Remotedesktopservice (TermService) on Azure Virtual Desktop is causing a high CPU load on our hosts

Question

Remotedesktopservice (TermService) on Azure Virtual Desktop is causing a high CPU load on our hosts

On other AVD deployments with much more users this service does not consume that much. How can we check why this service does cause a high CPU load?

Answer 1

Hi khchimadi, mohamed,

As you have mentioned Remotedesktopservice (TermService) on Azure Virtual Desktop is causing a high CPU load on our hosts, have you verified it in the Task Manager?

• Investigate TermService Process Load.
  Open Task Manager or run:

Get-Process | Where-Object { $_.ProcessName -eq "svchost" } | Sort-Object CPU -Descending

Identify if svchost.exe (TermService) is consuming the CPU. Run Process Explorer (Sysinternals) to inspect which threads inside svchost.exe are consuming CPU.https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer.

• Look for RDP Connection Issues: Use Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) to check: Application Logs (Event ID 1006, 1012, 1026, etc.) System Logs for RDP-related errors Remote Desktop Services Logs under:
  Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > TerminalServices

Look for frequent reconnections or authentication issues that could cause high CPU usage.

• Leaving unnecessary start-up items that launch with every user login and needlessly consume CPU. The more users log in, the more processes start up and the more CPU is wasted. Check the All Users StartUp folder (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp) for any items that don’t belong. This should typically be an empty folder in a AVD deployment.
• In most scenarios, AVD session hosts are CPU-bound, meaning that you will run out of CPU capacity before running out of RAM capacity. The most common VM families are Ds-series (v3 and v2) and Es-series. Using burstable (B-series) VMs for production workloads. These VMs may look like they have decent amount of CPU, but they have associated CPU quotas that limit how much of that CPU can be used. Don’t use B-series VMs as session hosts in production.
• Ensure that Windows Updates or application updates are not running in the background. Updates should be fully installed on the template VM before capturing it as an image to avoid high CPU usage during deployments.

Hope this helps!

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