VMware Horizon Community
EricConley
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

View Login Times

We are currently in the process of implementing View across our organization and the main complaint we are having from our users is that it takes about 40 seconds to a minute to log in to the guest OS. I will preface this question by stating that the users currently do not have to log in at all (computers stay logged in with generic accounts) so they have no concept of what it actually takes to log in to a Windows system and any login time is going to be percieved as to long to them. That said, what kind of login times are you guys seeing and what, if anything, have you done to shorten those times? Any advice would be a huge help.

I understand that by using floating assignment a new profile get's built everytime and by using dedictated desktops we can mitigate some of this but that would become a storage/host nightmare because we would end up carrying probably 2000+ desktops in order to support a max of 300 or so active users becuase we are a 24x7 operation. Floating assignment is the only way we can afford to scale our environment appropriately to meet the needs.

We are activley creating an upgrade plan to get to View 5 to take advantage of Persona Management but are realisticly 3-4 months from that and the goal is to have VDI rolled out to the majority of our users by the end of Feb. We are also purchasing a new storage array and multiple new hosts to get us off any potential bottlenecks the old equipment is providing but that is a few weeks down the road as well.

After further testing I havd found that the majority of the login times are taken up by drive/printer mappings from AD. Any suggestions as to how to bets measure which mapping is taking up the time or identify ways to speed this up?

As a frame of reference we are using ESXi 4.1 on our hosts and are currently using View 4.5.

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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

So most of the time is spent installing printers pushed down by a GPO?    Anways you can push that action to happen after a user is logged in?

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Michael0216
Contributor
Contributor

We have the same issue, if the user log into the new floating desktop it takes about 45-50 sec for creating the user profile. When he gets the same desktop he previously logged in it takes 7-10 sec to login. We contacted the Support, they collected the log files, we are still working on this.

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gunnarb
Expert
Expert

Question:  Why not keep the same workflow?  If your users are already using generic accounts, why don't you just keep it that way.  If they are generic i wouldn't even bother with RTO profiles (or roaming profiles).  I'd create a mandatory profile in the master image.  With a mandatory profile and a generic account your log in time should be a couple of seconds.

Also, as you design this system you should pay close attention to Fast Caching technologies.  Your mind will be blown once you see what caching can do to your boot time.  Using a Fast Caching VM I was able to have a VM go from powered off to logged in in a hair over 5 seconds.

My main point is if you already have the luxury of having generic accounts, and you are concerned with log in times, stick with the work flow you have and you should be able to smoke your physical environment.


Gunnar Berger

www.gunnarberger.com

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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EricConley
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Gunnar,

     Normally I would agree with not reinventing the wheel, however we don't really havethe luxury of using generic accounts due to regulatory compliance issues that require us to be able to have audit trails for individual users and the fact that we are using a Single Sign On application that requires the users to be logged in to the VM as themselves in order to work.  Basically the generic accounts were implemented as an appeasement method for the end users years ago that everyone (except the end users) regrets to this day because we get destroyed on Security Audits for using them.

     We are currently using fast cacheing on our storage array an, while I am sure it is helping somewhat, the fact of the matter is that it is the GPO application in Windows that is taking the time specifically the mapping of printers.  What I am really looking for is if anyone else has been able to find some middle ground on these issues that meets our regulatory compliance goals and provides the users with the fast log in times they are looking for.

Thanks for the response,

Eric

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gunnarb
Expert
Expert

That makes perfect sense.

Printers tend to be the PITA in the log in process so how about you start by just removing all printers and measure the time it takes, that'll be the control.  See if the control meets your desired log in time.  If it does then as you add printers we will discover how much time it adds to the process.  There are a lot of different ways to go about getting printers on your desktop so you'll end up having to fool with various methods to determine what is the best for your environment.

To support what Mattim was getting to, in your GPO there should be a setting that allows the printers to create post log in, I don't remember what the setting is off the top of my head but it something like "don't wait for all printers to load".  This should help.

Gunnar

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com