Vista vs XP

[Vitaly91]

I am not sure if this is the right place for this, but I figured it is a planning question.

I have a customer who is in the process of deploying a VDI solution. One of the VP's is pushing to use Windows Vista instead of XP.

In testing, Vista seems to run a lot slower than XP.

My questions are:

1. Are there any tweaks besides the "usual" (display effects for best performance, turn off Aero, no wallpaper, unneeded devices, etc.) that can be done to help performance?

2. Is there anything anywhere that verifies that Vista will perform much worse than XP in a VDI environment?

They run vSphere with vCenter and iSCSI storage.

Thank you in advance for the help!

[azn2kew · Accepted solution]

Vista takes too much memory and never works good even for home users. I would understand if they can wait for Windows 7 but that probably takes time to prove functional and reliable but most VDI implementation works very well with XP client and you can run 512MB of ram just fine. I would pursuade your managers using XP instead of Vista. If you have to virtualize vista for VDI solution, you may have at least 1GB of RAM allocated and that might work and tweak the same as physical machine. I do not see much case studies for Vista/VDI but a lot for XP/VDI combination. Windows 7 is much better and way faster than Vista, that case you may want to wait or test it out and bypass Vista OS.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[MHAV]

We run a large VDI Envirenment with Windows Vista and it's terrible to get it working have way right. You'll have to do a bunch of things if you need a list let me know. Go for XP or wait until Windows 7 is available and go with that. Windows XP is working pretty in VDI.

Regards

Michael Haverbeck

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[Vitaly91]

Michael,

I would LOVE the list of things you did! Something tells me I will

have tough time talking VP out of using Vista.

Thank you so much!

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 14, 2009, at 12:21 AM, "MHAV" <communities-emailer@vmware.com

[MHAV]

Well i found somethings I wrote done once we tested it look at the picture I added.

Regards

Michael Haverbeck

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[azn2kew]

What types of storage systems do you have for your VDI implementation? When deploying VDI solutions the mosts concerns is "boot storm" as listed in #1 on the picture. If you use NetApp, they have "cache" gear that can accomodate the boot storms issue without affecting performance. Have you consider looking at NetApp NFS and VMware View technical report paper, its pretty nicely written and you can't go wrong if using and investing to the right solution. Remember, majority of performance issue is from storage designs.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to the VMware View forum.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, Virtualization Practice Analyst[/url]
Now Available: 'VMware vSphere(TM) and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment'[/url]
Also available 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise'[/url]
[url=http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll]SearchVMware Pro[/url]|Blue Gears[/url]|Top Virtualization Security Links[/url]|Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast[/url]

[jkatz71]

Request more hardware/licenses for the extra necessary capacity for Vista. That fixed their Vista questions once that number got to the CFO. There really is no ROI for Vista over XP that I could see.

-jonathan

[Vitaly91]

Thank you all for your input!

I have gathered a bunch of ammo and provided it to the VP.

I believe we will end up with a mixed (some Vista, some XP) environment. But... it's better than all Vista, right?!!

Again, thank you all!

[mnasir]

I can't believe a VP would push for Vista over XP. Did he do his research? I know many CIO's and none of them are picking Vista over XP. The recommended path is to deploy XP and upgrade to Windows 7, later next year.

[mnasir]

I can't believe a VP would push for Vista over XP. Did he do his research? I know many CIO's and none of them are picking Vista over XP. The recommended path is to deploy XP and upgrade to Windows 7, later next year.

[jusrr]

Hi Michael,

That list you posted was great! Do you have an other recommendation to optimize Vista?

J

[Linjo]

Here is a few tips of how to tweak Vista to behave nice as a VDI Guest:

http://blogs.vmware.com/view/2009/04/vista-and-vmware-view.html

Best regards,

Linjo

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[mnasir]

I am not against vista - but I just don't see the point of deploying vista on view right now - one of the main reason many customers may like vista at home is due to its cool graphics. As we all know - most of us are using MS RDP as the default protocol for deploying linked clones - and RDP is not suited for higher graphics. So, my recommendation is to deploy xp and wait for PCOIP. Once that is out (end of this year according to vmworld) then you can deploy windows 7 or vista. You will be not be limited to choppy flash and graphics performance over RDP and truly enjoy Vista/windows 7 over pcoip.

Thanks,

Meraz

[Boogiebox]

Hi

Thats is excactly what i am just testing in a Proof of Concept.

My Results are, that you can 2 or 3 XP in VDI for 1 Vista.

The "Golden Image" ist 6 Times bigger. Perhaps it doesn´t matter, because you use linked clones.

The amount of memory for vista (when vista is in idle mode) up to three times bigger.

The CPU-consumtion is nearly 3 times more than XP.

For that reasons i spent for a vista 1,5 GB RAM and two CPUs and vista works fine.

SpeedUp-Tipps can be found via google; Microsoft first, some magazins and websites have some good ideas.

At least i have turn off all unnecescery? services.

Overall the same work as for XP.