Golden Master Best Practices with View

Golden Master Best Practices with View Matthew Honigford Technical Account Manager, VMware mhonigford@vmware.com 2009 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

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Best Practices for creating Golden images Can be broken up into two main parts: Optimizing the VM within ESX Optimizing the Windows OS

Best Practices for creating Golden images Optimizing the VM within ESX

Optimizing the VM within ESX Use Hardware Version 7 Use as few vcpu s as possible while still maintaining good user experience Ensure average CPU usage is less than 70% Ensure %RDY counter is less than 10% Change the default SCSI controller Default for Windows XP is BusLogic Change to LSI Logic Parallel Download LSI_U320_W2003_IT_MID1011438.zip from www.lsi.com Create.flp file using WinImage or other disk imaging tool to create virtual floppy

Optimizing the VM within ESX Disable Virtual Machine Logging Change Parameter through GUI (shown below) or modify.vmx file to reflect logging = FALSE

Optimizing the VM within ESX Disable Serial and Parallel Ports Edit Boot Options to boot into BIOS In BIOS, go to Advanced I/O Device Configuration and disable serial and parallel ports. Press F10 to save changes and Exit

Optimizing the VM within ESX Align.VMDK to 64K block Use mbralign, fdisk in ESX service console, diskpart, or voptimizer Since the free option is diskpart Once VM is created, mount.vmdk on another Windows System (Don t format it or do anything crazy to it) Open a command prompt and run diskpart select disk 1 (assuming you only have 1.VMDK file already) diskpart create partition align=64 Exit the command prompt and shut the VM down Remove the.vmdk (don t delete it) Install Windows using standard method Press F6 to install driver from floppy, mount floppy image and load LSI logic Driver (not required for Windows 7)

Best Practices for creating Golden images Optimizing the Windows OS

Windows OS Optimizations Install VMware Tools Install Windows Patches, then turn OFF Automatic Update Disable Serial and Parallel ports in Device Manager (if they exist) Set Screensaver to None or Blank Disable System Sounds (Set Sound scheme to None ) (Windows 7) Uninstall Tablet PC Components

Windows OS Optimizations Disable Windows Error Reporting Remove unnecessary boot applications (Quicktime, Real, Adobe Acrobat Updater, etc. Remove unneeded Windows components (Outlook Express, Messenger, Games, etc.) Disable unnecessary services

File System Disable NTFS Last Accessed option fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 (Requires reboot) Disable Windows Prefetcher [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher]; Set the value to 0 (Disable) Disable System Restore Right Click My Computer Properties, System Restore tab and select Turn off System Restore Disable Indexing Double Click My Computer, Right click on C:\ Properties Click General tab and clear Allow Indexing Service to Index

More File System Disable Offline Files Disable scheduled or background Defrag Disable Windows Search Disable Windows Disk Optimizer Adjust the disk timeout value [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk] TimeOutValue =REG_DWORD:0 000000be(190) Use User Profile Hive Cleanup Service to help prevent profile corruption

Power Settings Disable hibernation Change power settings to High Performance and disable sleep timer Set HDD s to Never turn off Open Control Panel Power Options Change Plan Settings Click Change Advanced power settings set "Turn off hard disks after" setting to Never Disable the Logon Screen Saver HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop Edit ScreenSaverActive and change value to 0

Disable Notifications Disable logging of informational Printing events Open Printers and Faxes, Click File Server Properties Advanced and clear Log spooler informational events Disable Success Logging (login attempts, etc.) Only do this if security policy allows it Disable Toolbar Notifications Disable the Windows XP Tour Notifier Disable Balloon Tips Shrink Event Logs and enable circular logging (registry keys) Disable Desktop Cleanup Wizard

Internet Explorer Disable Use Suggested Sites Set home page to Intranet site, or blank, or something lightweight Change IE to prevent programs from suggesting a change of the search provider Remove Webslice gallery and suggested sites from Toolbars on IE Add trusted sites as necessary Shrink the IE Temp File size

Common Applications Install Adobe Flash Player (turning off automatic updates) Install Adobe Reader and set to Do not download or install updates automatically Turn Java Updater off Remove MS OneNote tray service (if installed) Turn off Outlook Cached Mode Remove the Language Bar Regsvr32.exe /u msutb.dll

General OS Environment Set Pagefile to static size Change the default Windows Theme to Basic Adjust visual effects for Best Performance Enable ClearType Fonts Turn off Windows Security Center Turn off Automatic Computer Maintenance Disable Allow users to browse for troubleshooters Disable Allow troubleshooting to begin immediately when started

