Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), formerly Windows Virtual Desktop, is Microsoft's cloud-based Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform that enables organizations to securely deliver Windows desktops and applications from Microsoft Azure. Azure AVD helps businesses support remote work, virtual desktops, and hybrid work environments while simplifying infrastructure management.
Azure Virtual Desktop is a free service for Microsoft customers with most types of Windows Enterprise licenses. However, the subscription or pay as you go (PAYG) Azure costs are additional, as are many components you may wish to add including those associated with monitoring such as Log Analytics and Azure Monitor.
When Microsoft introduced AVD it added:
Theoretically, AVD certainly has the potential to replace traditional VDI deployments, however, it is still a very new product with a limited feature set relative to that offered by traditional VDI vendors, such as Citrix or VMware.
In many ways, AVD is the perfect product for the pandemic and post-pandemic world, offering organizations the ability to scale their remote work-from-home infrastructure rapidly and temporarily without the need to invest in server or networking hardware all from a trusted and proven supplier in Microsoft with clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for high-availability and failover, alongside a proven and certified security model.
However, as a very young product there is a degree of complexity and feature or tooling gaps in Microsoft stacks. This means that many are retaining or introducing Citrix, VMware, or other third-party vendor offerings to deploy and manage AVD.
Reasons to use a third-party product include:
Organizations use Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) to deliver secure virtual desktops, remote applications, hybrid work environments, and cloud-based digital workspaces. Azure AVD is widely adopted for business continuity, remote access, seasonal workforce expansion, and secure application delivery.
Azure Monitor is the default administration and monitoring solution in the Azure stack. Some of the challenges IT admins face when using Azure Monitor include lack of out-of-the-box features, dashboards and reports they need for daily operations, complex configuration model, lot of manual work, cost per metric collected and the need to write Kusto queries to get the details they need.
Effective Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring enables IT teams to monitor user sessions, login performance, session hosts, FSLogix profiles, Azure resources, application responsiveness, and infrastructure health. Comprehensive Azure AVD monitoring helps organizations proactively identify performance bottlenecks and maintain an optimal digital employee experience.
eG Enterprise is an end-to-end monitoring solution that provides incredible in-depth AVD monitoring to help you provide an excellent end-user experience by spotting performance issues before they become problems. Click here to understand the pros and cons of eG Enterprise vs. Azure Monitor for Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring.
While Azure Monitor provides native monitoring capabilities, many organizations also use advanced monitoring platforms to gain deeper visibility into Azure Virtual Desktop performance, automate root-cause analysis, and simplify troubleshooting. Solutions that integrate with Azure Monitor for Azure Virtual Desktop can provide richer dashboards, historical analytics, and actionable insights.
With eG Enterprise you can:
Advanced monitoring platforms also provide Azure Virtual Desktop insights, helping administrators analyze user experience, resource utilization, session quality, and capacity trends across their Azure Virtual Desktop deployments.
Learn more about eG Enterprise for Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring and start your free trial!
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is used to deliver secure remote desktops and applications from Microsoft Azure to users on any device. It is commonly used for remote work, centralized desktop management, contractor access, and scaling virtual desktop environments without managing the full physical infrastructure.
Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring is important because user experience depends on more than just whether the desktops are online. It helps teams track session performance, connection quality, resource utilization, and user-impacting issues so they can resolve problems before productivity drops.
An Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring solution should provide visibility into connection quality, session performance, host pool health, resource consumption, and user experience trends. It should also help isolate whether issues are caused by the Azure infrastructure, the session host, the network, or the user session itself.
