VMware Horizon Community
HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Persona Management Issue - Slow Logon

I have a View 5.0 POC lab setup. I have enabled and configured Persona management as instructed in the admin guide (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Persona-Management-Deployment-Guide.pdf). The first time a user logs into a virtual desktop from a floating pool and logs off, the persona profile is created on the network share as is it is supposed to. The next time and everytime afterwards the same user logs into a desktop from that same pool, it take 4 minutes for the desktop to show and then more often than not, explorer.exe has stopped responding. I turn off persona management, reboot the desktops and the user logs in every time normally. What am I missing?

I have a seperate pool with a seperate set of test users configured to use Windows Roaming Profiles only and it works like a champ.

Also, it does not appear that Folder Redirection will not work unless you specified that the roaming profile location is set in the "Persona Repository Location" gpo setting. Is that correct?

Thanks

Henry

22 Replies
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Have you enabled any of the persona logging to see if there are any errors? 

Reply
0 Kudos
HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

See attached. There is quite a few errors there. Some that is curious to me is these...

RTOGetExcludedPids        ] Failed Retrieving WinDefend Pid: 0, 0x0
RTOPruneHGFSCache         ] FindFirstFile Failed: Path: C:\ProgramData\VMware\HGFS\*.dat, 0x80070002

Reply
0 Kudos
HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The commonality that I am seeing is that it takes 4 minutes (240 seconds give or take a second) for a user to login after the initial login to a virtual desktop. I am seeing Failed errors in the logs, but nothing makes sense and apparently I cannot get any technical support by phone to ensure that this works for my proof of concept.

Anybody have any kind of clue or perhaps advise me on how to get support on trial versions of software?

Thanks,
Henry

Reply
0 Kudos
mammer
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm just trying persona out for the first time and am also getting the same experience. I'm noticing alot of CPU use from several applications (Excel/Outlook)while persona is enabled.

Reply
0 Kudos
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

I used persona in the beta and didn't have any problems.  I did have to enable the  Volume Shadow Copy and the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy services which had been disabled per the VMware Windows 7 optimizaiton guide.   Do you have those enabled in your environment?

Reply
0 Kudos
HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I think I have found my issue. I use Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection for antivirus/malware. I stopped the service for this and I was able to log into the VM in less than 3 seconds from sign in. I started the service back up and back to 240 seconds before arrival to the desktop screen. I did find in the VMware Persona Management Deployment guide page 25 to exclude the local profile directories from AV scans, which is scary IMHO. The guide says to scan the remote repository instead.

Still testing however....

Henry

Reply
0 Kudos
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Thanks for the update Henry.  I think a lot of people wil find this thread userful.  

Reply
0 Kudos
mammer
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I also had the same issue, although I must echo Henrys concern that the amount of AV exclusions required is far from safe.

View team, please take notice!

Reply
0 Kudos
HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Just wanted to close this one out, all of my test have showed that the antivirus software we use, Forefront Endpoint Protection, was the culprite in with the slow logon with Persona Management enabled.

Reply
0 Kudos
stimmons
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Can you list out the exclusions you were required to add?

Reply
0 Kudos
HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Basically just the entire ‘C:\Users’ folder.

Reply
0 Kudos
PatrickKremer
Contributor
Contributor

VMware created a GPO to specifically address this problem but forgot to include it in the current release of View 5.

http://www.patrickkremer.com/?p=303 for full details, I've tested the fix and it works perfectly with Forefront Endpoint.

Patrick Kremer VCAP5-DCA/DCD, VCP5-DT, VCAP4-DCA, CCNA, MCSA 2008
Reply
0 Kudos
gseburn
Contributor
Contributor

I'm just beginning to explore this feature and am having the same slow logon problem.  I added the new GPO and excluded my anti-virus processes (Trend Micro)  So far, no change.  I will keep digging, but so far it's dissapointing.

Reply
0 Kudos
PatrickKremer
Contributor
Contributor

Bummer. VMware just posted an official KB article KB2011823 on 2/13/2012. You can probably open a support ticket and ask for assistance referencing the article.

Patrick Kremer VCAP5-DCA/DCD, VCP5-DT, VCAP4-DCA, CCNA, MCSA 2008
Reply
0 Kudos
gseburn
Contributor
Contributor

Well, I guess I had better open a ticket.  I actually removed our anti-virus entirely from my test machines and it still takes 4 1/2 minutes to load the desktop.. hmmmm  It's not looking good.  I had high hopes for this feature.

Reply
0 Kudos
JF_ID
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We got the same issue with Horizon View 6.0 and Trend Micro Officescan.

Did you resolve your issue ?

Reply
0 Kudos
h3nkY
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I see in your persona logs that there is pre-load was set. This will impact login sped as Persona has to download them when user logs in.

[0][09/21/2011 21:17:15:0268][VPLogonNotify_OnStartShell] Preloaded Files: User: testuser, Session: 1

But yes before this pre-loading, there was almost 4 minutes slow process, after user authenticated which I suspect another software such as anti-virus might scan offline files population.

It is a correct way to disable anti-virus or other software which has filesystem driver to isolate the issue.

Reply
0 Kudos
JF_ID
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

On my side i can confirm it related to Antivirus and profile loading. In my case, by disabling RealTime Scanning or excluding c:\users, the speed come back to normal.

Reply
0 Kudos
JF_ID
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

After open a ticket with Trend Micro, they come with a solution.

1. Upgrade VSAPI to 9.855-1003. The steps for the upgrade of the scan engine is on this link http://esupport.trendmicro.com/solution/en-US/0122633.aspx

2. Apply registry this registry key (Bypass the process of Vmware Persona Management to be scan in real-time)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tmfilter\Parameters]

"BypassProcess"=hex:4B,57,5F,75,09,75,AB,63,DF,5C,B2,84,45,C0,CF,3C,4E,C5,25,\

  DC,E4,AD,89,FA,8C,A5,82,69,E0,86,60,88,41

After this, logon is back to normal and virus will be detected in C:\users. Smiley Happy

Reply
0 Kudos