Stage 5: Day-2 Operations, Monitoring & Lifecycle Management

What this stage accomplishes

Keeps the deployment healthy after go-live: monitoring provisioned VMs, catching drift, and staying ahead of recurring maintenance items.

Prerequisites

Stage 4 done — VMs are provisioning and reporting to the Management Portal.

Steps

1. Monitor via the Virtual Machines page. Sort and filter by any tracked parameter (VM state, OS version, last reported date, encryption status, and more), and export the list to .csv when you need to share it elsewhere.

2. Send commands as needed. Currently, Delete Virtual Machine is the only available bulk command.

3. Track recurring maintenance items:

   • The Intune provisioning package's bulk token expires after 180 days — renew it before then, or affected VMs will keep provisioning but silently stop enrolling in Intune.

   • If a Security Control blocks major-version upgrades, plan a deliberate, tested rollout instead of letting it block indefinitely.

Verification

Spot-check a sample of VMs' Last reported date to confirm they're checking in regularly, and confirm no VMs are stuck in Pending Deletion for longer than expected (which usually means the client hasn't checked in yet).

Common issues

Missing or outdated OS/version information on a VM usually means either an old Parallels Desktop client version, an out-of-date or missing Parallels Tools install, or a VM that hasn't been launched yet.

Handoff to next stage

This is the last stage. Loop back to Stage 3 if you need to change a policy, or Stage 2 if the Golden Image itself needs refreshing.