We’re excited to announce the public preview of enhanced host pool management for Azure Virtual Desktop. Enhanced host pool management is a collection of features and capabilities designed to help admins save time, confirm consistent configurations, and achieve cost-effective scalability. Enhanced host pool management features include:
- Session host configuration and update
- Creating and deleting session hosts at scale
- Using Ephemeral OS disks to improve session host performance (private preview coming soon—request access to preview )
These capabilities make it easier than ever for organizations to improve admin productivity while maintaining secure, efficient virtual environments tailored to their needs.
Session host configuration and update
Achieving consistency across session hosts to provide users with a shared and secure experience can be a challenge when managing host pools. The new session host configuration feature addresses this by allowing administrators to set specific parameters—such as virtual machine (VM) type, region, and image—that all session hosts within a pool will follow. Built-in parameter validation during configuration creation, such as verifying that the VM is available in the specified region, helps prevent errors and maintain uniformity across the host pool. By defining these properties up front, admins can streamline the deployment of session hosts, improve the end-user experience, and simplify troubleshooting.
Traditionally, updating session hosts has required custom automation, scripting, or other tools. The session host updating capability allows admins to modify the host pool’s session host configuration and roll out changes to existing hosts in batches, minimizing downtime. By scheduling updates and using test VMs for validation, administrators can smoothly implement changes without interrupting users. The batch update functionality will also roll back an update batch if errors are encountered, which reduces the risk of unhealthy session hosts after an update.
Creating and deleting session hosts at scale
Manually creating and deleting session hosts can be both time-consuming and costly. To address these challenges, the new Azure Virtual Desktop features allow admins to create and delete session host VMs at scale, taking advantage of scaling plans that adjust the host pool size based on demand.
Without automated scaling, admins face management overhead, a degraded end-user experience, and potential security risks. Administrators can now define minimum and maximum host pool sizes in a scaling plan and set capacity thresholds that trigger scaling actions based on actual usage. This ensures resources are available during peak hours and scaled down when demand is low, which reduces costs.
When scaling is enabled for a pooled host pool, session hosts can be automatically started or created outside of business hours while idle hosts are deallocated or deleted to conserve resources.
Enhancing performance with Ephemeral OS disks
Azure Virtual Desktop provides Ephemeral OS disks for environments that are in need of high-performance workloads. These disks are stored on the local storage of the virtual machine (VM), which enables fast deployment and high disk throughput.
Ephemeral OS disks can be configured on a VM's temporary disk or cache, with the important requirement that the image size must be equal to or smaller than the selected temporary disk or cache size available on the VM.
Ephemeral OS disks are supported only on host pools that are configured with session host configuration. For optimal management, administrators should use a create/delete scaling plan for session hosts configured with Ephemeral OS disks. This approach will help ensure an efficient session host management experience.
Next steps: Start streamlining host pool management
Enhanced host pool management for Azure Virtual Desktop offers a comprehensive solution to many of the challenges faced by administrators. By providing tools for defining, updating, scaling, and optimizing session hosts, this new capability streamlines management processes, reduces costs, and enhances both performance and security.
Want to learn more?
- Read the session host update for Azure Virtual Desktop documentation
- Read the create and assign a scaling plan documentation
- Watch this video on creating and deleting at scale
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