Network Optimizations Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP Disable IPv6 Join Master Image to Domain (if using View Composer) Add any necessary DNS suffixes Add any necessary HOSTS entries for custom applications Disable Automatic Searching of Network Printers and Shares

When it s all said and done, a few last steps Optimize the Registry RegScrub.exe Registry Cleaner NTRegOpt.exe Registry Optimizer, removing white space in registry Run disk cleanup Defrag the HDD Delete all event logs Make the User profile the Default Profile Windows 7, ensure KMS server is enabled Make sure Floppy and CD-ROM drives are set to Client Device and not set to Connect at Power On

View 4.0 Design Considerations

General View Best Practices Validate size of User Data Disk Provisioning too little disk for UDD can be detrimental Outlook.OST will likely end up on UDD in Outlook cached mode (and UDDs are difficult to resize) Validate the cost and performance tradeoffs of Cached Outlook mode for VDI Adjust browser cache size to lowest useful setting Exclude Java Message Bus folder from AV scanner C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\MessageBus Avoid running concurrent AV scans Full systems scans cause major performance impacts Stagger full systems scans (when full system scans are a corporate standard)

Pool Design: View VM Memory Considerations VM Swap size and storage VM Swap size = VM RAM Local vs. shared datastore VM Memory Size VM Density Windows pagefile TPS Optimization Disk consumption Size of delta disk IOPS Balance between paging and VM Swap file size Memory for Apps

Pool Design: Pool Type Considerations Common Pool Types: Persistent/non-persistent Linked clone/non-linked clone User installed apps Will users need to install apps? Pool Type User initiated machine changes Are users modifying registry keys or environment variables? Available disk space Is disk space inexpensive or plentiful?

VI Design: View Block vcenter and Clusters vcenter Servers One VC per 2,000 (VI4.x) desktops vcenter and Cluster Design Cluster Hosts Cluster Settings Max Eight ESX hosts per cluster serving linked clones Leave room for failover and maintenance Keep within DRS limits (1280) 100 (160 ESX 4 U1) VMs per host for HA

Example View Block and Pod Architecture

VI Design: ESX Server Considerations RAM Density and cost Balance CPU and memory needs Higher density DIMMs increase price ESX Server Considerations Blades have emerged as ideal platform for hosting virtual desktops pnics Storage VMs/pNIC/VLANs 1 Port group per VLAN ID 1GBE vs. 10GBE Storage network 10GBE cost dropping (NFS/iSCSI) NFS Best performance with jumbo frames Type/protocol Size and Quantity Performance iscsi vendors optimizing performance Local disk good storage location for vswp files

Storage Design: Sizing Considerations Linked Clone Pool datastore size= Replica VM VMDK size + (Desktop VM Memory Provisioned * 2) + (Parent VM VMDK * 25%) 10GB (Same as Parent VM) VM Swap and Windows PF Growth for delta files + Log File storage size Conservative ~100 MB * Number of VMs per Datastore + Datastore free space allocation Max per LUN: 64 Conservative 15% overhead

Operational Best Practices Operations Common Sense Don t reboot all VMs during operational hours Perform Refresh and Recompose operations on a schedule, during off-peak times Track or limit user initiated changes, or plan on increasing cluster capacity over time User Application Virtualization to save on application licensing costs Don t include licensed apps in the base image whenever possible Use an image build tool (i.e., MDT) Structured build process and predefined modules drives consistency, fewer untracked changes Keep master image metadata outside of View/VI Create and enforce strong naming conventions for Parent VMs and snapshots

Operational Best Practices DHCP Adjust default lease time (MS DHCP) from 8 days to 1 hour Release DHCP script for floating pools that refresh on logoff VLAN Usage Avoid overloading VLANs used for View desktops to avoid running out of IP addresses This situation is difficult to troubleshoot vcenter Management Do not allow a vcenter VM to manage the ESX host it s running on

Recommendations User Data and Persona Management Use folder redirection for My Documents Easier to use existing file archival system, maintain multiple file versions Evaluate Profile Management Applications Turn off Outlook Cached Mode VMs on same high speed network don t benefit as much from cached mode Save on disk space and conserve storage IOPS Never P2V a physical machine for a View master image It would be more efficient to build a VM from scratch

References http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/white-papers/h7168-performanceoptimization-windows-xp-vdi-wp.pdf EMC Document on optimizing Windows XP http://www.creedtek.com/?p=37 Some Best Practices for tuning Windows 7 www.vdi.com Independent online gathering of VDI gurus www.vmware.com VMware corporate web site. Collection of Best Practices guides, sizing guides, and white papers

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