AWS End User Computing (EUC) Dashboard Guide: Optimizing WorkSpaces Personal and WorkSpaces Applications with Cloud Intelligence Dashboards

IT teams managing hundreds or thousands of Amazon WorkSpaces face a critical challenge controlling costs while maintaining optimal user experience across their virtual desktop infrastructure. Without deep visibility into usage patterns, session data, and resource utilization, organizations struggle to identify cost optimization opportunities, spot inactive workspaces, and make informed decisions about AutoStop versus AlwaysOn configurations. The EUC Dashboard solves this visibility gap by combining Cost and Usage Report (CUR) data with API-driven insights, giving administrators the comprehensive monitoring solution they need to transform WorkSpaces management and drive significant cost savings.

What is the EUC Dashboard?

The EUC Dashboard is a comprehensive monitoring solution built on the Cloud Intelligence Dashboards (CID) framework, an open-source solution that delivers actionable insights and optimization opportunities. For AWS EUC services, this dashboard merges Cost and Usage Report (CUR) data with API-driven insights for deep visibility into Amazon WorkSpaces Personal and Amazon WorkSpaces Applications environments.

Fig A: EUC Dashboard architecture diagram

Built using Amazon QuickSight for visualization, the dashboard integrates AWS Glue for data processing, Amazon S3 for storage, AWS Lambda functions for data collection. This architecture creates a solution that helps customers drive financial accountability, optimize costs, track usage goals, and achieve operational excellence.

The dashboard complements and extends the existing EUC capabilities, providing deeper insights for your virtual desktop infrastructure. Whether you’re managing hundreds or thousands of WorkSpaces (Desktops/Application Fleets) across multiple accounts, the EUC Dashboard scales to meet your needs.

Comprehensive Visibility Across Your EUC Environment

WorkSpaces Management at Scale

The EUC Dashboard provides visibility into your WorkSpaces deployment with capabilities that go beyond basic monitoring. It offers specific usage tracking and trending analysis, allowing you to understand exactly how your WorkSpaces are being used across your organization

Key WorkSpaces insights include:

• Cost optimization opportunities: Automatically identify over used AutoStop instances that warrant conversion to AlwaysOn to be cost-effective.
• Usage pattern analysis: Track user sessions, protocol usage, and operating system distribution to understand how your workforce interacts with their virtual desktops
• Inactive workspace identification: Quickly spot WorkSpaces that haven’t been used, which helps you reclaim resources and reduce unnecessary spending.
• Weekend usage monitoring: Understand after-hours usage patterns to optimize your deployment strategy
• Performance metrics: Integration with Amazon CloudWatch provides CPU and memory utilization data for proactive capacity management.

WorkSpaces Applications Analytics

For organizations using WorkSpaces applications, the dashboard delivers comprehensive usage and spending metrics that help optimize fleet utilization. Compare provisioned versus streamed capacity, monitor Image Builder usage, and analyze weekend usage patterns to help ensure resources are allocated efficiently.

User-Level Insights

What sets the EUC Dashboard apart is its Lambda powered features that capture environmental data providing deeper insights than CUR data alone. The dashboard collects username information, directory details, CloudWatch metrics, and user connection details, giving administrators a complete picture of their EUC environment.

Business Value and Cost Optimization

The EUC Dashboard delivers insights across multiple dimensions:

• Cost Management: Auto-generated cost optimization recommendations provide actionable insights that FinOps practitioners, Product Owners, and Engineering teams can use. The dashboard enables you to understand monthly billable hours for each WorkSpace, identify underutilized instances, and make data-driven decisions for resource allocation.
• WorkSpaces Capacity Planning: Forecast capacity needs and strategically deploy EUC resources based on usage analytics.
• User Experience Monitoring: Track connection details, session information, and performance metrics to proactively identify and address issues before they impact end users.
• Compliance and Security Oversight: Centralized visibility maintains organization-wide EUC compliance and security standards, including End-of-Life OS visability.

Getting Started

The following steps are a high-level overview of how to Implement the EUC Dashboard in three straightforward steps:

Deploy a foundational dashboard

First, deploy one of these foundational dashboards

• CUDOS Dashboard
• Cost Intelligence Dashboard
• KPI Dashboard

This establishes the required Cost and Usage Report (CUR) integration and sets up the necessary Amazon QuickSight and Amazon Athena resources.

Deploy the Data Collection Lab

Deploy or update the Data Collection Lab (version 3.2.0 or higher) with the following configuration:

• Include Inventory Collector Module (Mandatory) – This enables the collection of WorkSpaces environmental information using the WorkSpaces API.
• Include WorkSpaces Utilization Data Collection Module (Optional) – This enables the collection of CloudWatch metrics for WorkSpaces.
• Account Targeting – Specify which accounts to scan or leave blank to scan all linked accounts.

Access your Dashboard

Once deployed, access your EUC Dashboard through Amazon QuickSight to start exploring insights in your WorkSpaces environment.

For comprehensive step-by-step instructions, please refer to the EUC Dashboard deployment guide.

Cleanup

To remove the EUC Dashboard, please follow the CID Teardown instructions guide.

Conclusion

EUC Dashboard advances EUC management, giving administrators and decision-makers essential visibility and analytics to optimize WorkSpaces Personal and WorkSpaces Applications environments effectively. By combining comprehensive data collection with intuitive visualizations, it transforms raw usage data into actionable insights that drive cost savings and strategic decision-making.

EUC Dashboard provides powerful control over AWS End-User Computing deployments, delivering immediate value and long-term optimization benefits.

Ready to transform your Amazon WorkSpaces management? Follow the step-by-step implementation guide to deploy the EUC Dashboard today.

Christian O’Donoghue is a Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS, based in London, where he has been helping enterprise customers optimize their cloud infrastructure since 2019. As an End User Computing SME with over 20 years of experience in the field, Christian specializes in guiding organizations through complex WorkSpaces deployments and EUC optimization strategies. In his free time, Christian enjoys staying active with tennis and football and unwinding with a good movie.