Azure Cost Management AVD Limitations

Imagine you’ve recruited 200 remote analysts. Instead of investing in 200 high-spec laptops, you can have them access a cloud-hosted desktop from their personal devices.

All sensitive information and applications remain secure within Azure, while your IT team efficiently manages security, updates, and accessibility. It sounds like a smart, productive approach, doesn’t it?

However, when the bill arrives, it brings confusion. The numbers around desktop usage and employee costs may not add up. Rather than being driven by actual business activities and AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop) usage trends, you see charges for:

• Virtual machines (VM)
• Managed disks
• Azure Files storage
• Network bandwidth
• Snapshots and backups

This is the reality of Azure cost management—it often leaves you in the dark regarding where your funds are going and who is responsible for the expenditure, making it challenging to track and manage AVD costs effectively.

Fear not; this article aims to provide clarity.

By the end, you’ll understand what’s driving your costs, where money may be leaking, and how to resolve it.

Understanding the Complexity of AVD Cost Management

AVD costs aren’t derived from a single source. Instead, they aggregate from various Azure resource consumption charges.

Therefore, when reviewing native reports, you’ll notice costs related to:

• VM compute
• Storage
• Networking
• Backup
• Licensing

The pay-as-you-go model is great for scalability but also adds unpredictability to costs.

Let’s take a closer look at the key cost drivers behind these complex bills.

The Major Cost Contributors to Your AVD Bills

Upon analysing any AVD bill, four primary factors typically emerge as significant contributors.

Session Host VMs

The largest expense comes from session-host VMs (compute), which can account for 35-75% of your total spend. That’s a broad range, as it hinges on the type and size of Azure Virtual Machines in use, the purchased model, and optimisation efforts.

For instance, a D8 VM can support 20 users; however, if only 8 are typically active, you’ll still incur costs for all 20.

AVD session hosts remain operational even without active sessions, potentially leading to unnecessary costs from idle VMs that charge you for CPU, RAM, or storage, even when nobody is using the desktop.

Storage

Your AVD environment incurs storage costs in two main areas:

VM Operating System (OS) Disks: These store the Windows OS, system files, and applications.

Each session host VM has one operating system disk. Therefore, if you’re operating 20 session hosts, you’ll pay for 20 OS disks.

Note: Opting for Premium SSD managed disks for enhanced performance will lead to higher costs compared to standard disks.

User Profile Storage (Azure Files/NetApp): AVD maintains each user profile as a virtual disk file (FSLogix profile container), holding desktop settings, files, and personal data.

The size of these virtual disks will increase over time, as users accumulate data (e.g., Outlook files, OneDrive sync data, browser caches). According to the Configuration Setting Reference, FSLogix profile containers can be as large as 30GB.

Assuming each of your 200 new remote analysts has a profile averaging 5-10 GB, this storage utilization can rapidly balloon to several terabytes, sharply increasing your monthly storage expenses.

Networking

Networking charges are generally less significant compared to compute and storage costs, which can lead them to be overlooked as the environment expands. These charges often arise from data egress (the cost of transferring data out of Azure) and fixed costs associated with VPN/ExpressRoute.

Networking costs can escalate quickly in Azure environments when:

• Teams frequently download or upload files
• Applications require substantial data transfer
• AVD workloads involve graphics or video content
• Employees connect from various global locations

Licensing

This area can often be confusing.

Although there isn’t a specific AVD license fee, access rights are typically bundled with various Microsoft 365 and Windows Enterprise licenses. This enables employees to log in without needing an additional software license.

You may think, “We already have the license, so AVD should be economical.” However, it’s important to note that the licensing does not cover infrastructure costs.

While you might not pay extra for the Windows OS, charges accrue for every hour of VM compute, storage, and network utilised by your desktops.

Identifying Potential Areas of Financial Loss in AVD

If your AVD expenses are soaring, and you’re uncertain how the cost drivers mentioned above are affecting your budget, consider these common pitfalls:

• Always-on VMs and Idle Sessions: If many users aren’t properly logging off at the end of the day but simply disconnecting, then VMs remain operational without doing any work. Some sessions may linger in host memories, continuing through the night and even on weekends.
• Improper Auto-scaling Configurations: If your auto-scaling is not set up correctly, you could be paying for idle host pools or deploying additional VMs that go unused.
• Overprovisioned VMs: Engineers might opt for larger VMs “just in case.” If this holds true for your workforce, you are likely paying for resources that are unnecessary.
• Lack of Cost Allocation Visibility: If resources aren’t regularly tagged, unassigned expenses can quickly mount. Without accountability, it’s tough to ascertain who’s generating the costs.

