Insights: Real-Time

Nerdio Manager's Real-Time Insights feature allows you to conduct live monitoring (subject to a configurable polling interval) of the resource usage and health of managed endpoints, allowing you to quickly identify and remedy resource and performance issues.

Key capabilities

• Monitor CPU, memory, disk, GPU, and network metrics for AVD hosts and Windows 365 devices in real time.

• Track active user session performance, including user input delay and per-session resource usage.

• Configure alert thresholds and receive notifications when endpoints meet or exceed defined performance levels.

• View per-application resource usage across enrolled devices.

• Export dashboard data as CSV for reporting and analysis.

Considerations

Script execution

Real-Time Insights deploys a worker script to enrolled session hosts via a scheduled task named NerdioMonitoringTask. The script runs under NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM with highest privileges, and is installed at C:\Program Files\NerdioMonitoring\Monitoring. During deployment, the worker script is downloaded and its SHA-256 hash is verified before installation.

Code signing

The worker script is Authenticode-signed using Eido Software Ltd's signing certificate and timestamped by DigiCert. To trust the signed script, ensure the following certificates are trusted on all target devices:

• The Eido Software Ltd code signing certificate, imported to Local Computer > Trusted Publishers (required when using the AllSigned execution policy).

• The DigiCert root and intermediate certificates used for timestamp validation (typically already trusted on Windows by default).

Application control compatibility

In environments using application control tooling such as AppLocker, WDAC, CyberArk, or similar solutions, you may need to configure the following allowances to ensure the RTI worker script runs correctly:

• PowerShell execution of the signed RTI worker script from the Nerdio Monitoring install path (C:\Program Files\NerdioMonitoring\Monitoring).

• Execution via the NerdioMonitoringTask scheduled task as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM.

• Outbound HTTPS to the RTI app service.

PowerShell execution policy

Ensure the required PowerShell execution policy is configured on all target devices. RemoteSigned is the simplest option. If your environment uses AllSigned, you must also trust the Eido Software Ltd code signing certificate as described in the Code Signing section above.

Ingestion security

Metric ingestion is protected by endpoint authentication. When the worker is deployed, it registers with a valid enrollment token and receives a generated endpoint secret. Subsequent metric submissions include the endpoint UUID, a timestamp, and an HMAC-SHA256 signature derived from the endpoint secret. The backend rejects submissions from unknown endpoints, expired timestamps, deleted endpoints, and invalid signatures, preventing unregistered devices from posting metrics. To maintain ingestion security, keep enrollment tokens tightly controlled and ensure the worker targets the correct RTI app service.

Role-based access control (RBAC) and permissions

Nerdio Manager roles

This procedure requires the Admin Nerdio Manager role to carry out the tasks outlined below.

Azure built-in roles

Additional permissions

After Nerdio Manager provisions this feature, the following permissions are automatically granted to the managed identity:

nmw-rti-app-* managed identity:

• Storage Account (stnrt*)

  • Storage Blob Data Contributor

  • Storage Table Data Contributor

• Application Insights (nmw-rti-app-insights-*)

  • Monitoring Reader

• Log Analytics Workspace (nmw-rti-law-*)

  • Log Analytics Reader

Enable and configure Real-Time Insights

To monitor endpoints in real time, you first need to enable and configure the feature, which creates the required Azure resources based on your estimated usage patterns. You can then enroll devices and configure alert thresholds.

Enable Real-Time Insights:

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Settings > Environment, and select the Nerdio tab.

2. Expand the Real-Time Insights tab.

3. Next to the Current status heading, select the Enable toggle to open the initial configuration window.

4. Enter the following information:

   • Polling interval: Enter a value between 1 and 15 minutes.

   • Total number of endpoints: Choose a range from the drop-down menu that best matches your estimated usage patterns.

   Nerdio Manager selects the optimal App Service Plan and SQL database for your estimated usage.

   Notes:

   • While you can change these values later, estimating your usage patterns helps Nerdio Manager to determine and create the best-value plans for your environment.

   • A more frequent polling interval ensures that the Real-Time Insights dashboard displays the most up-to-date data on endpoint health, but requires more database capacity and therefore incurs increased storage costs.

5. Optionally, expand the Customize resource names heading to specify a custom name for each of the Azure resources to be created. Otherwise, Nerdio Manager will create resources with automated names, as listed in the configuration dialog.

6. Select Enable to create the new resources, activate the selected plans, and turn on Real-Time Insights.

Enroll devices in real-time monitoring:

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Settings > Environment, and select the Nerdio tab.

