Horizon with UEM Login Times

[Super6VCA]

Hi All,

I've been struggling for quite a while now on how to get things setup for the hospital and doctors so that they can experience some decent login times.  As it stands now for the hospital login times are about 1 minute and that is with nothing loaded.  I have Optimized the desktop, cleaned up any startup apps, among other things and still getting these long times.  To top that off it takes another 40 seconds to login to our web based EMR program and get desktop icons for it.  This is very painful for the nurses and docs and was curious if there were any other suggestions.  I am using INSTANT CLONES with view 7.4 and it needs to build the local profile every login.  I am trying to use UEM for the profile portion but that is only for the ROAMING profile.  I am trying to find the best solution to get this done and it this isn't it then I am open for comments.  Here is my setup.  Any help or comments are always welcome.  Thanks

Horizon 7.4 Instant Clones

Windows 1607 (LTSB version)

UEM 9.3

Nimble storage

Some HP embedded Thin Clients and some thick clients running the latest clients. 

[nettech1]

This is what we used to identify an issue with a slow login a few years ago

Use the following commands in an administrative command prompt on the base image to enable the ETL traces :

logman create trace "autosession\minio_profapi" -ow -o c:\minio_profapi.etl -p {EB7428F5-AB1F-4322-A4CC-1F1A9B2C5E98} 0xffffffffffffffff 0xff -nb 16 16 -bs 1024 -mode Circular -f bincirc -max 4096 -ets

logman update trace "autosession\minio_profapi" -p "Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles General" 0xffffffffffffffff 0xff -ets

logman update trace "autosession\minio_profapi" -p "Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles Service" 0xffffffffffffffff 0xff -ets

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\minio_profapi /v FileMax /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /F

Reboot the VM to start tracing.

Stop the traces using the following commands :

Stop tracing:

logman stop "minio_profapi" -ets

logman delete "autosession\minio_profapi" -ets

[Super6VCA]

The link you gave me in the beginning of this thread about Optimizing the Master Image had you creating a Mandatory profile during the optimization.  Is there something different that needs to be done with mandatory profiles? 

[sjesse]

I was testing the difference, the only thing I did different is I used a local group policy to set the mandatory profile, instead of using a group policy on the AD objects. If you do that and end up using app volumes though remember to remove it on your build machine, it looks like it breaks thinks when capturing app stacks. Outside of adding the delayed switch, verbose startup messages, and how I set the mandatory profile, everything is step by step by that guide. Including the using sysprep and the copyprofile part in the unattend.xml. I tried bypassing that and ran into more problems using defprof.

[sjesse]

nettech1​ do you have a reference for reviewing the ETL file?  this looks different than what I tried before, but all the api calls where getting confusing. I think yours is much more targeted so it may be better.

[nettech1]

You can use tracerpt | Microsoft Docs or event viewer to review the ETL how to open and read ETL Trace log files (.etl) - Network Diagnostics Log - YouTube

Alternatively you can look in to Windows Performance Analyzer

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[Super6VCA]

sjesse,

Well after a lot of changes, your help, and others i finally got the login time (with UEM and APPVOL) down to about 20 seconds without an GPO's involved.  Still have to modify teh GPO's to get rid of the junk but it's a lot better that what i had (over a minute).  Thanks for all the help with this.  Really appreciate it!

[VentziP]

Could you please share with me or us all of your steps that you used to get that login time without the GPO involved? I'm testing Windows 10 1809 LTSC and can't get it under 90sec. I had better results in 1607 LTSB, but the same tweaks dosen't seems to work well under 1809.

Thanks in advance

[Moltron83]

Yes, could you please share your steps to get those login times?  We are struggling to get under 1 minute on Windows 10 1903. 

[sjesse]

1809 and 1903 are harder, have you tried the lasted opimizer fling, they separated out the older win 10 versions and the newer ones.

VMware OS Optimization Tool | VMware Flings

and check this article

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

I think it used to break things, but my last attempt and seemed pretty solid, even without doing the mandatory profile.

[Moltron83]

You are not kidding sjesse!  I rebuilt our whole image based on using the new OSOT that came out, as well as some other changes.  Microsoft references a script to optimize desktops, though its for 1803 but I used that also.  I have followed the guide from VMware except this time around I didn't do the copyprofile or make a mandatory either.  I've see little differences in performance between using mandatory and not, but not doing a copyprofile with sysprep corrected several errors seen in event logs.  I found that the copyprofile left a bunch of reg pointers to the old administrator profile.  New users would be denied access to that profile, and it created some problems.

