Hi all,
We are currently fine tuning our new View environment before rollout to around 45 staff. I have the following specification:
3 x Hosts
HP ProLiant DL385 G7
24 x CPUs at 2.5GHz (AMD Opteron 6180SE)
100GB RAM
ESXi 5.1.0 /799733 -- VMware vSphere Essentials
HP Thinclient t510
[Total Resources of 287GB RAM and 3.64TB storage and 179GHz CPU]
I have:
viewSecurity server 5.2
vCenter server 5.1
View server 5.2
viewComposer 5.2
1 x Cluster
23 x Datastores (SAN into LUN accessed via 8/20q hp storageworks switch connected directly into the hosts)
I have created multiple master images of Windows 7 32-bit with 3GB RAM and Windows 7 64-bit with 4GB RAM ( some with 1 x vCPU and some with 2 x vCPU) through VCenter and done the following:
1. Optimised the VMs with the optimisation guide - http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf
2. This included running the commandswithnopersona.bat file
3. Reduced windows graphics to best performance and no pagefile on any partitions, i.e. turned off
4. Stopped all services as advised in the optimisation guide
5. Applied various Group Policy as advised by the optimisation guide in the OU of the Active Directory where the VM sits
6. Replaced the VM Audio (devtap) driver with the teradici one (latest version)
7. Disabled in the BIOS all COM ports and LPT1 ports
8. Removed Floppy Drive
9. Configured the VM with 128MB RAM and 3D enabled
10. Add this in the configuration of the VM: "mks.poll.headlessRates" as per KB note: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2010359
11. Created the VMs with Thin Provision
12. Installed the Windows hotfix for the VMXNET3 adapter
In View 5.2 I have created Test pools of Linked-Clones with PCoIP as a default with full 512MB of vRAM and Automatic handling of 3D Rendering. These test pools have been pointed to the base snapshot of the optimised windows 7 machines.
The problems I have noticed (both on the HP thinclient t510 view client or my beefy Desktop PC accessing it via view client) are as follows:
1. Video is extremely choppy in Chrome and Firefox, smoother on IE (but still juttery)
2. Average CPU utilisation of VMs in 1 x vCPU or 2 x vCPU is always high, at least 60% upwards
3. If testing audio with online radio via any browser OR using something like Spotify AND scrolling up and down on a web page, the audio is significantly distorted and the CPU shoots up
4. The VM seems to behave particularly badly with regards to audio, applications seem calmer although a higher than average CPU utilisation is noticed
5. Connecting via the Security server into the connectin and onto the VM is smooth and even HTML access works very well
My thoughts at the moment are:
1. ESXi 5 hosts incorrectly configured with regards to the network cards (4 per host)
2. Networking switch issue, (not managed by me but easy to contact the service providers on-site)
3. PCoIP problems
4. Missing an important Windows 7 optimisation
5. Not updating the VMs with full windows updates before optmising
I have at this stage hit a brick wall and am concerned Im missing something really obvious here!
Athemiya