Windows 10 | OSOT

[vgerg]

Hi All,

I'm a bit late to the Horizon Cloud and Azure party so trying to get up to speed and hoping you can provide some tips please!

When I'm creating Windows 10 Gold Images for Horizon 7 on prem I follow the 'Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop' religiously, to the letter.

As far as I can see there is no way for me to get Windows 10 into Audit Mode on Azure?

As I am in the UK and any VM I create in Azure is always set to English US I've had to follow the steps to manually create a VM. When I import from Market Place the Windows Store gets disabled which stops me getting the English UK language properly set up.

I have managed to Optimise using the OSOT. I used the unatend.xml and modified it to my needs, ie remove the autologon, fiddle with the accounts, set the locale etc to en-GB and manually ran sysprep. I then used the OSOT to Finalise. End result was a Floating Pool with a logon time under 40 seconds (for a new profile) which is a lot better than the 1:40 ish I was getting on the VM I imported from the Market Place.

Any hints or tips that can accelerate my journey please?

Cheers,

Greg

[vgerg]

I thought I'd provide an update as to how my 'journey' is going!

Win10 1909 Multi Session on Standard_D4_v3

Imported from Marketplace, 'Optimise Windows Image' not selected as if I select this it's impossible to get the UK Language settings sorted! Import reg keys to meet the Horizon requirements (Kill the store, windows updates etc)

MDT to install: latest FSLogix, Office, Chrome, Teams (system wide installer with reg key for multi-session), Adobe Reader, OneDrive

Custom Start Menu xml to resolve lots of broken stuff (Note that pinning items to the Taskbar appears to be no longer supported in 1909)

Run Once Script (configured on Farm): Had to write a batch file to rid myself of the en-US language pack (suspect that something in the VMware unattend.xml is adding it)

Blast

Login times:

We're using FSLogix with a new profile and configured to delete at logoff so we expect initial logon to be slower, with subsequent logins much faster. Login in time are calculated on the time from double clicking the Pool / Farm through to seeing the desktop.

Initial login around 45 - 50 seconds, some of this is sub optimal Group Policy, 10 seconds of it is a lovely 'black screen'!

Subsequent logins around 15 - 20 seconds, a couple of seconds of this is the lovely 'black screen'!

Optimisation:

When I get some time I'll be looking into this further...

GitHub - TheVDIGuys/Windows_10_VDI_Optimize: Windows 10 optimization script for VDI configurations

Optimizing Windows 10, version 1909, for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) role | Microsoft Doc...

Currently investigating how valid this is for Windows 10 Multi Session, the doc from MS doesn't mention Multi Session but TheVDIGuys does.

Need to look into what settings from the OSOT can be implemented. If I Optimise using OSOT it breaks searching on the Start Menu.

I'll try to provide updates on my journey, hopefully this will accelerate the journey for others 🙂

[sWORDs]

The latest version of the guide and OSOT support HCoA:

Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop | VMware