Limitations of Native Azure Cost Management Tools

Azure’s cost management tools provide a solid foundation for managing expenses; however, they fall short for tracking and controlling AVD costs for several reasons:

• Lack of Granularity: Azure Cost Management simply displays spend at the subscription level or resource group total, without revealing who incurred these costs. Thus, you miss out on insights like cost per user session or department.
• Reactive Nature: Azure’s native suite gives you a look at what you’ve spent during the billing period but doesn’t help prevent waste in real-time. While Azure Advisor can identify idle VMs or recommend reserved instances, it doesn’t automatically initiate resizing or session host shutdowns based on user activity patterns.
• Complex Learning Curve: Extracting AVD-related insights from Azure’s native tools requires considerable effort. Tools like Azure Monitor and Log Analytics only deliver raw infrastructure data. To make this data actionable, your team must run custom KQL queries, establish dashboards, and implement comprehensive tagging strategies.

In summary: These tools lack awareness of AVD-specific behaviour; they cannot distinguish session hosts from standard VMs or automatically account for patterns such as disconnected user sessions, log-on spikes, or maintenance-related host drainage.

Strategies for Optimising AVD Expenditure

At this stage, it’s clear that you can’t optimise AVD expenditure solely through Azure’s native tools. Moreover, if your organisation’s AVD expenses are erratic, addressing the issue isn’t the exclusive responsibility of the finance team, nor can IT tackle it alone.

Traditionally, finance departments would conduct monthly reviews or generate ad hoc reports in hope of identifying budget drainers. However, cloud workloads are dynamic. By the time a monthly report flags idle instances, you’ve already incurred those costs.

To implement an effective FinOps strategy for cloud expenditure, collaboration between your engineering and finance teams is essential, and it requires looking beyond Azure-native tools.

You will require:

Real-time Cost Visibility: Trace costs down to specific cost centres. For instance, identify that department X spends $Y on IT desktops.

What to Do: Ensure that all teams using cloud resources tag them with a standardised labelling practice—these tags might represent cost centres, departments, projects, environments, owners, etc.

Accurate, Context-rich Forecasting: Implement AI/ML predictive functionalities that account for usage trends, planned alterations, and seasonality to create more reliable budgets. Therefore, when those 200 new analysts start utilising AVD, you can better anticipate the resulting charges.

What to Do: Employ a robust FinOps platform to analyse historical patterns and align them with future business realities.

Automations: Set triggers that execute actions to optimise spending, such as VM shutdowns after hours or recommendations for resources to be right-sized according to usage.

What to Do: Develop a notification system that acts on these insights.

Cost Accountability: Every expenditure must connect back to the organisational goals and objectives.

What to Do: Monitor metrics such as cost per active user, cost per transaction, or cost per department.

Filling the Gaps Left by Native Azure Tools

Azure-native tools have inherent limitations that necessitate a FinOps layer to bridge the gaps and effectively manage AVD costs. This is where Turbo360 comes in.

Turbo360 is the comprehensive platform you need for holistic Azure cost management. It processes Azure usage data and applies business-level cost allocation, revealing optimisation opportunities that native tools cannot provide.

Here’s how Turbo360 adds value to your FinOps efforts:

• Achieve Real-time Visibility: Get detailed insights into Azure expenditure across tenants, subscriptions, and resource groups all in one dashboard.
• Simplified Cost Allocation: Trace cloud expenditure back to specific products, teams, environments, or customers, making unit economics transparent. This helps clarify how costs support your business objectives.
• Prevent Escalating Anomalies: Receive alerts for irregular spending patterns, allowing you to investigate unusual costs promptly before they appear on your bills.
• Obtain Accurate Forecasts: Employ historical data and trend-based forecasting to better anticipate finances and align with revenue expectations.
• Continuous Optimisation: Proactively identify idle assets, underutilised infrastructure, and pricing inefficiencies at an early stage.

Turbo360 allows your organisation to transition from reactive reporting to proactive FinOps. CFOs access the dashboards they need, while IT possesses all the necessary tools to implement optimisation strategies. Request a Turbo360 demo to understand how to transform your AVD expenditure into a strategic investment rather than a fluctuating cost.