AZ-140 ep19 | What's The Point of Cloud Monitoring

[@deo-max9229]

Even this quick video is enough for me to finally see how useful and valuable monitoring and insights are! ...and yes, those specs make you it looks cool!

[@AzureAcademy]

LOL 😎

[@davemccormack1547]

Loving the WVD series!!! Currently implementing it for our organisation. Having a current issue when installing new session hosts and when the MMA agent installs it says fine but you run a heartbeat query and it does not pick this up. Looking at operation logs it reports wrong timezone and must be 15 mins around UTC I believe, set the timezone to GMT but still no fiddle. More investigation on this. Would love to see more on troubleshooting agents. Love what you do so far thanks and learning loads! Looking forward to taking the exam.

[@AzureAcademy]

Awesome, Thanks Dave! Where is your time server? internal in your domain...like a domain controller or external? Azure uses...well Azure as the time server, locked to UTC. You can force the VMs in Azure to use your preferred time zone in the ARM Template when you deploy the VM. Also the global UTC time and your Time Server do need to be within 15 minutes of each other...otherwise a lot of things go wrong.

[@AwesoomeNinja]

Great video, thank you! Having the extra backgrounds makes it more interesting to watch than just a plain technical video. If I understand correctly, when you add new hosts to a host pool after setting up monitoring, they aren't added automatically into the Insights view. I've been looking into how to automate it with an automation account that runs once a day against each host pool to verify that every host is being monitored. Should the script script just automate the installation of the MMA extension and point it to the correct log analytics, or is there more things that happen when you click the "Configure host pool" button at 3:02 ? Thanks!

[@AzureAcademy]

Thanks for the feedback AwesoomeNinja! Correct, any new hosts you deploy next month will not be added automatically to the exist pool...yet. you can check the ARM Template for all the details in that onboarding session Hosts deploy button...but I think that is it. If you are interested...and you publish the code publicly...I can share it with the Product Group... I can ask them to include your code and solution into the official product...they might be working on this already...but it may be a way for you to contribute and get some name recognition...maybe even a video made about it too...🤷‍♂️ let me know 😁

[@ullasanandwsa8057]

Only when I did the POC of Azure WVD monitoring, I realized that Log Analytics workspace is different from Workspace that we get while creating the hostpool. I feel Microsoft should look at changing the name of the WVD "workspace" to something else as it is highly confusing.

[@AzureAcademy]

Agreed...the naming across many things in Microsoft overlap or reuse words...and it can be quite confusing. Hopefully the rebranding of Windows Virtual Desktop to Azure Virtual Desktop begins the process of clarifying these things 🤔🤷‍♂️😁

[@Die_Biene]

To have the data monitored is all fine but I still have to take a look manually. Is there a way to set handy alerting cirteria like uptime of a machine, failed logon processes, CPU/RAM utilization, etc.?

[@AzureAcademy]

yes, all the alert data is now in The Azure Monitor / Log Analytics So you can setup Azure Alerts...just as you would for any other metric.

[@tabaniz]

@@AzureAcademy That's great

[@AzureAcademy]

👍👍

[@navnathzanzad4379]

Thanks Dean for such a nice info. I have a question here. WVD Monitoring tool shows the monitoring data in graphs/ tables, but there is no proper option to export them as it is. Current option just export them in .csv file

[@AzureAcademy]

To export everything you can configure the diagnostic settings to export data to a storage account as well as log analytics

[@bass2562]

Thanks you Dean . I took the exam az-140 on March 30. I would like to know when we will have the results?

[@AzureAcademy]

I am waiting too 🤷‍♂️ Once the Exam is out of Beta and made generally available...it is 7-10 days after that when they publish the results.

[@tabaniz]

Nice video mate. Nearly there with AZ-140 series. Can you please create a video on auto scaling for WVD session host? I would prefer to be done via azure portal using PS, Workbook etc. Also, if you can show with and without Ephemeral disk. Thanks 😊

[@AzureAcademy]

I already have a scaling video, Check it out! - kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqunkq2AqMZlkM0

[@tharagz08]

If this helps you at all, I went down the autoscaling path but in the end determined that just having VM reservations was more cost effective. For instance we save around 59% on D4s_V4 SKUs with a reservation. That means I would need to have the VM off at least 59% of the time to make it worth going the auto scaling route. My userbase can sometimes work late, and it was always frustrating for the user to be logged off at the end of typical business hours so they could get on another WVD VM. YMMV if you aren't willing to commit to a 3 year term like we are, but yeah thought I'd mention that.

