investigation and analysis.
Virtual machine administration
Remediation remote actions are provided that can be used to fix common issues with VDI devices that normally require the assignment of issues to specialist teams with VDI experience or administration tools. These fixes include the ability to invoke session host restarts, update GPO policies, and to end unresponsive processes running within a session.
Use cases
In addition to the relevant use cases covered below, you may uncover other troubleshooting scenarios specific to your environment.
Investigate devices with poor reboot health
The reboot health of a VM is determined by the custom field "AVD reboot health" included with this pack. The parameters for 'good, average, and poor' are configurable. This information is summarized in the dashboard with a dedicated bar chart, showing the number of devices in each category. This allows you to drill down to any devices that have not rebooted for a long period, which may require further investigation.
Detect network congestion causing latency spikes in specific office locations.
The High average latency per VDI client location monitor tracks the average network latency for each VDI client entity and triggers an alert when the latency exceeds a dynamic threshold compared to a 7-day baseline, computed hourly.
Identify CPU bottlenecks affecting virtual desktops
The High CPU usage per desktop pool monitor tracks the average CPU queue length for virtual desktop pools and generates an alert when it surpasses a dynamic threshold computed hourly compared to a 7-day baseline.
Prevent overloading of a desktop pool to maintain optimal user experience
The High number of sessions per virtual machine monitor tracks the total number of active sessions per virtual machine and triggers an alert when the session count exceeds a user-defined threshold.
Identify network instability affecting session continuity
The High percentage of disconnected sessions per desktop pool monitor observes session disconnections, calculates the disconnection-to-active session ratio, and triggers an alert if the ratio surpasses a defined threshold.
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