2. Expand the Real-Time Insights tab.

3. Next to the Current status heading, select Configure.

4. Select the box for AVD host pools or Windows 365 provisioning policies to display a drop-down list of available host pools/provisioning policies. You can start typing the name of the item you're searching for to filter the list.

5. Select one or more host pools and/or provisioning policies to enroll the applicable session hosts and/or devices.

   Note: You can also adjust the polling interval from this screen.

6. Select Save.

   The enrolled devices will now appear in the Real-Time Insights dashboard.

Configure alert thresholds:

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Settings > Environment, and select the Nerdio tab.

2. Expand the Real-Time Insights tab.

3. Next to the Thresholds heading, select Configure thresholds.

4. Select the tab for the performance area for which you want to change the alert settings, and then choose a specific metric to adjust. The performance areas and metrics (with units) for which you can configure alerts are as follows:

   • CPU:

     • CPU usage (%)

     • Processor queue length (cores)

     • Session CPU usage (%)

   • Memory:

     • Memory usage (%)

     • Memory usage (pages/sec)

     • Session memory usage (%)

   • Disk:

     • Disk usage (%)

   • GPU:

     • GPU usage (%)

   • Network:

     • Packet loss rate (%)

     • TCP round-trip time (ms)

     • UDP round-trip time (ms)

   • User input delay:

     • User input delay (ms)

5. There are five alert levels for each metric:

   • Info

   • Low

   • Medium

   • High

   • Critical

     Note: These levels correspond to the levels at which Nerdio Manager generates alerts for these metrics only. They are unrelated to the extended RAG scale that displays in Real-Time Insights dashlets, which is not configurable.

   For each alert level, enter values (or use the scroll arrows to modify the existing values) for the following:

   • Trigger: The value at which an alert of this level is generated by Nerdio Manager.

   • Recovery: The value at which the alert condition is canceled.

   • Consecutive polls: The number of consecutive polls (at the configured polling interval) for which the metric must meet or exceed the trigger or recovery condition before an alert is generated or canceled.

     Tip: Setting Consecutive polls to a value higher than 1 means that, for example, sustained high levels of CPU usage will generate an alert, but an isolated spike in CPU usage won't.

6. Select Save to save your changes and exit the window.

Check Real-Time Insights status and configuration:

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Settings > Environment, and select the Nerdio tab.

2. Expand the Real-Time Insights tab.

3. Next to the Current status heading:

   1. Select the info icon to check that all required components and services are functioning correctly.

   2. Select the bar graph icon to view statistics related to enrolled devices.

View Real-Time Insights for enrolled devices

Real-Time Insights in Nerdio Manager provides a comprehensive set of dashboards for live monitoring of devices, sessions, and alerts.

View the Real-Time Insights dashboards:

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Insights > Real-Time.

2. Select the tab corresponding to the dashboard you want to view:

   • Azure Virtual Desktop: View live performance metrics for AVD hosts.

   • Windows 365: View live performance metrics for Windows 365 devices.

   • Sessions: View live performance metrics for user sessions.

   • Alerts: View all alerts generated as a result of managed endpoints meeting Insights: Real-Time.

3. Optionally, start typing in the search box to display only the data that matches the entered string, or filter the data as follows:

   • Select Add Filter to add a filter based on any of the columns in the currently displayed dashboard, and use the dropdowns to select the include/exclude criteria based on the chosen columns.

   • Select a filter's X button to remove it.

     Note: Where multiple filters are selected, only data that fulfills all configured criteria is displayed.

4. To view detailed metrics on a device from any dashboard, select the device's name.

   A set of summary tiles displays high-level metrics related to recent activity, health, sessions, and alerts for the device, and you can choose from the available tabs to dive deeper into the device's performance.

5. Use the dropdowns to choose the date range of data displayed (from the last hour to the last 30 days), data granularity (from 1 minute to 1 hour), and whether to display average or peak values for each data segment.

6. Select from the following tabs:

   • Host Health: Expand the headings to display dashlets relating to CPU, memory, disk, and GPU usage across the selected date range.

   • Sessions: Display a list of sessions on the device, along with their performance metrics.

   • Applications: Display dashlets showing the resource usage by individual applications on the device.

     Note: Resource usage metrics for applications use an extended RAG (red-amber-green) color-coding scheme, as follows:

     • Low (green): <10%

     • Medium-low (yellow): 10–30%

     • Medium (orange): 30–50%

     • Medium-high (red): 50–70%

     • High (red): 70%+

   • Alerts: View a summary of alerts related to the device.

7. To export data from the currently displayed dashboard screen, select Export as CSV.