Summary

In the chapter, you learned how to analyze, monitor, and troubleshoot Windows 365 Cloud PCs. We looked at how the tools built into Microsoft Intune and the Windows operating system can help with doing these things.

In the next chapter, you will learn about Windows 365-approved partners and how they can extend Windows 365.

Questions

1. Where is the best place to analyze Cloud PC performance?
2. How can you add custom performance monitors to assess whether Cloud PCs meet your company’s performance standards?
3. How can you troubleshoot connectivity issues?

Further reading

Please take advantage of the following resources to learn more:

• Recommended configuration for VDI desktops | Microsoft Learn: https://aka.ms/W365OSRecommendations
• Endpoint analytics via Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn: (https://learn.microsoft.com/mem/analytics/overview)
• Monitor performance of a remote computer without logging on to it | Microsoft Learn: (https://learn.microsoft.com/troubleshoot/windows-server/performance/monitor-remote-computer-performance)

System alerts and email notifications

Manually going into Microsoft Intune to check for failures is not an ideal workflow. When failures or anything unintended happens, they should be reported automatically to you through an external channel for a better response time. This is possible with the integrated alerts in Microsoft Intune, which enable an IT administrator to get a system notification inside the Intune portal and send an email to one or more addresses.

Figure 7.19 – Overview of Alerts in Microsoft Intune

Configuring notifications for the failed provisioning of Cloud PCs

Configuring an alert in Microsoft Intune is straightforward. We will show how to set up an alert notification if a Cloud PC fails under the provisioning state. The process is similar if you want to activate other alerts as well:

Note

You will only be able to use the predefined alerts. Custom alerts are not supported.

1. Start by going to Microsoft Intune |...

Cloud PC utilization dashboard

It can be very helpful to know a user’s Cloud PC usage over time. For example, if a user doesn’t use their Cloud PC, your organization might want to review their license usage or reallocate the license to another user who might benefit more from it. It could also be that the environment doesn’t fulfill the user’s needs anymore and from here, you can start investigating what has changed.

Microsoft Intune provides a built-in utilization report. There are currently two types of utilization reports, one for Cloud PCs and one for Frontline Cloud PCs.

Cloud PC utilization

When looking at the utilization of Cloud PCs, you will be able to see the following information about each Cloud PC: Device Name, Primary UPN, Total time connected, and Days since last sign in.

The utilization of a Cloud PC will be separated into three utilization categories based on the number of hours connected in the past 28 days. If Days since last...

Troubleshooting

We’ve seen numerous problems with customers implementing Windows 365. Even though the process isn’t very complex, there are still factors involved that could influence the connectivity or other elements that can disrupt a good performance or onboarding experience.

Here, you will discover valuable insights and solutions to address many of the challenges you may face while offering Windows 365 to your users. The troubleshooting guidance offered here aims to assist you in overcoming these hurdles and ensuring a smooth and secure Windows 365 experience.

Common implementation errors

Here’s a list of issues we see most while implementing Windows 365. Network and DNS are the most reoccurring types of issues we see:

• Connectivity issues:
  • Frequent disconnects from Cloud PC sessions (a big driver here is VPN/network security software in the Cloud PC that is not configured to ignore RDP traffic, but could also be any sort of client network configuration...

Screen capture protection

We learnt about the Screen capture protection feature in Chapter 6, Securing Cloud PCs. Here are some of the known issues and limitations of this feature:

• When Screen capture protection is turned on, connections from clients other than the Windows 365 app, and Microsoft Remote Desktop client on Windows and macOS, will be rejected. If a user tries to connect to a capture-protected session host with an unsupported client, the connection won’t work and will instead show an error message with the code 0x11511.
• This feature protects the Remote Desktop window from being captured through a specific set of public operating system features and application programming interfaces (APIs). However, there’s no guarantee that this feature will strictly protect content in scenarios where a user is to take a photo of their screen with a physical camera.
• For maximum security, customers should use this feature with watermarking while also disabling...

Summary

In the chapter, you learned how to analyze, monitor, and troubleshoot Windows 365 Cloud PCs. We looked at how the tools built into Microsoft Intune and the Windows operating system can help with doing these things.

In the next chapter, you will learn about Windows 365-approved partners and how they can extend Windows 365.

Questions

1. Where is the best place to analyze Cloud PC performance?
2. How can you add custom performance monitors to assess whether Cloud PCs meet your company’s performance standards?
3. How can you troubleshoot connectivity issues?

Further reading

Please take advantage of the following resources to learn more:

• Recommended configuration for VDI desktops | Microsoft Learn: https://aka.ms/W365OSRecommendations
• Endpoint analytics via Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn: (https://learn.microsoft.com/mem/analytics/overview)
• Monitor performance of a remote computer without logging on to it | Microsoft Learn: (https://learn.microsoft.com/troubleshoot/windows-server/performance/monitor-remote-computer-performance)