We’re excited to announce the general availability of ControlUp Real-Time DX v8.6! This release introduces numerous enhancements to help customers improve the digital employee experience (DEX) for their virtual desktops and applications environments, most notably for those that are expanding their use of Microsoft Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Desktops-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings. 

A Gartner survey of IT and business leaders found that 42% had deployed DaaS in 2021 and a further 30% planned to invest in DaaS by mid-20231

With customers expanding their footprint in the cloud, it’s increasingly important to strike the balance between usage and performance on one hand and controlling cost on the other. As Gartner also states in their recently published research “How to Avoid Surprise Costs With Desktop as a Service” (Gartner subscription needed): Unlike on-premises virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) where costs are fixed and overprovisioning is common, most DaaS deployments can be scaled to meet changing demands.1 

ControlUp Real-Time DX has supplied usage and performance insights for cloud workloads for many years through our Real-Time DX agent, including support for AVD workloads. And we have supported Amazon AWS and Citrix Cloud through agentless metric collection for some time as well. Now with 8.6 we expand this by bringing in a wealth of data from the Microsoft Azure platform. 

Let’s take a look at the key enhancements we made in this release: 

Integration with Microsoft Azure  

ControlUp Real-Time DX now lets you connect your Microsoft Azure account through the Azure API and will bring new metrics into the Real-Time Console and ControlUp Solve.  

This integration includes automatic discovery of Azure entities, including subscriptions, resources groups, virtual machines (VMs) and virtual disks, and will provide you with comprehensive information on each entity, including cost, size, performance, state, location, and more. 

These new metrics can be used for monitoring, alerting, and reporting purposes, as well as in combination with scripts available in our Script Library, including existing AVD and other scripts. There are a host of new scripts available that you can add to your environment from directly inside the console, including:

  • Run power actions, such as start, stop, and restart on a virtual machine (VM)
  • Change the disk type for a VM
  • Change the VM size
  • Connect to a virtual machine to RDP
  • Show a VM’s network configuration
  • Set a virtual machine’s boot diagnostics mode
  • Take a screenshot of a VM console

ControlUp Real-Time DX

ControlUp Real-Time DX v8.6

ControlUp Remote DX for AVD Users

Designed for people working outside the office, ControlUp Remote DX collects performance metrics from off-the-network client devices running Windows, macOS or IGEL OS, without the need for line of sight to the ControlUp Real-Time DX infrastructure in your datacenter.

Previously available only for Citrix and VMware Horizon environments, Real-Time DX v8.6 adds support for Microsoft RDS and Azure Virtual Desktop environments.

Improvements to Scheduled Triggers

The scheduled triggers functionality introduced in v8.5 has been enhanced with more schedules: daily, weekly, and monthly.

Real-Time DX Scheduled Triggers

Enhancements to ControlUp Solve

Scalable, clean, and incredibly detailed, ControlUp Solve allows you to see, in real time, the overall health of your EUC environment, end to end. Delivered as a SaaS application, it can be accessed from anywhere and by any member of your team, from IT leadership to the help desk.

Earlier this year, we released a slate of enhancements for Solve, including more historical data, improvements to Custom Dashboards and Quick Access to Edge DX-managed physical endpoints.

With the release of v8.6, besides the insights into usage and cost we highlighted above, we have expanded the topology navigation available from the Discovery Dashboard to include various new Azure entities and relationships, including Azure subscriptions, resource groups and machines.

ControlUp Solve

Centralized Auditing

Previously released as a Tech Preview, Centralized Auditing is now Generally Available to all customers using ControlUp Solve.

Centralized Auditing

What are you waiting for? Upgrade to ControlUp Real-Time DX v8.6.5 today! Not a user yet? Start a FREE 21-day trial and be up and running in just minutes.

Want to learn how to automate your Azure Virtual Desktops with ControlUp? Check out this blog:

How To: Automate Your Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktops with ControlUp

1 Gartner, How to Avoid Surprise Costs With Desktop as a Service, Stuart Downes, 18 February 2022
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.