Azure Virtual Desktop User Session Insights Workbook

Understanding user activity and session health is essential for optimizing any Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment. The User Session Insights Workbook in Azure Monitor provides detailed insights into user sessions, helping administrators monitor performance, troubleshoot connection issues, and enhance overall user experience.

How to Access the User Session Insights Workbook

To start using the User Session Insights Workbook, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Azure Portal: Log in to the Azure Portal.
2. Go to Azure Monitor: Use the search bar at the top of the Azure portal to find and click on Azure Monitor.
3. Select Workbooks: In the left-hand menu under the Insights section, click on Workbooks.
4. Search for Azure Virtual Desktop Insights: You can either search for “Azure Virtual Desktop Insights” or find it under the Azure Monitor workbooks section. From here, you can select User Session Insights to view the predefined workbook.

1. Connect to Your Log Analytics Workspace: Ensure you have configured Log Analytics for your AVD environment to collect session data, connection logs, and other critical metrics.

Key Metrics Tracked by the Workbook

The User Session Insights workbook allows you to visualize key session-related data points, including:

• User Session Counts: This metric tracks the number of active sessions across your AVD environment. It allows you to identify peak usage periods and understand how many users are utilizing the virtual desktop infrastructure.
• Average Login Time: A critical performance indicator, average login time provides insight into how long it takes users to start a session. Extended login times could indicate issues with the session host configuration, network latency, or user profile management (e.g., FSLogix).
• Session Duration: This metric tracks how long users stay connected during each session. It helps assess user engagement, resource consumption, and whether users are experiencing disconnections or forced logouts.
• Connection Failures: Monitoring failed connection attempts is vital for identifying underlying issues such as authentication errors, network interruptions, or host pool misconfigurations. This data can be used to pinpoint trends and proactively resolve issues before they become widespread.
• Disconnection and Reconnection Events: Identifying users frequently disconnecting and reconnecting can provide insight into network stability or potential client-side issues. This metric is crucial for troubleshooting inconsistent user experiences.

How to Leverage Insights from the Workbook

• Optimizing Resource Allocation: By analyzing user session counts and duration, you can better allocate resources like CPU and memory. This helps balance the load across session hosts, ensuring optimal performance while avoiding unnecessary scaling that might inflate costs.
• Reducing Login Time: If the workbook shows consistently high average login times, it’s a sign that further optimization is needed. This may involve adjusting the configuration of FSLogix profiles, tuning session host settings, or improving network performance.
• Proactive Issue Detection: Identifying spikes in failed connections or prolonged session disconnections allows administrators to detect issues early. This can reduce downtime and improve the user experience. Alerts can be set up based on these workbook insights, notifying you when thresholds are crossed, like when the number of failed logins or disconnected sessions exceeds a set limit.

Integration with Log Analytics for Custom Queries

The User Session Insights Workbook is powered by Log Analytics, enabling customization and deeper analysis through queries. For example, a custom query to track users experiencing the longest login times could look like this:

AVDConnections

| where ResultType == “Success”

| summarize AvgLoginTime = avg(TotalLogonTime) by UserName

| top 10 by AvgLoginTime desc

This query allows you to identify users who consistently face long login times, helping target optimizations or resolve user-specific issues.

Practical Use Cases

• Session Performance Troubleshooting: When users report slow performance, the workbook’s data can help pinpoint the source, whether it’s high resource utilization on a session host or network issues impacting session continuity.
• Capacity Planning: By analyzing session trends, including peak usage times and overall session duration, administrators can forecast when to scale up resources and when to reduce capacity to manage costs effectively.
• Improving User Experience: Frequent disconnections or failed logins can negatively impact productivity. By using the insights from this workbook, you can proactively address these issues, ensuring that users have a stable and efficient virtual desktop experience.

Conclusion

The Azure Virtual Desktop User Session Insights Workbook offers comprehensive data that administrators can use to monitor user activity, troubleshoot issues, and optimize the overall performance of the AVD environment. With this workbook, you can make data-driven decisions that directly enhance user experience while ensuring that your AVD infrastructure operates at peak efficiency.

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