{"id":14906,"date":"2021-06-04T09:20:55","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T13:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eginnovations.com\/blog\/?p=14906"},"modified":"2024-01-02T12:25:11","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T17:25:11","slug":"azure-monitor-avd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eginnovations.com\/blog\/azure-monitor-avd\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Set up Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop \/ Azure Virtual Desktop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span>How to set up Azure Monitor to use a Log Analytics Workspace?<\/span><\/h2>\n

At the end of March 2021, Microsoft released Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop<\/a> (AVD) for General Availability. Built upon Azure Monitor Workbooks to give insights into the Windows Virtual Desktop environment, including: Connection Diagnostics, Connection Performance, Host Diagnostics, Host Performance, Utilizations, Users, Clients and Alerts.<\/p>\n

\"RobI was recently inspired by Citrix Expert, Rob Beekmans posting that it is an obstacle when getting started for his customers to evaluate their monitoring and analytics costs.<\/p>\n

Since eG Innovations has an out-of-the-box solution for monitoring Microsoft Azure<\/a> and AVD<\/a> that\u2019s priced by named or concurrent users, I decided to set myself the challenge to see how hard it actually was in comparison to evaluate cloud monitoring\/analytics costs, in this case on Azure, which are essentially based on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis on how much data monitoring you do and how much analysis \/ alerting is done on that data and how long you keep the data. This blog is the first chapter in my story of my adventure with some pointers for those looking to do something similar.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1: High level view of Azure Monitor<\/em><\/center><\/div>\n

First, I had to set up Azure Monitor, starting from the point where I already had a AVD host pool and VMs deployed, so this is a description of how I plugged the Log Analytics in. If you have already managed to do this for yourself – I\u2019ll be covering how to set alert thresholds on metrics and how to estimate the costs in a later blog. This blog should however cover how to setup a Log Analytics Workspace and connect it to Azure Monitor to collect and store monitoring data from a AVD Host pool.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Background on Azure Log Analytics Workspace<\/span><\/h2>\n

Before getting started, you will need to know what a Log Analytics Workspace is. A Log Analytics workspace is a unique environment for Azure Monitor log data. Each workspace has its own data repository and configuration, and data sources and solutions are configured to store their data in a particular workspace.<\/p>\n

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Figure 2: What is Log Analytics<\/em><\/center><\/div>\n

It is also worth being aware that the Azure portal documentation will also refer to \u201cblades\u201d, Microsoft’s own documentation style guide says \u201cUse blade to refer to a pane in the Azure portal. Avoid talking about blades. Instead, try to discuss what the customer needs to do. When you must mention a blade: Always name the blade except in general references to a blade or blades.\u201d Basically, blades are consistent management pages that let you manage Azure’s services through a consistent way of exposing settings, actions, billing information, health monitoring and usage data and so on.<\/p>\n

Azure Virtual Desktop is still a relatively new product and is evolving rapidly, particularly around monitoring, as such the interface does seem to change fairly frequently and there are quite a few beta features available. This article was written in May 2021 and I do expect that the procedures involved will change further.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Getting Started with Monitoring WVD Host pools in Azure<\/span><\/h2>\n

I started with an existing host pool named \u201cUKGROUP\u201d containing two AVD session hosts within a resource group \u201cegwvd\u201d located in the Azure region \u201cEast US 2\u201d.<\/p>\n

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<\/span>Step 1: Create a Log Analytics Workspace<\/span><\/h3>\n

An Azure Log Analytics Workspace is required to enable Azure Monitor for AVD. You will probably want to create a dedicated Log Analytics Workspace for your Windows Virtual Desktop environment, to which you will add only those VMs within the AVD environment. This will ensure you collect performance counters, metrics and logs from only the AVD session hosts rather than the wider Azure environment you may have, as this could add unnecessary cost. A Log Analytics Workspace is a unique environment for Azure Monitor log data. Each workspace has its own data repository and configuration, and data sources and solutions are configured to store their data in a particular workspace.<\/p>\n

Login to the Azure Portal via Home – Microsoft Azure.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Azure Portal, click All Services<\/strong> and select Monitors from the list of services displayed. Once you click Monitors <\/strong>a group of resources under monitors will be displayed. Select Log Analytics Workspace<\/strong> from the group of resources displayed. I followed the steps detailed, here, to create the Log Analytics Workspace: Create a Log Analytics workspace in the Azure portal – Azure Monitor | Microsoft Docs<\/a><\/p>\n

From portal home page I navigated via the \u201cAll Services\u201d options, by clicking on the Log Analytics icon<\/p>\n

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Within the Log Analytics Blade, click New<\/strong><\/p>\n

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And created my new workspace, named \u201cRachels-LogAnalyticsWorkspace\u201d, within the same resource group \u201cegwvd\u201d that my host pool resided in, by default Azure proposed I locate the workspace in a different region to my host pool so I changed the region to be \u201cEast US 2\u201d manually.<\/p>\n

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Once I had done this, I clicked Review + Create<\/strong><\/p>\n

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If the details look correct, you just need to click Create<\/strong>, you will see some messages about deployment appear, and hopefully be presented with a message indicating you have been successful<\/p>\n

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<\/span>Step 2: Open Azure Monitor for Azure Virtual Desktop<\/span><\/h3>\n

You can open Azure Monitor for Azure Virtual Desktop with one of the following methods:<\/p>\n