[@AzureAcademy]

its something to think about for sure! Also keep in mind that you can power off your VMs every day at the correct time so you don't pay for them at all...then Start VM on Connect will power them on when needed...without the need of setting up scaling

[@tabaniz]

@@AzureAcademy You are right. Thanks for sharing the video link. We are planning to have session hosts turned off until required like spin up on number of users or if the CPU reaches certain% and scale in. I got an idea let me put that on paper first. Thanks for all your kind assistance

[@AzureAcademy]

👍👍

[@jplewis1452]

Thanks for this I have now set this up however can't see where to pull a list of all users that have logged in with X days.

[@AzureAcademy]

On the users tab or the host pool tab

[@tharagz08]

I'm currently studying for my AZ303/304 exams so haven't been able to apply the knowledge from this series towards the WVD certs, but regardless this information has been very helpful in making WVD a success in our production environment. Thank you again for taking the time to make them. Would a deeper video on monitoring performance and identifying bottlenecks be possible? I'm still having a hard time on identifying bottlenecks for workloads running in Azure. Is it the NIC? VM IOPS? Disk IOPS? CPU (including on burst SKUs) and RAM is simple enough but particularly with network throughout and IOPS in the various places they exist I am having trouble. At this level I got quite good at identifying these things in an on-prem VMware environment but am having a hard time in Azure. Another question I had was around MFA on the login process to WVD. As we know the subscribe flow uses modern auth and is straight forward enough to implement MFA but launching the wvd app/desktop uses ntlm/kerberos with some Azure magic happening in the background with the reverse proxy and all. We're wanting to use some WVD kiosks and I'm having a hard time figuring out how I can further harden them.

[@AzureAcademy]

the AVD Monitoring Insights shows your Host CPU, Disk, Ram and Application latency. This should point you in the right direction where those bottle necks are in the system for you. Then you may have to dig deeper with windows perf mon to see WHY. on the MFA question: What is the goal of the kiosks...Where are they kiosks located, inside or outside your network...and what are the security requirements you need to solve for?

[@tharagz08]

@@AzureAcademy For the most part the kiosks will be public places, though intended only to be used by employees. Imagine in an open area like a service bay. They will be using published applications for manuals and logs. I'm experimenting with FIDO2 Yubikeys to handle the Windows logon session. If I go that route, I become less concerned with MFA to launch WVD apps. We also have been using kiosks in retail stores behind the counter that employees use for a full desktop. What we've seen though is you can select "Remember Credentials" and then you can just select the icon and boom, it logs you in. That is problematic since the thin clients automatically sign in. If the thin client is stolen and we aren't notified quickly, anyone could just plug it in and access that user's WVD desktop, emails, etc. I know in this scenario I could use RD properties to prevent that, but still that would be a single factor login. I'd really like to use Azure MFA in some way to protect the launching of published applications and full desktops from the WVD Remote Desktop app. I've been able to secure RDP with MFA in the past with a RD Gateway + NPS server but wouldn't even attempt that here with WVD. With the reverse proxying I'm sure its not even possible and with how dispersed my userbase is performance would be awful. Plus I like Microsoft managing that piece for me :)

[@AzureAcademy]

ok...public places...but within the company controlled areas...not PUBLIC places like a coffee shop or library. 😜 the RDGateway + NPS won't work. I have had some customers using the YUBIKeys in their environments...I think this doc is what you are looking for. docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/key-distribution-center-proxy

[@tharagz08]

@@AzureAcademy Yes that does look in line with what I am thinking here. When I was using RDG + NPS to further protect my servers, I did notice increased latency inside of the RDP session on the server. Would this implementation have the same effect, or is the KDCP only involved during the RDP authentication process into WVD? My userbase is highly sensitive to performance issues and I'm afraid that if they experienced the increased latency with KDCP as I did with RDG it would not be viable.

