Optimize Windows 8 for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments

Ivo Beerens
Date : April 12, 2013
Categories : vdi ,view ,windows-8
Tags : vdi ,view ,windows-8

Optimize and tuning a Windows 8 desktop in a VDI environment is important to reduce for example the CPU, IOPS and the memory footprint. During the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2013 a breakout session about optimizing a Windows 8 desktop for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is held. The session has three main subjects:

Microsoft Guidance for Windows 8 Configuration VDI desktop. What version of Windows 8 do I need, how many CPUs, memory, disk partitioning etc.
Detailed Review of Component Configuration. What services do I need to enable or disable, do I need to disable SuperFetch? All the optimization settings are available in VBS script
Recommendations for performance testing. This section is about the (third party) tools that can be used to do performance testing.

. The Windows 8 VDI sizing and optimizations can be used for example on the following VDI solutions:

VMware Horizon View
Citrix XenDesktop
Microsoft VDI

A Windows 8 VDI optimization VBS script is available. This script does all the optimization work for you. Review all the settings before executing if the fits for your environment! There will be a PowerShell version available in the future. The Windows 8 optimization VBS script can be found here .