Forum Discussion
What is your experience with Start VM on connect. Share your voice!
Hi Community :)!
If you remember I announced a while ago public preview of start VM on connect. As you had some time to explore the feature, let me know what you think.
Please answer this short survey which is meant to capture your rating and comments. This will help me and feature team to drive further improvements: https://forms.office.com/r/SRHMS8DVWk
39 Replies
Hi Eva,
I was trying to use Start VM on connect and using this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/start-virtual-machine-connect?tabs=azure-portal#create-a-custom-role-for-start-vm-on-connect.
I am getting an attached error. I also attached the role I have assigned to the group. As you have mentioned in this document, there is no way to add a custom role to the group.:https://avdlogix.com/startvmonconnect
Please advise. This would be more helpful in reducing our costing in Azure.
Thanks- Start on connect works great, if you are not using fslogix or mapped drives.
When using fslogix and\or mapped drives, I end up with local profiles being created and drive maps missing.
Presuming this is related to the session host advertising it self as ready prematurely, before all appropriate services are started.
Any advice appreciated.I appreciate this is an old thread but I am struggling.
Having literally created a brand new AVD deployment by just using the AVD management in the portal the steps to add the custom role cannot be completed sine there is no "Windows Virtual Desktop" service principal.
How do I remedy this? I ran the app registration URLs and ended up with and Windows Virtual Desktop AME and Client.
What is needed to get this going?
Thanks
barnesyboy Just in case it helps someone in the future. The docs are not entirely accurate now.
The principal is "Azure Virtual Desktop".
Experience has been relative been good. Its a great feature to have in place but have been running into issues of late with the first attempt of connecting, getting error occurred while accessing this resource.
On second attempt, its work correctly then. Its like the first connection timeouts while the the VM is starting up.
Just wondering has anyone else come across this?
RobMahon90 One issue I noticed is whenever the machine turns off automatically (due to CPU idle) they have difficulty powering on and reconnecting to the machine. Very likely as mentioned earlier an issue with an existing session. Not sure if there is a way around this.
Hi! evasse
We use this feature with Azure Virtual Desktop, and I think is a great feature and it does make sense to have it in combination with auto scaling.
However I found that after the machines turns on one time. It does not want to turn on again "On Demand" if it gets turned off. I receive this message from the Remote Desktop app: "We couldn't connect because there are currently no available resources. Try again later or if this keeps happening, ask your admin or tech support for help."I've been following up all possible documented troubleshooting, and not found any solution yet. I know I follow the correct configuration, because it works, is just that it seems it won't work again until the next day, or after the machine gets turned on again, and then off, so it'll turn on with the feature...
Thank you in advance for all the possible help provided here.- If your user can't connect due to stale session on a turned off VM. You can remove the session with the Remove-AzWvdUserSession cmdlet.
- It's hit or miss with us. We have offshore users and a handful of onshore users that it doesn't seem to work for. It's great when it works, frustrating when it doesn't.
- Please review our documentation to ensure that the service has permission to start the VM. Our support will be able to troubleshoot with you deeper for the cases where it is not working.
- For us is randomly failing all the time. We have all setup properly. When you have 100 VMs trying to use is when you will start seeing the issues coming on.
- Thanks for the answer. Last time we open a case, we went to check but as its in Preview there was no much support as they cannot escalate with product team. We gave directions to all the users to Log off their sessions when they end their shift, but after it still keep happening.
I was quite excited about this feature and where able to try it today, unfortunately without a lot of success. 🙂
We already had a similar custom role in place, containing options to read and start/stop/restart/deallocate the VM. Adding the User to this group and enabling the StartOnConnect feature via the portal did not work.Logs are showing the following error:
RunCommandForAzureVMAsync Session Host with /subscriptions/subIdRemoved/resourceGroups/rg-weu-d-compute-poc/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/VMTestX001 operation GetVM was blocked due to insufficient permissions. Review permissions are assigned as per requirement for start VM on connect. See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2151762To check if the role assignment worked, I ran "Get-AzVM" powershell command in the context of the user in question, this command receives the VMs in question. I am also able to see, start and stop VMs via Azure portal. Therefore, the "insufficient permission" error does not make a lot of sense to me.
Any hints what I could have missed during configuration?Christoph Distefano: You need to create the custom role: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/start-virtual-machine-connect#create-a-custom-role-for-start-vm-on-connect.
hello evasse , as mentioned in my initial post we had a similar role already in place (it has more permissions actually, but also read and start permission) and assigned it on Resource Group Level.
And, also as mentioned, the custom role works, since the user can see/start/stop the VMs via Azure Portal or PowerShell after we assign him with the role.
Any other information on this, maybe some insights from the troubleshooting within the last months?
- I have been testing in my own host pool and I like it so far. Are there ways to make the VMs boot faster? We get a deallocated VM to a working session in 4 minutes.
What has been the experience for people who have multiple users try to start a VM at the same time? How does that work and is it different depending on the host pool type?- This is something you could try if you use Win10 multisession. https://christiaanbrinkhoff.com/2020/07/31/optimize-your-windows-10-single-and-multi-session-images-with-the-new-windows-virtual-desktop-optimization-tool/
evasse Hi Eva, I have just tested this out on personal WVD Hostpool and it works great, I timed the start-up multiple times takes less than a minute for the VM to come up.
My question is regarding the cost now saving this is making. When I shutdown the WVD it goes to Stop state and not Stopped De-allocated State, Does that mean I am still getting charged for the consumption costs as explained here https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-virtual-desktop/must-read-wvd-personal-vm-proper-shutdown-process-and-deallocate/m-p/2377241
If this is the case and I am able to implement Azure Automation to Stop and de-allocate the VM, will the Start ON connect still work as expected?
