Hi All,
as promised in last blog post that you can read here, an argument that I want to write about is Windows Virtual Desktop monitoring.
In last days Microsoft has released in preview a new and simpler way to implement this function.
I will guide you through implementation, using only Azure Portal resources.
At the end of this blog post, we’ll be able to monitor various aspects of WVD: Connection Performance, Host Performance and we can consult easily User Report, Utilization Report and Client Report.
Then, I’ve spoken too much: let’s start!
The first prerequisite is to have a WVD environment (you can find instructions to create it here). The second is the presence of a Log Analytics Workspace. If you don’t have one, I will help you to create it. Go to portal.azure.com, search for Log Analytics Workspaces in the upper search bar and click on it.
Then, on the new page, let’s click on “Create log Analytics Workspace”.
Select a Subscription, a Resource Group a Region and a Name for your Workspace and click “Next: Pricing Tier”.
Now, select a pricing tier (in my case the only choice is the 2018 PAYG tier) and click “Review + Create” to deploy the new Log Analytics Workspace.
The next step is optional, but I think that is also important. Azure Log Analytics, maybe as all resources in Azure, has a price that we should consider when we plan to deploy it. We can control and reduce costs configuring how many data are ingested by Log Analytics and the retention period of these data.
Open the Log Analytics Workspace that we have created and go to “Usage and Estimated Costs”.
Here we can see our Pricing Tier and usage chart to monitor efficiently costs generated by Log Analytics.
Selecting “Daily Cap”, we can choose the amount of daily data ingested. We also can choose an hour of the day, when reset this limit.
Another way to save money is to set retention to the minimum required: more is retention period, more are accumulated costs. 31 days are include in the basic PAYG Plan.
Now, we are ready to go to aka.ms/azmonwvdi: we arrive to this page that show us that neither Azure Monitor for WVD Hostpool nor for Session Host is configured.
Choose from the drop down menu, the Subscription, the Resource Group and the Host Pool. Then, click on “Open Configuration Workbook”.
The first thing that we must configure is the Host Pool diagnostic settings: in this step, select the Pool Workspace (our Log Analytics Workspace) from the drop down menu.
After we’ve selected Analytics Workspace, we can proceed: click on “Configure Host Pool”.
Azure says us that when we’ll click deploy, Host Pool will be configured to collect diagnostic data showed. Let’s go!
During deployment, we’ll execute the next step of the procedure: Log Analytics Configuration. We’ll select Host Workspace (also in this case our Log Analytics Workspace).
After we’ve selected the correct Host Workspace, we have two columns: on the left side, we have Workspace Performance Counters present in the workspace yet. In my case, for my past experiments, I have put manually some counters, but this is not a problem. On the right side Azure shows us missing counters. Let’s click on “Configure Performance Counter” to proceed to next step.
Automatically the procedure adds the requested counters to Log Analytics Workspace: click on “Apply Config”.
Ok, in the meantime that Azure applies configuration to the Workspace, we can proceed to “Windows Events Configuration”. On the right side, we have missing events that we must configure. Expand the name column and copy events name. It’s also useful to look at type: in the next step we will write down manually events name and events type. Click on “Open Workspace Configuration” to proceed to next step.
Now, select Data and then Windows Events Logs. Write down event logs name and click on the “+”. Select the correct type for single event logs: the correct selection is needed to save money on useless logs ingestion in our Workspace.
When you have added all the required event logs, click on the “Save” button and Azure will show you a confirmation window.
Ok: we are arrived to the last step! We must add our hosts to workspace.
Click on deploy to complete the procedure.
When all deployments are completed, return here and, if you have completed all steps, Azure shows your new WVD Monitoring system!!
Here are some examples menus to show you how it’s clear and powerful this new WVD monitoring tool.
I hope that my post can help some of you that want to try new monitoring experience in Windows Virtual Desktop Environment. I think that this is a very powerful tool to monitor in real time our WVD.
See you soon!
Michele
