(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

When designing your VMware Horizon View infrastructure, creating a Virtual Desktop master image is second only to infrastructure design in terms of importance. The reason for this is simple; as ubiquitous as Microsoft Windows is, it was never designed to be a hosted Virtual Desktop. The good news is that with a careful bit of planning, and a thorough understanding of what your end users need, you can build a Windows desktop that serves all your needs, while requiring the bare minimum of infrastructure resources.

A default installation of Windows contains many optional components and configuration settings that are either unsuitable for, or not needed in, a Virtual Desktop environment, and understanding their impact is critical to maintaining Virtual Desktop performance over time and during peak levels of use.

Uninstalling unneeded components and disabling services or scheduled tasks that are not required will help reduce the amount of resources the Virtual Desktop requires, and ensure that the View infrastructure can properly support the planned number of desktops even as resources are oversubscribed.

Oversubscription is defined as having assigned more resources than what is physically available. This is most commonly done with processor resources in Virtual Desktop environments, where a single server processor core may be shared between multiple desktops. As the average desktop does not require 100 percent of its assigned resources at all times, we can share those resources between multiple desktops without affecting the performance.

Why is desktop optimization important?

To date, Microsoft has only ever released a version of Windows designed to be installed on physical hardware. This isn’t to say that Microsoft is unique is this regard, as neither Linux and Mac OS X offers an installation routine that is optimized for a virtualized hardware platform.

While nothing stops you from using a default installation of any OS or software package in a virtualized environment, you may find it difficult to maintain consistent levels of performance in Virtual Desktop environments where many of the resources are shared, and in almost every case oversubscribed in some manner. In this section, we will examine a sample of the CPU and disk IO resources that can be recovered were you to optimize the Virtual Desktop master image.

Due to the technological diversity that exists from one organization to the next, optimizing your Virtual Desktop master image is not an exact science. The optimization techniques used and their end results will likely vary from one organization to the next due to factors unrelated to View or vSphere. The information contained within this article will serve as a foundation for optimizing a Virtual Desktop master image, focusing primarily on the operating system.

Optimization results – desktop IOPS

Desktop optimization benefits one infrastructure component more than any other: storage. Until all flash storage arrays achieve price parity with the traditional spinning disk arrays many of us use today, reducing the per-desktop IOPS required will continue to be an important part of any View deployment.

On a per-disk basis, a flash drive can accommodate more than 15 times the IOPS of an enterprise SAS or SCSI disk, or 30 times the IOPS of a traditional desktop SATA disk. Organizations that choose an all-flash array may find that they have more than sufficient IOPS capacity for their Virtual Desktops, even without doing any optimization.

The following graph shows the reduction in IOPS that occurred after performing the optimization techniques described later in this article.

The optimized desktop generated 15 percent fewer IOPS during the user workload simulation. By itself that may not seem like a significant reduction, but when multiplied by hundreds or thousands of desktops the savings become more significant.

Optimization results – CPU utilization

View supports a maximum of 16 Virtual Desktops per physical CPU core. There is no guarantee that your View implementation will be able to attain this high consolidation ratio, though, as desktop workloads will vary from one type of user to another. The optimization techniques described in this article will help maximize the number of desktops you can run per each server core.

The following graph shows the reduction in vSphere host % Processor Time that occurred after performing the optimization techniques described later in this article:

% Processor Time is one of the metrics that can be used to measure server processor utilization within vSphere. The statistics in the preceding graph were captured using the vSphere ESXTOP command line utility, which provides a number of performance statistics that the vCenter performance tabs do not offer, in a raw format that is more suited for independent analysis.

The optimized desktop required between 5 to 10 percent less processor time during the user workload simulation. As was the case with the IOPS reduction, the savings are significant when multiplied by large numbers of desktops.

Virtual Desktop hardware configuration

The Virtual Desktop hardware configuration should provide only what is required based on the desktop needs and the performance analysis. This section will examine the different virtual machine configuration settings that you may wish to customize, and explain their purpose.

Disabling virtual machine logging

Every time a virtual machine is powered on, and while it is running, it logs diagnostic information within the datastore that hosts its VMDK file. For environments that have a large number of Virtual Desktops, this can generate a noticeable amount of storage I/O. The following steps outline how to disable virtual machine logging:

1. In the vCenter client, right-click on the desktop master image virtual machine and click on Edit Settings to open the Virtual Machine Properties window.
2. In the Virtual Machine Properties window, select the Options tab.
3. Under Settings , highlight General .
4. Clear Enable logging as shown in the following screenshot, which sets the logging = “FALSE” option in the virtual machine VMX file:

   

While disabling logging does reduce disk IO, it also removes log files that may be used for advanced troubleshooting or auditing purposes. The implications of this change should be considered before placing the desktop into production.

