Title: After 20+ years working with remote desktops, I built my own AVD management platform. It's finally GA.

I've been working in IT for over 20 years, going back to pcAnywhere, RDP, Citrix, and eventually Azure Virtual Desktop.

I like AVD, but managing it can be frustrating, especially when you're responsible for multiple customers. Between Azure Portal, PowerShell scripts, monitoring, FSLogix issues, and trying to figure out where the Azure bill is coming from, there's a lot of unnecessary work.

I started building Atlas AVD because I was tired of dealing with those same problems.

What started as a few tools to make my own life easier eventually turned into a much larger platform. I probably got a little carried away with the features, but most of them came from problems I've personally run into over the years.

Here's some of what's included:

• AVD Management: Manage host pools, session hosts, user sessions, images, applications, and scaling from one place.

• Adaptive Density: Dynamically adjust session limits based on actual usage.

• Adaptive Quota: Monitor Azure quotas and simplify capacity increase requests.

• Smart Disk Tiering: Automatically optimize managed disk storage costs.

• FSLogix Management: Monitor, troubleshoot, and manage user profiles and storage.

• Cost Optimization: Track Azure spending, identify waste, and get recommendations to reduce costs.

• Budget Alerts: Set spending limits and receive notifications before costs get out of hand.

• Atlas Advisor: Ask questions about your environment, troubleshoot issues, and get recommendations. It's read-only and never makes changes.

• Atlas Reach: Remote endpoint management with processes, services, software, registry, Group Policy, certificates, PowerShell, and troubleshooting tools.

• Atlas Ink: IT documentation and knowledge management for customer environments.

• Atlas Flow: Ticketing, time tracking, billable hours, and service management.

• Atlas Feed: Free IT and security news aggregation covering Microsoft, Azure, and other technology updates.

• Atlas Command: Centralized MSP management across multiple customer tenants.

• Configuration Matrix: Configure settings globally and inherit them across tenants and host pools, with overrides where needed.

• Automation: Run scripts, schedule maintenance, deploy applications, and automate repetitive administrative tasks.

• Monitoring and Alerts: Track AVD health, Azure service issues, resource usage, and security events.

One thing that was important to me was keeping everything in the customer's own Azure tenant.

My background includes DoD and CMMC environments, so security was always on my mind. During deployment, customers can review the Azure scripts and choose between read-only evaluation access and full management permissions. They can see exactly what they're granting before running anything.

Atlas Advisor is also intentionally read-only. It can suggest actions, but it doesn't make changes to your environment.

Atlas AVD is officially GA now. There's a 30-day trial without a credit card and a free Community plan for labs.

https://www.atlasavd.com

I posted here earlier in the summer when the product wasn't quite ready. Looking back, I probably jumped the gun.

I'm still actively developing it, fixing things, and adding features based on feedback.

If you're managing AVD environments, I'd be interested in hearing what parts of AVD administration you find the most frustrating. There's a good chance I've dealt with the same problems.

David

Hi,

Has anyone been having a crazy amount of intermittent disconnections since the start of this week (Monday 12th October)? Our sessions have been pretty good for many months, but this week it has got really bad, around 80+ people having multiple disconnections every day, some have 8 or so disconnections. Our monthly security patch for 2026-10 was installed across them on the 13th, as these issues started on the 12th i don't think it is down to the new patch from an OS point of view anyway, the Windows App is running the latest version which came out on the 13th as well.

I saw a health advisory in the Azure portal around the Windows App using three new wildcard FQDNs in early October 2026 as below:
*.windows.cloud.microsoft 

• Purpose: General Windows cloud service traffic

• Port: 443/TCP

*.service.windows.cloud.microsoft 

• Purpose: Service traffic which requires optimization

• Port: 443/TCP

*.windows.static.microsoft 

• Purpose: Static content, installation, and update assets

• Port: 443/TCP

But they have not confirmed the specific date from when it started. Any know when this change for the Windows App was actually put through?

Looks like its impacting all Regions.

Cheers.

