Start VM on connect enters GA

[Eva Seydl]

Start VM on Connect will help you optimize the costs of your deployment. Instead of predicting when the VMs need to be available for your users, give them the power to turn on a deallocated or stopped VM to meet flexible demand.

This new feature that will turn on a shutdown or deallocated VM in a Azure Virtual Desktop host pool when you a user tries to connect to it. You could always set policies to shut down idle VMs and save cost - but with the Start VM on connect capability you can now also ensure that those VMs are available to your users if needed.  

Get started with our documentation here. 

[kumarallamraju]

Great News Eva. I worked with at least 10 customers and implemented this feature in the preview release. Just notified them. I'm sure they'll be super happy to see this GA announcement.

[Eva Seydl]

That is what I love to hear :)! No better way to start GA.

[JacobSteentoft]

Sounds amazing Eva. Our team is quite excited for this feature, and we've been previewing it for a bit now.
If possible, can you elaborate on "You could always set policies to shut down idle VMs and save cost". Are there any policies that can be set on the Azure side to detect idle VMs?

[kumarallamraju]

Have you seen this Jacob? https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-virtual-desktop/deallocate-vm-on-user-logoff/m-p/228021...

Just to clarify shutting down the VMs won't save you the money. You need to make sure the VMs are deallocated. That's why you need to use Azure REST APIs provided in the above blog to save on compute costs.

[Eva Seydl]

@JacobSteentoft: see the FAQ section in our documentation. You will find on Techcommunity tools that use them as well and provide functionality on top.

[Chandu_P]

Nice.
Is this feature useful for Azure Virtual Desktop for Single User session only or Can be used for Multi-User Session mode Desktop too?

What will happen to the installed software and stored files on a shutdown/deallocated VM? When the VM gets turn on back, does all the software & files be there ready to use?

[kumarallamraju]

@Chandu_P
This is valid for Personal and Pooled Desktops as well. Pls refer to the docs page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/start-virtual-machine-connect

This feature doesn't affect the installed software when you shutdown/deallocate the VM. It only allows you to start the VMs on demand. The user's data stored under C:\users\{username} is persistent for Personal Desktops. For Pooled Desktops, you'll be using FSLogix to store user profiles in an external file share like Azure Files or Azure NetApp Files.