VMware Horizon Community
Memmo
Contributor
Contributor

Horizon general performance

Hi all,

we've been using Horizon 8 for over a year now with Windows 2019 RDS Servers (migrated from Citrix XenApp and a bunch of MS 2012 RDS Servers) and several users now report annoying lagging and declining performance in daily operations with most published apps. Performance is still decent but they say it was better with Citrix and RDS 2012 back in the day. We never exceed 200 concurrent sessions and CPU and RAM usage on the RDS server are pretty low. I could see most windows or menus are a little slower on Horizon, the mouse sometimes lags and everyone would love a snappier system.

We have already checked the firewalls rules bug for RDS 2016/2019 servers and the mouse polling rates for users. Is there anything else we could do to improve users' experience? For now, Horizon is just a run-of-the-mill infrastructure, it works fine but doesn't look super fast and super responsive.

Thanks.

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vBritinUSA
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

hi @Memmo 

I feel your pain, and this is very hard to prove or disprove. vRops used to be an option and has nice dashboards but you need a PHD to understand making your own and to be honest it was great about giving you information about everything but whats going on within the OS.

We recommend using ControlUp to gather the information, both at the hypervisor and within the OS. And the other thing that is amazing is ControlUP is able to gather information between the physical device and the session, so you are able to see if there is latency, bad wireless etc.

VDI & DaaS - ControlUp

Its worth asking about a PoC

Please mark helpful or correct if my answer resolved your issue.
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Kilroy526
Contributor
Contributor

Check you power settings on the VM instances and the hosts to ensure they are in high power mode and not in balanced power.  I have  seen performance issues related to the nodes and hosts both to balance power.   Once changed, performance is improved.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1018206

Another suggestion, take a look at each user's session to see what processes they have running.  you might be able to control items be reviewing what is started using sysinternals autoruns.

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

 

 

 

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jmacdaddy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Are Meltdown Spectre Remediations enabled on the hosts?  If so, can be responsible for a performance hit.  

What display driver are you using?  SVGA or Horizon Indirect Display Driver.  If SVGA, try switching.

Blast protocol or PCoIP?  If Blast, do you have Blast Codec enabled along with Encoder Switch turned on?  

Are you using physical GPUs in your hosts or endpoint devices?  If you aren't, make sure the H.265 option is turned off in the Horizon Client.

How about the Windows visual effects settings.  Much snappier performance when this is set to Custom with all options disabled except "Show shadows under windows" and "Smooth edges of screen fonts"

As mentioned in an earlier post, change the power performance profile on the hosts from Balanced to High Performance and also change to High Performance in the BIOS/UEFI of your host servers.

Good luck.

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Memmo
Contributor
Contributor

Hi jmacdaddy,

thanks for your kind response. We are using the Blast protocol and we're seeing a slightly better performance/better stability when H.264 and HEVC codecs are disabled on the Horizon client. Standard SVGA 3D driver is installed on the RDS servers and these are running High Performance settings.

The Vmware hosts are running a High Performance profile in the BIOS too.

The real pain are high latency links (130-150 ms). The user experience is barely decent... the big issue is the file copy/save through the remapped local drives... the users search and open and upload tons of small local files and this process is painfully slow. This is not super slow in other remote offices with a better latency (40-50 ms). Can performance be optimized for higher latency? ICA is way better beyond 100 ms, I must say.

 

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jmacdaddy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would look at enabling the Blast codec on your virtual desktop template and also enable Encoder Switching.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Vmware, Inc.\Vmware Blast\Config

Name: EncoderBlastCodecEnabled

Type: Reg_SZ

Value: 1

Name: EncoderSwitchEnabled

Type: Reg_SZ

Value: 1

 

If you have both the SVGA and the IDD drivers on your template, you can force IDD with the following:

HKLM\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Blast\config

Name: PixelProviderForceViddCapture

Type: Reg_SZ

Value: 1

How are your users accessing your VDI across the high latency links?  Is this a WAN with no encryption or through an internet connection?  If via internet, are they hitting a VMWare UAG or are they connecting via a VPN?  If you have WAN circuits with encryption or are coming in via a VPN, make sure that you disable UDP in Blast.   If they are accessing via an internet and UAG with no additional encryption/tunneling, make sure you HAVEN'T disabled UDP.  Make sure you have installed Horizon Performance Tracker option when you install the Horizon Agent on your template so that you can see detailed information about latency, codecs being used, and TCP vs UDP usage.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Vmware, Inc.\Vmware Blast\Config

Name: UdpEnabled
Type: Reg_SZ

Value: 1 = On, 0 = Off

If you have VMWare DEM Enterprise deployed in your environment, you can create Smart Policies that will automatically adjust display options in a session based on latency.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Dynamic-Environment-Manager/2209/com.vmware.dynamic.environment.ma...

 

Finally, have you tested Storage Drive Redirection instead of Client Drive Redirection?  It came out in Horizon 8 2206.  VMWare claims it has better performance but less flexibility than Client Drive Redirection.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon/2209/horizon-remote-desktop-features/GUID-DA730945-987A-41...

 

 

 

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