VMware Horizon Community
Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Performance issue with writable

Hey Guys,

My guess is that this topic name is not very new to all of you when looking at some issues posted here on the fora Smiley Happy.

We also had some issues with performance when a writable is attached, mostly seen in Office applications (which are all installed in the golden image) that didn't start quick, just simply hung or even crashed applications.

Although it is not 100% fixed yet we found out that adding some exclusions to the snapvol.cfg in the writable does boost performance.

Firrst, I wanted to share the folders we added, second I wanted to post an option on how to test and change it manually and last but not least invite everyone to share their exclusions in the writable mostly added there for performance. All other exclusions might be useful but not what I'm aiming for here for all kinds of different reasons Smiley Happy.

Just as a side note. We are still doing some tests but these 3 seem to be the best changes so far.

exclude_path=%SystemRoot%\WinSxS\Temp

Exclusion from the profile!. Be aware that you can only use this with Appvolumes 2.16. In older version this exclusion does not work!! And although there are a bunch of syntaxes going around in official documentation of VMware, this is the one that works!!

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache

Adding this to a users writable is very simple. Just make sure you have a snapvol.cfg you want to test and copy it to C:\SnapVolumesTemp\MountPoints\{8e399ec3-0000-0000-0000-100000000000} and overwrite the current one. For as far as we can see it seems as if the GUID is always the same for every user. COuld be that it is different but appstacks start with {000 and then some..

I would love to hear other users opinions on it (and please not the I don't like writables Smiley Happy) and maybe some extra rules you are using that we can add...

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Ray,

SO far I didn't do any exclusions on our writables but I do see performance problems wit Office applications especially Outlook. We are using profile only writable template but I'm guessing it doesn't matter.

Do I add those lines in snapvol.cfg to a specific section that already exist in the file or do I create new sections in there or simply just add it at the bottom of the document?

Thank you in advance

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hey Lukasz,

We added the line above this part of the snapvol.cfg, it's almost at the bottom. No need to put it in a specific section. And it is mostly the settings within the profile. So using the profile only you need to set the exact same lines.

As said, we are still in the process of adding extra rules to see wat works best for us. We also added some lines for Chrome and it seems rto work a lot faster.

You do have Appvolumes 2.16? And we also see Outlook specifically as an issue with performance ans also crashes. It seems that this line fixes (or least makes it less worse Smiley Happy) these issues.

Make sure to give the user administrative permissions before you edit the snapvol.cfg of the user in it's session.

# Reverse Replicate File Entries

# WorkAround  for Some Apps Failing when executed from AppStack. This change provides configurablity to

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Ray,

Thank you for the information. We are on AppVolumes 2.16.The way I edited mine is that I just browsed to my machine through File explorer and used my admin account to do that. I just added  these 3 lines you provided at the end of the config

# Office Optimization

exclude_path=%SystemRoot%\WinSxS\Temp

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache

# This should always be the last line in the policy

os=any

Once I used for couple of days and validate I will probably just update the template with that config and jsut browse to those users and add those enries.

So far not seeing too much of an improvement but I will continue with testing. Do you mind sharing your Chrome entries?  We also see Chrome slowly launching on a first launch.

TBH, I decided to use more images and just supplement it with appstacks limited to single apps. I know it's more work on images side but I'm getting more consistent results than using appstacks with combination of apps per department. Maybe it's just me but we are really pushing on getting Windows 10 rolled out to everyone and so far I have spent already a year on getting things ready with AppVolumes, UEM and Horizon and didn't get too far with it and moved barely 40 users. With images we seem to be moving much quicker and it seems more reliable

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Our google exclusions are these.

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Code Cache

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Application Cache

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage

exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Media Cache

Please do test before implementing.

It also seems to depend on the amount of times a user logged into the writable and the way he or she works. We mostly see this happening with secretaries that open a lot of documents, use Outlook quite a lot and don't really work in just 1 document. We have quite a lot of users that don't seem to have performance issues (me being one of them).Still trying to find more folders to exclude though..It's an ongoing process.

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

One thing I noticed with the Chrome exclusions is that once put in place they make Chrome open homepage very slow on  a first launch. After that it's back to normal. The chrome launches quick but then spinning for about 90 seconds before it opens homepage. After commenting those exclusions out, it launches just fine.

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

It could be that we are using UEM for some of those settings which makes it launch quicker again..

You could try and check which of those exclusions cause this behavior

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Thank you Ray, since you mentioned the UEM , are you able to capture bookmarks only with UEM so that if I need to delete user writable then all bookmarks will be restored on next logon with new writable? This same kind of stuff with Mozilla.

I apologize for spamming that thread but I've figured that I ask. I can delete it if you want but I have posted the question on UEM forum and no one seem to be responding Chrome and Mozilla Bookmarks Only

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Yes you can. With UEM you are able to only capture 1 file within a configuration. You can also collect an entire folder and exclude specific files.

That being said, for Chrome bookmarks you need to add this file (see line below), I don;t know where Mozilla stores it's bookmarks, sorry.

[IncludeFiles]

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks

Besides those bookmarks we also aded the following files because of settings users could need when working with Chrome, most of them are pretty straightforward, if anyone has some more good options, please let me know Smiley Happy. It's your own choice which of them you actually consider to also capture. Make sure to not use FDirectFlex with Chrome because Chrome always keeps a process active in the background thus never saving changed settings.

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Preferences

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Data

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\History

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cookies

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Visited Links

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Login Data

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\First Run

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Last Version

<UserProfile>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Local State

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Ray,

Thank you very much. I think you hit the nail on the head with DirectFlex. I never thought about it. I had it enabled and that is probably why it never worked

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Lieven
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Ray,

Do you mind attaching your logoff.bat, prestartup.bat, shellstart.bat, shutdown.bat, snapvol.cfg and startup.bat files you are using.

Attached are the ones I am using for the moment and everything seem to work fine (except for the windows search). Login times are less then 50 seconds.

Horizon View 7.8

UEM (DEM) 9.8

Appvolumes 2.17 (Writeable volumes UIA only)

vSphere 6.5

Regards,

Lieven

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Lieven, that's gonna be kinda hard. I work at another place now so I'm unable to get the info you need.

For us it was mostly the slow performance within the VDIn session when usign a writable volume. Logon times weren't the issues we had.

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