Windows on myvirtualcloud.net

Jack's VMware OS Optimization Tool

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 09:30:28 +0000

VMware colleague Jack McMichael has released the a tool that helps to optimize Windows 7 desktops for use with VMware Horizon View and VDI in general. The optimization tool includes customizable templates to enable or disable Windows system services and features, per VMware recommendations and best practices, across multiple systems. Since most Windows system services are enabled by default, the optimization tool can be used to easily disable unnecessary services and features to improve performance.

Why you should move your VDI to Windows 8

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:28:09 +0000

I believe I may have found a pretty compelling reason to migrate your VDI deployment to Windows 8. While running some experiments I collected some statistics for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 2K8 Server running as virtual desktops.

At this point we should all be familiar with the challenges associated with the number and latency of IOs in VDI environments, therefore I am not getting getting into details in this article.

Windows 8 storage performance for VDI. Forget what you know…

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:25:14 +0000

Last week Microsoft Corporate VP, Worldwide Licensing and Pricing, Joe Matz finally brought some light to a long standing Windows licensing discussion. In summary, It's now public understanding that ISPs wanting to deliver DaaS (Desktop-as-a-Service) will need to implement Windows 2K8 Server with SPLA. In addition to that, with the soon Windows 8 release organizations will start to prepare themselves to either go to VDI/TS or upgrade existing VDI environments. That probably won't happen as fast as we would like to because there may be no business reasons for to upgrade.

How to Access Windows 8 CP via PCoIP with VMware View

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:15:00 +0000

I have recently posted a video showing Windows 8 Customer Preview being streamed via PCoIP to an iPad, and I received comments and emails asking for a step-by-step guide to reproduce the solution. If you didn’t have the chance to watch the video go to Windows 8 CP + View 5.0 with PCoIP + iPad [video].

Windows 8 CP + View 5.0 with PCoIP + iPad [video]

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 13:50:00 +0000

I dedicated part of my Saturday to get Windows 8 Customer Preview running on ESXi5 with VMware View 5.0 and PCoIP. VMware View 5 doesn’t support Windows 8 CP out-of-the-box, and I had to do some modifications to get that working.

VDI + Windows PageFile Done Right!

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:59:00 +0000

Windows pagefile configuration for VDI environments has been a long standing discussion ground. I first wrote about it in 2010 (Pagefiles and VDI. Not so simple). However, because of few recent discussions I decided to review the subject and run some validation tests against well-known best practices. “The problem with best practices is that they around stay for longer than the technology they were based on.”

Pagefiles and VDI. Not so simple.

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Windows Virtual memory, also known as Windows pagefiles, has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.0. Microsoft introduced virtual memory in response to the failures of Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0, attempting to slash resource requirements for the operating system. Since then, not much has been discussed about paging until VDI became mainstream.

Mastering VDI Templates updated for Windows7 and PCoIP

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:32:00 +0000

I have just uploaded an updated version of my Mastering VDI Templates spreadsheet. This is the 3rd version of the document and adds Windows 7 specific customisations and few additional PCoIP configuration settings.

Amongst the new item are:

Disable copy/paste using PCoIP
Configure PCoIP virtual channels
Change Startup Check Disk (Win7)
Disable updates to the Last Access Time stamp (Win7)

Download the updated version here: