Before you begin
- An existing host pool (see Creating Your First Host Pool)
- An administrator account: Create Host, the bulk actions, and Re-Image All are shown to administrators
- Azure credentials configured for the tenant, so Atlas can create and manage VMs
Find the Session Hosts table
Open a pool from the Host Pools list. The page header shows the pool's name, resource group, region, type, and VM and session counts, with Create Host, Ask Atlas Advisor, Get Support, and Delete Host Pool actions. Administrators also get a menu on the left with Overview and the pool's settings categories; Overview holds the pool's metrics, an action center, the Session Hosts table, and the provisioning history. You can hide that menu to give the table the full width, and the Settings button above the table brings it back.
The Session Hosts table lists every VM in the pool. By default it shows Heartbeat, VM Name, Status, Sessions, CPU %, RAM %, disk and network metrics, SKU, Image, FSLogix, Maint. (maintenance mode), and Power; Personal pools add an Assigned User column. Use Columns to show or hide columns, including AVD Version and Date Created. On narrower screens the table hides lower-priority columns, such as Disk Queue, Disk Free %, SKU, Image, and Maint., to make room.
Toggle between Dense and Comfortable rows, pick how often the table refreshes (10 seconds to 5 minutes), filter by VM name or status, and use Export CSV or Export Excel to take the table with you.
Add session hosts
Click Create Host in the pool header. It opens the Deploy Session Host page, which steps through Configure, Verify Quota, and Provision. In Configure you set the number of VMs, confirm the VM size and image version, set a name prefix (use # for the running number; generated names are limited to 15 characters), and choose the disk type and size. A deployment summary shows the hourly cost before you click Create. If the pool has no base image or VM size yet, the page first asks you to finish setting up the pool and saves your choices to it, so later deployments skip that step.
Power a host on or off
The Power column has a control for each host: a stopped host shows Start and a running host shows Stop, which deallocates the VM so it stops incurring compute charges. Stop is disabled while the host has active sessions, and its tooltip tells you to drain or disconnect users first. Hosts on ephemeral OS disks can't be stopped; they show Delete instead, which asks you to confirm.
Bulk actions
Tick hosts in the table (or use Select All). The selection bar then offers Start, Restart, Stop, Run Script, Install Apps, Drain & Reclaim, Resize, and Delete, each showing how many hosts it applies to; where FSLogix is configured, Push FSLogix appears too. Restart, Stop, and Delete ask you to confirm first, and Delete lets you choose what happens to the VMs' disks. Stop warns you if any selected host still has user sessions.
Drain and maintenance mode
Turn on a host's Maint. switch to put it in maintenance mode: it stops accepting new sessions and its status shows Maint, while users already signed in keep working. Use this to drain a host before re-imaging or deleting it, so live sessions are never interrupted. To drain selected hosts and remove them automatically once they are empty, use Drain & Reclaim (see DrainGuard Setup).
Re-image hosts to the latest image
Re-Image All shows a count of VMs that aren't on the pool's selected image. It opens the Re-Image All VMs dialog, where you choose Immediate (idle VMs are re-deployed now, busy ones as soon as their sessions reach 0), Replace (a rolling, drain-first replacement with no forced sign-outs: new VMs are provisioned first and old ones are drained and deleted), or Scheduled (each VM is re-imaged when it reaches 0 sessions). The Auto switch next to the button re-images mismatched VMs automatically when they reach 0 active sessions, checking every 5 minutes.
The image and VM size that new and re-imaged hosts use are set under Settings → Compute & Deployment → Image & Size. See Image Management.