VMware VCM 5.3 User Manual download pdf (Page 12)

Customizing the Virtual Machine

Deploying Microsoft Windows 7 Virtual Desktops with VMware View Applied Best Practices

Configure the virtual machine settings

Windows 7 compatibility

In order to run Windows 7 virtual desktops, ensure the ESX servers can support the virtual

desktops as a guest OS type. Windows 7 support is included with the ESX as of ESX 4 update 1.

Additionally, VMware View Manager 4.5 is required for official support of Windows 7 virtual

desktops. EMC also recommends that you use version 7 virtual machines.

vCPU count

Use as few virtual CPUs (vCPUs) as possible while providing the required amount of CPU

resources to the guest OS. Increasing the number of vCPUs increases the work required by the

hypervisor to co-schedule CPU resources on the physical CPU cores. Be sure to allocate adequate

CPU resources are allocated to the virtual machine, verify that the average CPU utilization

reported by the virtual machine is less than 70 percent, and the %RDY counter for the virtual

machine is less than 10 percent.

If the virtual machine reports low CPU utilization and the %RDY value is higher than 10 percent,

the virtual machine vCPU is waiting for free physical CPU resources to schedule its workload.

This can be an indication of over-provisioned physical CPUs on the ESX host. Move some

virtual machines off the ESX host to free up physical CPU resources.

Virtual machine memory

The minimum recommended configuration of RAM for Windows 7 is 512 MB. For most users

this will not be adequate to hold the entire active working set of applications in memory. If

enough RAM is available, Windows 7 will cache binaries and data in memory. This caching is

referred to as client side caching and it is key in reducing unnecessary read activity from the

guest operating system. Appendix A has more information on how to adequately size the memory

configuration for Windows 7 virtual desktops. For initial testing, 1.5 GB is a safe value to use.

SCSI controller

The default small computer system interface (SCSI) controller for new Windows 7 virtual

machines is the LSI Logic SAS controller. This controller provides good performance and

Windows 7 includes the drivers in its image.

Disable virtual machine logging

Every time a virtual machine is powered on, it logs diagnostic information to the data store

hosting its VMDK file. For large concentrations of virtual machines, this overhead can be

significant.

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VMware VCM 5.3 User Manual Page 12