Removing unneeded devices

By default, a virtual machine contains several devices that may not be required in a Virtual Desktop environment. In the event that these devices are not required, they should be removed to free up server resources. The following steps outline how to remove the unneeded devices:

1. In the vCenter client, right-click on the desktop master image virtual machine and click on Edit Settings to open the Virtual Machine Properties window.
2. In the Virtual Machine Properties window, under Hardware , highlight Floppy drive 1 as shown in the following screenshot and click on Remove :

   

3. In the Virtual Machine Properties window, select the Options tab.
4. Under Settings , highlight Boot Options .
5. Check the checkbox under the Force BIOS Setup section as shown in the following screenshot:

   

6. Click on OK to close the Virtual Machine Properties window.
7. Power on the virtual machine; it will boot into the PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility .
8. The PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility menu defaults to the Main tab. Use the down arrow key to move down to the Legacy Diskette A , and then press the Space bar key until the option changes to Disabled .
9. Use the right arrow key to move to the Advanced tab.
10. Use the arrow down key to select I/O Device Configuration and press Enter to open the I/O Device Configuration window.
11. Disable the serial ports, parallel port, and floppy disk controller as shown in the following screenshot. Use the up and down arrow keys to move between devices, and the Space bar to disable or enable each as required:

    

12. Press the F10 key to save the configuration and exit the PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility .

Do not remove the virtual CD-ROM device, as it is used by vSphere when performing an automated installation or upgrade of the VMware Tools software.

Customizing the Windows desktop OS cluster size

Microsoft Windows uses a default cluster size, also known as allocation unit size, of 4 KB when creating the boot volume during a new installation of Windows. The cluster size is the smallest amount of disk space that will be used to hold a file, which affects how many disk writes must be made to commit a file to disk. For example, when a file is 12 KB in size, and the cluster size is 4 KB, it will take three write operations to write the file to disk.

The default 4 KB cluster size will work with any storage option that you choose to use with your environment, but that does not mean it is the best option. Storage vendors frequently do performance testing to determine which cluster size is optimal for their platforms, and it is possible that some of them will recommend that the Windows cluster size should be changed to ensure optimal performance. The following steps outline how to change the Windows cluster size during the installation process; the process is the same for both Windows 7 and Windows 8. In this example, we will be using an 8 KB cluster size, although any size can be used based on the recommendation from your storage vendor.

• The cluster size can only be changed during the Windows installation, not after.
• If your storage vendor recommends the 4 KB Windows cluster size, the default Windows settings are acceptable.

1. Boot from the Windows OS installer ISO image or physical CD and proceed through the install steps until the Where do you want to install Windows? dialog box appears.
2. Press Shift + F10 to bring up a command window.
3. In the command window, enter the following commands:

   diskpart
   select disk 0
   create partition primary size=100
   active
   format fs=ntfs label="System Reserve" quick
   create partition primary
   format fs=ntfs label=OS_8k unit=8192 quick
   assign
   exit
   

4. Click on Refresh to refresh the Where do you want to install Windows? window.
5. Select Drive 0 Partition 2: OS_8k , as shown in the following screenshot, and click on Next to begin the installation:

   

The System Reserve partition is used by Windows to store files critical to the boot process and will not be visible to the end user. These files must reside on a volume that uses a 4 KB cluster size, so we created a small partition solely for that purpose. Windows will automatically detect this partition and use it when performing the Windows installation.

In the event that your storage vendor recommends a different cluster size than shown in the previous example, replace the 8192 in the sample command in step 3 with whatever value the vendor recommends, in bytes, without any punctuation.

Windows OS pre-deployment tasks

The following tasks are unrelated to the other optimization tasks that are described in this article but they should be completed prior to placing the desktop into production.

Installing VMware Tools

VMware Tools should be installed prior to the installation of the View Agent software. To ensure that the master image has the latest version of the VMware Tools software, apply the latest updates to the host vSphere Server prior to installing the tools package on the desktop.

The same applies if you are updating your VMware Tools software. The View Agent software should be reinstalled after the VMware Tools software is updated to ensure that the appropriate View drivers are installed in place of the versions included with VMware Tools.

Cleaning up and defragmenting the desktop hard disk

To minimize the space required by the Virtual Desktop master image and ensure optimal performance, the Virtual Desktop hard disks should be cleaned of nonessential files and optimized prior to deployment into production. The following actions should be taken once the Virtual Desktop master image is ready for deployment:

• Use the Windows Disk Cleanup utility to remove any unnecessary files.
• Use the Windows Defragment utility to defragment the virtual hard disk.

  If the desktop virtual hard disks are thinly provisioned, you may wish to shrink them after the defragmentation completes. This can be performed with utilities from your storage vendor if available, by using the vSphere vmkfstools utility, or by using the vSphere storage vMotion feature to move the virtual machine to a different datastore. Visit your storage vendor or the VMware vSphere Documentation (http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html) for instructions on how to shrink virtual hard disks or perform a storage vMotion.