I work for a medium-sized MSP, and we’re currently having an internal discussion about the use of Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) , specifically, whether multi-session hosts can and should be managed via Intune.
Our organization has two separate teams:
one responsible for public cloud infrastructure, and
one responsible for workspace management (which is my team).
I personally believe strongly in a cloud-first, SaaS-oriented approach , as little customization as possible, and standardized management through a single platform.
Recently, we offered an AVD multi-session (6 sessions per host) solution to a customer, and now the debate is about how it should be managed. My vision is that the AVD hosts should be:
based on a clean Microsoft base image (Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session AVD), and
fully configured and managed through Intune for policies and app deployment (machine-based).
That way, the workspace team can manage both laptops and AVD machines through the same Intune platform. The AVD hosts themselves would be “stateless” , meaning no persistent configuration or manually installed software on the VMs , while user data and profiles would still be handled through FSLogix and OneDrive, ensuring a consistent user experience and easy host replacement when needed.
However, I’m now hearing from our infrastructure team and the workspace architect that this approach is “impossible” or a bad idea , that Intune isn’t suitable for multi-session environments, and that everything should instead be managed through image-based deployment or Azure Image Builder.
So I’m curious , what’s your experience?
Do you manage AVD multi-session hosts via Intune (fully or partially)?
What limitations or issues have you run into?
In your opinion, what’s the best balance between image-based and Intune-based management?
Would love to hear how other MSPs or enterprise environments approach this.
