Windows 7 VDI idle CPU usage

[vmcoa]

Just curious if anyone knows of a tool that I can use to discover what processes are consuming CPU cycles on our VDI win7 vms. Currently, idle VMs sitting at the alt-ctrl-delete screen are consuming anywhere from 179-389 mhz as reported from vsphere. We have a lot of idle machines, depending on the time of day, so they are consuming a lot of the cluster resources. If I had to guess, it would be mcafee running inside the guest, but I would like to know other culprits. I am aware of the host based virus scanning (i.e., McAFEE Move) but hoping to find some other tweaks with the ultimate goal of increasing VM density and improved performance. 

[mbud01]

Check for screensaver, All VM's (servers, desktops) should have screensaver disabled / blank.

[vmcoa]

Screensaver has been disabled through the Win7 optimization guide/tools provided by VMware. Unfortunately, I do not control which software applications are installed into the guest. I would like to figure out which processes are consuming CPU while the desktops are sitting at the ctrl-alt-del screen.

[Erossman]

Just for comparsion. I checked the idle cpu load on my vdi desktops --> win7 x64, 6GB memory and 2vcpus.

We use Sophos for virtualization (offload scanning), vmware appvolumes and vmware user environment manager.

All instant clones are very optimzid for performance. I can see in the vcenter view 165Mhz load on each vm.

I don't know if it's possible to lower the idle cpu load. I will check it.

[Erossman]

Sorry my fault.

I checked again. For my idle horizon view vms I can see 165mb memory and 30Mhz cpu load.

I think thats a good value. Try to use windows "perfmon" tool. You can connect remotely to the idle vdi and check whats going on there.

[vmcoa]

I used perfmon and found Quest KACE agent to be the culprit. Stopping and disabling this service brought the average CPU usage down to 29mhz. Thanks!

edit: Also the CPU ready from esxtop dropped from an average of 9% on all machines down to 0.5-0.9% ... wow!