Living with Azure Virtual Desktop: what effective ongoing management really involves
So that’s it then. You’ve migrated to Azure Virtual Desktop, journey complete. Your legacy platform has been retired, users cut over, another job done.
If only! Because in reality, everyone knows that migration is only the beginning.
AVD might well be a powerful, flexible platform, but it is not a ‘set-and-forget’ service. Once it is live, the focus shifts from delivery to operation and that’s when organisations can start to feel an unexpected strain. The truth is, AVD is like so much else in the stack: optimal performance doesn’t just happen. Managing AVD effectively requires ongoing attention, specialist knowledge, and a level of operational maturity that is often underestimated during the initial project phase.
Why AVD needs active management
AVD sits at the intersection of multiple Azure and Microsoft 365 services. Which means that there are a lot of things in play when it comes to day-to-day performance and user experience - identity, networking, storage, compute, security, monitoring and automation for starters.
That integration is obviously one of AVD’s greatest strengths but it also means responsibility does not stop at the desktop layer.
The onus is on teams to continuously manage:
Host pool health and scaling behaviour
Image updates and application changes
User profiles and FSLogix performance
Security controls and conditional access
Cost optimisation and consumption patterns
Incident response and user experience issues
Fail to keep on top of the above and you risk small inefficiencies quietly compounding into higher costs, degraded performance, and frustrated users.
Where organisations often struggle
Many AVD deployments start life smoothly, but operational reality can start to cause friction over time.
Drawing on our own experience, we’d highlight the following as the main challenges:
Keeping images and applications current
Regular image updates are essential for security and performance, yet poorly managed update cycles can introduce instability or user disruption.
Balancing performance and cost
AVD offers flexible scaling, but without a degree of active tuning environments often default to over-provisioning “just in case”, eroding the financial benefits of AVD in the process.
Managing FSLogix and user experience
Profile-related issues remain one of the most common causes of AVD dissatisfaction, requiring specialist troubleshooting rather than generic desktop support.
Operational ownership gaps
One to really watch as it so often goes under the radar. AVD can sit between teams, so not quite traditional EUC, not quite core infrastructure, not quite cloud platform. And when accountability is all a bit blurred, issues can linger longer than they should.
The value of tooling and experience
The good news is that none of the challenges highlighted above are showstoppers. Tooling can help hugely: platforms such as Nerdio can significantly simplify AVD administration, offering automation, standardisation and visibility that would otherwise take time to build manually.
But there are limits to their value; and tools alone do not define outcomes. You are still going to need to make decisions about architecture patterns, scaling thresholds, image strategy, security posture and cost controls. When issues arise, understanding why something is behaving the way it is matters as much as knowing where to click.
This is where hands-on experience becomes critical. But that raises another question: to manage or be managed?
For some organisations, building deep in-house expertise around AVD makes sense. For many others, particularly those with small IT teams or stretched cloud capability, it raises a more pragmatic question:
Do we want to run this platform or just rely on it working well, entrusting its management to others?
The good news here is outsourcing does not mean losing visibility or control. On the contrary, done well you can expect:
Proactive monitoring and optimisation rather than reactive support
Access to specialist skills without recruitment/staffing overhead
Faster resolution of user-impacting issues
Ongoing cost and performance tuning as usage evolves
Clear accountability for a platform users rely on day-to-day
Our top tip here? Choose a partner who understands AVD as part of a wider Azure ecosystem, not as an isolated service.
A focused, specialist approach to AVD operations
At Shaping Cloud, we offer AVD management on a specialist as-a-service basis. Our approach reflects how customers actually use the platform: focused, business-critical, and tightly integrated with Azure and Microsoft 365. Rather than wrapping AVD into a broad, one-size-fits-all managed service, we support it through a targeted offering designed specifically around its operational needs. That means organisations get exactly what they need to keep AVD running smoothly while retaining architectural clarity and strategic control.
AVD can deliver enormous value when it is well run, and that’s the whole promise of our AVD managed service: we’re about keeping users super productive, costs staying predictable, and IT teams free to focus elsewhere.
We help you treat AVD as a living platform, one that requires care, optimisation and informed oversight to drive sustained success long after your migration project is complete.
As one of the UK’s leading Azure specialists, AVD is the stuff of deep domain expertise. Lean on us to help you assess, migrate to and manage your AVD platform, drawing on proven architectures, critical tooling such as Nerdio, and all the lessons learned from a wealth of delivery projects.
Enquire about our Azure Virtual Desktop services and free workshops today.