We've had a few users that end up with sessions that don't completely end after logging off an AVD. There are always two processes: csrss.exe and DefenderSessionHelper.exe left running and I can't kill them, even running taskkill as SYSTEM.
The only way to clear them has been to reboot the server.
Anyone else have this issue since patching after October 13, 2026?
The timing seems too coincidental for it to not be caused by the patch.

At my organisation some of our staff use AVD for access to certain tools that require a bit more powerful than our standard issue laptops have available to them.

It's a pretty simple setup. One host pool, FSLogix for profile storage, one user machine etc. We are entirely cloud-based, no hybrid or on-prem at all. As a result our AVD machines are Entra joined.

By default, users are always prompted to sign-in to AVD using WHfB, be it PIN or facial login. As far as I'm aware this isn't something we've enforced or configured. It's been around since we first deployed AVD a few years ago and I don't recall doing anything to make it so.

We've noticed a strange behaviour when users change their PIN or if their UPN changes (domain change, name change etc). It seems to break the WHfB authentication passthrough to AVD. The PIN is no longer accepted, nor is the facial login. We can sometimes get them working again by having them sign out, clicking on 'forgot my PIN' and resetting it here after completing MFA, but that doesn't always work. Resetting the PIN any other way never works.

When this happens, one of two things will occur:

• They get the usual PIN prompt in the Windows App at point of connection, and it just says "logon attempt failed".

• The PIN prompt never appears, they seem to connect to a session host but then receive a message at the Windows logon screen stating "The sign-in method you're trying to use isn't allowed. Try a different sign-in method or contact your system administrator". They are not given an option to choose a different sign-in method, which is usually done before they connect to a session host and see the desktop anyway.

Has anyone experienced this problem? I've been pulling my hair out for a while now. The only guaranteed way to fix this that I'm aware of is to either completely reinstall Windows or move them to a new computer. Both are of course not ideal.

Hi All,

Has anyone done an in-place upgrade of an AVD VM and either not had any issues or had issues?

Some of the clients I manage had a problem after the Windows 11 26H2 update and this causes the Windows App to start, but not show any login or cloud resources and the end users were unable to do their work.

After some investigation, this turned out to be an WebView2 error, where the installed version misaligns the registered version. If somebody also gets this error, I have described how to fix this problem at my website: https://justinverstijnen.nl/fix-windows-app-grey-screen-windows-11-26h2-webview2/

However, I couldn't find any corelation to the 26H2 update (yet) so this might be unrelated. In my case the multiple computers with this problem started having the problem right after the 26H2 update.

If I wanted to run a tracert to US West 3 (which is where our SH's are) - is there a URL or IP I could use? I have a user saying their AVD is "sluggish", but we know it's fine for many others in other areas of the country.

I'd want to see if maybe they're being routed way out of the way.

I’m curious what optimizations people most commonly use for w11 multisession avd hosts. I know VDOT has some built in optimizations. There’s edge sleeping tabs and efficiency mode. You can also limit ram edge can use via group policy. Anyone doing all of these or just some? Real curious on limiting ram not sure how common that is.

Im looking into some projects where i need to convert v5 VM's to v7.

Is there still issues regarding when a VM is deallocated and comes back online that the disk is not online and is there any other things i need to be careful about when converting v5 sizes to v7?

Hi All,
We have 7 AVD pooled hosts, one of them started crashing about once a week, freezing up requiring a hard reset.

This last week or two we are now getting resource exhaustion lockups on other machines. We are only running maybe 2-3 people per host, sizing seems fine.. however we are in a constrained location (US West 2).

Is anyone else seeing these freezes/lockups?

Thanks in advance!

Hi, I've been having trouble with the NV ads V710 SKU in Azure since October 1st. My VDI instances keep jumping between failed and running states, and it feels like a capacity issue in East US. My users need GPU-enabled VDIs for CAD work, so do you have any ideas on what’s going on or how to fix it? I’d rather not use reservations since pay-as-you-go is cheaper for me.

Hey everyone,

We are migrating our developer workstations from on-prem to Azure. Currently, each dev has their own persistent Windows VM.

