High CPU Win10 persistent desktops with no user sessions - scripted reset?

[vmrulz]

We have a Horizon 8.7 infra (vSphere 7) serving about a 1000 persistent desktops. Most of these are Win10 21H2 running a typical variety of O365 apps along with a number of security agents and 8.x Horizon agents. We have been finding especially over the last month that a lot of these machines will go into a high CPU state with no user sessions (disconnected or active). These sessions also drive a lot of IOPS which loads up our Pure Flash arrays. I've not been able to isolate any particular process other than SYSTEM which seems to be using majority CPU when I have the time to wait for the UI to respond and look.

This is probably a tall order scripting wise but I'd like to be able to periodically run a script that will reset machines in a high CPU state that also have no active user sessions. Sadly this requires both Horizon and vCenter data to discover this and act on it via Horizon.

Anybody ever seen this and/or know of a script that might work? I guess I could just reset all machines with an available status in Horizon but it would be nice just to reset the offenders.

Thanks

[Jubish-Jose]

Not sure if it's the right approach. We should aim to root cause what's causing the high CPU ( I would suspect the security agents first) rather than trying a workaround of resetting the VMs.

[vmrulz]

I don't disagree other than the machines are so cpu bound that they are impossible to work with in that state. The agents do consume some but its things like system and svchost processes that seem to take most cpu. Those are always fun to figure out what actual service or processes is the cause.

[kennyvz · Accepted solution]

I've seen this kind of System process behaviour when a persistent desktop is waiting for a reboot after OS updates have been installed. Maybe force a reboot out of hours if it's waiting to finish installing?

[vmrulz]

Ultmately I think that is what it is. I just went through a major effort to get all our Win10 stuff up to at least 21h1 enterprise.. Half our stuff was 1809 and older.  Thanks for the replies