In this guide, you will work with an existing Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment and focus on implementing a comprehensive monitoring solution. Effective monitoring is essential to ensure the health, performance, and availability of AVD resources, as well as to gain visibility into user sessions and system activities. Please see Azure Virtual Desktop – Connect to Session Hosts Using Entra ID – Part 04, and Manage Azure Virtual Desktop host pools and session hosts using the Azure portal [Part 02].
By leveraging Azure Virtual Desktop Insights, you will be able to collect and analyze telemetry data across the environment, enabling proactive troubleshooting and performance optimization.
Scenario
You have an existing Azure Virtual Desktop environment. Your goal is to implement monitoring capabilities to track the status and activities of the environment.
Objectives
After completing this lab, you will be able to: Implement monitoring for an Azure Virtual Desktop environment using Azure Monitor and AVD Insights.
Please see Azure Virtual Desktop: Deploy host pools and session hosts in the Azure [Part 01], Disaster Recovery Test Checklist: What to Capture Before You Start, and Upgrading Azure AD Connect to Microsoft Entra Connect Sync.
Enable Monitoring for an Azure Virtual Desktop Environment
The main task in this exercise is to register the Azure subscription with the Microsoft.Insights resource provider. This step is required to enable Azure Monitor capabilities and support data collection for the Azure Virtual Desktop environment.
Register the Azure subscription with the Microsoft.Insights resource provider. Azure Virtual Desktop Insights depends on this provider, so it must be enabled in the subscription used for the lab. Although this can also be done using Azure PowerShell (as in previous exercises), in this lab the task is performed through the Azure portal.
Create an Azure Log Analytics workspace to support Azure Virtual Desktop Insights. Insights is based on Azure Monitor Workbooks and provides centralized monitoring and visualization for Azure Virtual Desktop environments. Note that monitoring Autoscale operations through Insights is only supported for pooled host pools.
| Setting | Value |
| Subscription | XX-XXX-XXX |
| Resource group | XXXX-XXX-RG |
| Name | XXX-laworkspace41e |
| Region | the name of the Azure region where you deployed the Azure Virtual Desktop environment |
On the Review + Create page, select Create and wait for the provisioning process to complete (approximately 1 minute). After deployment, configure the newly created Log Analytics workspace to collect diagnostic data from the Azure Virtual Desktop environment, including session host performance counters and Windows Event Logs.
Finally, set up the Azure Virtual Desktop Insights configuration workbook to target and monitor the specific AVD environment for the first time.
From the list of Azure Virtual Desktop workbooks, navigate to the Azure Virtual Desktop section and select the Insights workbook to access and begin configuring the monitoring dashboard for the environment.
On the Azure Virtual Desktop Insights page, review any warnings showing that the workspace and session hosts are not sending data, then open the Configuration workbook to fix the data collection issues.
On the CheckAMAConfiguration page, under the Resource diagnostics settings tab, select the az140-laworkspace41e1 Log Analytics workspace from the drop-down list.
Then, in the Host pool az140-21-hp1 section, review the warning indicating that no diagnostic configuration exists for the selected host pool and proceed by selecting Configure host pool.
Select Deploy to start the deployment process
This step enables diagnostic data collection in the target Log Analytics workspace, activating key tables such as Management Activities, Feed, Connections, Errors, Checkpoints, HostRegistration, and AgentHealthStatus.
After deployment completes (typically within one minute), refresh the CheckAMAConfiguration page and confirm under the XXXXX-hp1 host pool section that diagnostic settings are enabled for allLogs.
On the Resource diagnostics settings tab, scroll to the XXXXX-ws1 workspace section and select Configure workspace, then deploy the template. This action enables allLogs configuration for the workspace.
After the deployment completes, refresh the CheckAMAConfiguration page and verify that diagnostic settings are enabled for allLogs and that no warning messages remain.
On the CheckAMAConfiguration page, navigate to the Session host data settings tab. In the Create DCR section, select the XXXX-laworkspaceXXXX workspace from the Workspace destination drop-down list, then choose Create data collection rule to configure session host data collection.
Select Deploy to start the configuration process. Wait for the deployment to complete, which typically takes less than one minute.
On the CheckAMAConfiguration page, in the Session host data settings tab, select the Refresh icon in the toolbar. Ensure that the newly created DCR (Data Collection Rule) appears in the Available DCRs section; if it is not yet visible, wait a minute and refresh the page again.
On the Session host data settings tab, select the Data Collection Rule (DCR) entry starting with the microsoft-avdi- prefix from the Selected DCR drop-down list. If required, in the DCR associations section, choose Deploy Association and then select Deploy in the template pane.
This associates the DCR with the session hosts in the XXXXX-hp1 host pool. Wait for the deployment to complete, which typically takes less than one minute.
On the Session host data settings tab of the CheckAMAConfiguration page, select the Refresh icon. In the Session hosts missing Azure Monitor extension section, choose Add extension and then select Deploy in the template pane. This installs the Azure Monitor extension on the session hosts in the XXXXX-hp1 host pool. Wait for the deployment to complete, which typically takes about one minute.
On the CheckAMAConfiguration page, in the Session host data settings tab, select the Refresh icon and confirm that no errors or warning messages are displayed. Then, switch to the Data generated tab and select the Refresh icon again to update and review the collected monitoring data.
Review delle sezioni con i grafici dei dati raccolti (Billed data over last 24hrs, Performance Counters ed Events) per monitorare ingestione e attività, tenendo conto dei costi del Log Analytics. Infine, tornare alla pagina Azure Virtual Desktop e, nella sezione Monitoring, selezionare Insights.
On the Azure Virtual Desktop Insights page, review the Overview tab, including Capacity, connection success rate, connection performance (time to connect for new sessions), and utilization telemetry.
Then explore all remaining tabs such as Connection Reliability, Connection Diagnostics, Connection Performance, Users, Utilization, Clients, and Alerts. These views provide detailed insights into AVD telemetry and can be revisited after completing further labs to analyze collected data over time.
This concludes the third part of the guide to Azure Virtual Desktop. Let’s move on to the fourth part for the next steps.
I hope you found this guide very usefulon “How to set Up Azure Virtual Desktop Insights Monitoring [Part 03]”. Please feel free to leave a comemnt below.