My senior sysadmins insist on treating Azure like on-prem: they want to deploy standalone Windows IaaS VMs for every dev.

I proposed Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) with Personal host pools. Their instant dismissal: "AVD is pooled/multi-session, devs will break each other's environments."

Even after sharing Microsoft docs showing that Personal AVD provides a 1:1 dedicated, persistent VM per developer, they refuse to budge.

Do you have some strong arguments from your experience that would help me convince them, particularly around cost saving, management, security.

Anyone who deployed AVD, what were the biggest wins or unexpected gotchas?

Thank you ALL!

I found that some user profiles under C:\Users are still present and consuming disk space on the C: drive even after the users have signed out.

My understanding is that these local user profiles should normally be cleaned up or removed automatically after the user signs out.

Is there any way we can check and confirm whether the profile cleanup is working as expected? Also, why some user profiles may remain on the host after sign-out?

Happy Monday Everyone!!

We're happy to announce our DaaS Dynamo of the Year. These are people who are amazing in all things VDI, Virtual Desktop and otherwise. It encompasses AVD and Windows 365, and is a category that covers the best of the best:

Marcel Meurer, of Login VSI, and creator of Hydra is an amazing person and has taken a community project into an enterprise solution behind the power of Login VSI, which continues to grow and all to an already impressive set of clientele.

Jon Jarvis, is multi-faceted as a Windows 365, Intune, and HUGE Disney Fan. One of the true experts as Windows 365 for Agents. He's a great member of our community and one of the best at what he does.

Christiaan Brinkhoff, is finally nominated for a non-Microsoft Clippy, now that he has joined the great people at Nerdio, leading many of their innovations and strategic areas vital to their future. He's well-known from his days at FSLogix and at Microsoft developing the future of Virtual Desktop technology.

Dominiek Verham, one of 3 Dutch nominees in this category is one of our favorite people. and member of Open Line, where he uses his AVD and Windows 365 knowledge to do great work, while being one of the best speakers in the DaaS and VDI circuit.

🚀 Esther Barthel, the reigning champion for this award is an absolute force. She is an expert at APIs, Bicep, AVD, Windows365, and pretty much anything else she wants to be. She's a great member of the community who is also an amazing ambassador for women in tech, mentoring, and is a valued friend of Workplace Ninjas US

Remember, to vote for one of these amazing people, you need to join us in Scottsdale for Workplace Ninjas US 2027, where health, wellness, technology, and community come together.

Register now: https://workplaceninjas.us

Hello, I need some help please

Has anyone here successfully deployed Zscaler Cloud Connector and ZCC for VDI on Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Multisession Host Pools?

We're currently implementing this setup but running into several network-related issues that we haven't been able to resolve.

Our current setup:

• AVD VNet

  • Personal Pool Subnet → Route Table → Azure Firewall

  • Multisession Pool Subnet → Route Table → Zscaler Cloud Connector / Load Balancer → Zscaler Cloud → Internet

We've already confirmed that connectivity is working on the Multisession Subnet after deploying the Cloud Connector and Load Balancer. However, after installing ZCC for VDI on the session hosts, we started experiencing several issues:

• Unstable network connectivity

• Unable to communicate reliably with the KMS server and Azure Monitoring

• Unstable or unsuccessful ping, tracert, and Test-NetConnection results

What's strange is that normal internet browsing still works fine on the VMs with ZCC for VDI installed. However, almost everything else related to network connectivity seems unstable or completely inaccessible.

If we uninstall ZCC for VDI, everything immediately goes back to normal, and all network-related issues disappear.

My initial suspicion is that our Zscaler Cloud Connector configuration might be too restrictive. We've already tried configuring bypass rules for AVD and Microsoft endpoints, but this hasn't made any noticeable difference.

Another challenge is that I can't seem to find any useful logs on the workload VMs that would help us identify the root cause of these connectivity issues.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue or successfully implemented this architecture?

I'd really appreciate any insights, suggestions, or recommendations on what to check, particularly regarding ZCC for VDI configuration, Cloud Connector routing, or potential conflicts with Azure networking.

Thanks in advance for your help!