[@AzureAcademy]

The monitoring reads the logs so there is no performance hit on the hosts. However, because the AVD Monitoring reads from the logs it is NOT real time. The delay is about 5 minutes. Besides that, if you are under 120ms of latency they should have a great experience. If you are under 120ms and have an extremely sensitive userbase or app...I'd love to hear more

[@haraprasadnayak4040]

Thanks Dean. Though wvd insight is good monitoring tool but may great as a troubleshooting tool. For example it doesn't give features like logon duration of a user if someone complain about slowness. It don't have historical reporting feature also. We are a customer coming from Citrix vdi to wvd and have tendency to compare it with Citrix Director or Eginnoovation or control-up monitoring tool. Also can you create some video on Microsoft End Point manager configuration on personal and pooled wvds. I think for pooled it is still under preview

[@AzureAcademy]

actually it does show how long a user logon took. I showed it at this time: 7:50 kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJLPZ4WCa5WMoKc It also has the historical reporting data...but how long it retains the data depends on how you configure Log Analytics to retain that data. To your last question, my next video will show how to onboard Win10 Multi-session to Endpoint Manager 😁 should be online this Sunday!

[@haraprasadnayak4040]

@@AzureAcademy yes but don't gives break up..for example how long it took to process the GPO how much it took for logon scripts etc..

[@AzureAcademy]

That is true it does not break down the login process, just shows the total time That data is not available at the Azure layer for the insights directly…however you will have all access to the log files You can write a custom script or dashboard and add it to the insights portal

[@Steenabiez]

Is it also possible to find the last connection time of a user on a specific session host somewhere in the AVD blade? (insights or powershell) Usually I get that info from inside of the OS, but it would be cool if it's also somewhere in the AVD service. Thanks!

[@AzureAcademy]

to be clear...you want to find the last time that a specific user connected to a specific session host? if that is right...is this for pooled or personal host pools?

[@Steenabiez]

@@AzureAcademy yeah pretty much, so basically the customer where I started recently has a personal machine avd setup running 24/7 and not caring about their usage. So as a first basic monitoring I want to show them machines that haven't been logged on to in a while.. for some initial savings. I don't have a domain account yet, just Azure creds, so I can't check c:\users or wherever on the VMs themselves for that data. So any thoughts are welcome :-)

[@AzureAcademy]

A few thoughts 1. You can find this from the users side On the connection diagnostics tab Near the bottom Look at the connection activity browser You can search for your host names then see the users who connected to it 2. For cost savings I would direct them to use Start VM on Connect. They can set the VMs to power off every day then don’t bother to start them up. When the user logs in the VM will power on for them. At the end of the day the deallocate script will run and stop costing them $$$ Here is my video - kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYLId2pti7uVo7M

[@Steenabiez]

​@@AzureAcademy Thanks for the info and the responsiveness! With the previous engineer they stopped doing reboots/shutdowns because of many zoneallocation errors, but I'm trying to get them back on track during my lifetime :-) And thanks for all the AZ vids, I like your info sharing style!

[@AzureAcademy]

Glad you found the videos helpful… Stay tune for more!

[@karlochacon]

great videos as always, what do you know about sepago for WVD monitoring? I think there is a free and paid options, any comments for both versions?

[@AzureAcademy]

Quite a lot, I used to Sepago exclusively before AVD insights…you can see it all here - kzbin.info/www/bejne/moGWdISLZ8hgoKc

[@karlochacon]

@@AzureAcademy is it free OK? Is it ok to use both Sepago and the AzureMonitor/Logs Analytics? Thanks

[@AzureAcademy]

There are free and paid versions of Sepago I think the main difference it the paid removes the water mark from the screen

[@karlochacon]

@@AzureAcademy well do you still recommend to use Sepago? Freee is OK? Or AVD insights now is enough thanks

[@karlochacon]

@@AzureAcademy oh go it, and what about using sepago when Azure monitoring is available? do you still recommend Sepago? Thanks

[@cloudpachehra1113]

Awesome 🙂

[@AzureAcademy]

Nice

[@Muzon111]

is there some solutions for what a hack ?

[@AzureAcademy]

What do you mean? What the hack is a training guide that you can follow to build your environment along with my video series

[@kvsc5914]

Can you continue the DevOps series

[@AzureAcademy]

I would love to…but the DevOps videos are my lowest performing videos… How do you think I could improve them so more people would watch

[@tabaniz]

@@AzureAcademy may be start using arm template for WVD and build on it. It might interest people. Merely a suggestion, could not work though

[@AzureAcademy]

Thanks Faddy I do have videos on Bicep coming soon For a look at an ARM Template I use for AVD all the time go here - github.com/DeanCefola/Azure-WVD/tree/master/WVDTemplates/WVD-NewHost

[@tabaniz]

@@AzureAcademy back from holidays. Not long enough 😂😂🤣🤣 . Thanks for the GitHub link. Good luck with the new video on Bicep. Looking forward to it. Cheers

[@AzureAcademy]

☺️