cloudchristoph

ls ~/series/avd-connection-paths

AVD connection paths

7 parts, 1 published so far. Best read in order.

  1. Part 1 ·

    The client decides which path you get

    Every Azure Virtual Desktop session starts on TCP and tries to add RDP Shortpath over UDP, direct or through a relay. How to see which path you got, and why two clients in the same network can end up on different ones.

  2. Part 2 · coming soon

    What the AVD settings really do to the path

    What the RDP Shortpath switches on the host pool and the session host change, and what they don't: turning off STUN or TURN alone left my Windows client on TCP, and the AVD agent needed a restart after every egress change.

  3. Part 3 · coming soon

    The firewall rules you need, the ones you don't, and three traps

    Which firewall rules Azure Virtual Desktop needs, and what Azure Firewall, a NAT gateway, and a bypass route do to RDP Shortpath: less than you would expect, and three traps along the way. Measured in my lab and checked against the docs.

  4. Part 4 · coming soon

    Why RDP Shortpath over private networks is luck, and a fix

    VPN or ExpressRoute into Azure: without further configuration, UDP over a private path was luck in my lab. With the RDP Shortpath listener for managed networks, 11 of 11 sessions ran on UDP.

  5. Part 5 · coming soon

    The join type decides your sign-in firewall rules

    Entra joined session hosts need a few FQDNs for sign-in. AD DS and hybrid joined hosts bring the domain controller port list back, and hybrid join adds device registration in the system context. Plus FSLogix on Azure Files.

  6. Part 6 · coming soon

    Reading the logs without being fooled

    How to find out from Log Analytics which path every Azure Virtual Desktop session took: which columns lie while a session is running, which checkpoints tell the truth, and a query that classifies sessions as TCP, direct, or relay.

  7. Checklist · coming soon

    The checklist

    Everything from the AVD connection paths series on one page: client, host pool, firewall rules, identity, UDP and logs. For design reviews, firewall requests and the next 'my remote desktop is slow' ticket.

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