[sjesse]

Are you doing the Sysprep part though , if not do it, but first make a new profile do all the optimizations in that and update the unattended.xml to use reference that account and not the Administrator account. I ran into the same thing when I tried to follow the guide the first time, I must have did it this time without even thinking. I think we are getting 30ish seconds now vers almost 90 seconds before.

[RachelW]

I realize all of this is talking about login times using windows 10 images.  We are still using Windows 7 desktops and our login times are 1 min 50 seconds to get to a desktop with icons.  Are there any suggestions for decreasing the login times for /windows 7.

I have gone through the Optimizing your desktop link and also setup a mandatory profile.  We use both appstacks and UEM.  With No Appstacks, the login time is about 45 seconds on average.  As we add Appstacks to a user, the time increases of course.

We are starting to develop the Windows 10 desktops but this will take some time and need some immediate relief on the login times.  I work in a hospital and getting to a desktop quickly is critical. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Shreyskar]

Hi RachelW

If adding appstacks delays the logon time, please test with below registry on one of the test VM and let me know if it provides any relief in login time:

Note: You can take a console session to a VM from vSphere and test on that. Make sure to reboot the VM within the OS otherwise VM will be deleted if you are using instant clone Or Linked clone with policy 'delete on logoff'.

> Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\svservice\Parameters 

> Create REG_DWORD as below:

  VolWaitTimeout and set the decimal value to 25   --This is the time required for a volume to be processed before ignoring the volume and proceeding with the login process.
VolDelayLoadTime and set it to decimal value 10   --This might speed up the login time by delaying the virtualizing of applications until after logon is complete
WaitForFirstVolumeOnly and set the value to 1

Regards,

Shreyskar

Please mark the reply as helpful if it helps you.

[RachelW]

So just to be sure I understand, there are 3 entries for the registry:

1)  VolWaitTimeout and set the decimal value to 25   --This is the time required for a volume to be processed before ignoring the volume and proceeding with the login process.

2) VolDelayLoadTime and set it to decimal value 10   --This might speed up the login time by delaying the virtualizing of applications until after logon is complete

3) WaitForFirstVolumeOnly and set the value to 1

Can you please help me understand how the VolWaittimeout might help?

And I assume the WaitForFirstVolumeOnly allows ONLY the first appstack to attach before continuing the login. Is that correct?  If not, please help me know what that entry is for.

Thank you!

[Shreyskar]

Hi RachelW

You are correct. Waitforfirstvolumeonly will wait for only first appstack to attach and will proceed with login, remaining appstacks will attach in background asynchronously thus you don't have to wait at login screen.

For your other query, check the details here:
Configuring the Volume Behavior Parameters

[RachelW]

Hello Shreyskar​,

I am a bit confused on the VolWaitTimeout registry key even after reading the information from the VMware link you included.

So it says that the VolWaitTimeout "is the time required for a volume to be processed before ignoring the volume and proceeding with the login process. The default value is 180." Does that mean that it could take up to 3 minutes for a volume / Appstack up to 3 minutes (180 seconds) to process for proceeding with the login process?  And does it mean the AppStack MIGHT be ignored such that it won't be applied? What does "ignore" mean?

[Shreyskar]

Your understanding is correct.

By default, it will wait for 180secs for appstack to attach before proceeding with login, if appstack fails to attach during this duration, it will proceed with login ignoring the appstack. Ignorning here means it will not wait any further for appstack attachment even if it fails to attach.

[RachelW]

Ok. Thank you for the information. 

Regarding the VolDelayLoadTime key..again based on seconds with default being 0.  Is a higher number better with this key, 20 instead of 10?

[sjesse]

That key helps control how long the its before the user sees the desktops. Lower numbers will make the logon look faster, but applications may not be ready yet, so lower is better but not too fast. If your going to adjust it try setting it to zero and watch. Try logging in and see if anything is missing then wait for a bit and see it again, if things popup later you need to adjust it a bit higher or except that applications may take longer.

[johnmontgomery]

@agalliasistju I am in the midst of configuring this exact same solution for exam rooms at a hospital.  They have Wyse ThinOS and Imprivata badge readers.  They want a generic user account to log into the Wyse and to launch a VDI session.  Then the session waits for the user to badge in to fully launch the desktop.  After logon, they want to use Warp Drive to pass the Wyse Device name through into Epic, which is a Citrix published app.  This is not working as expected at the moment.  Do you have any further explanation on how you have things configured?  Maybe we are missing a small piece of this.