Remote Desktop Services Performance and Tuning in Windows Server 2008 R2
Note: This article is based on RDS 2008 (R2) and might not apply to RDS 2012 (R2)
Remote Desktop Services provides both Session and VM based Windows desktops and Applications. Decisions on the configuration of both the operating system and specific applications can drastically change both the end user experience and density per host (which translates to cost) so should be carefully considered.
Some specific points around how to configure and calculate requirements:
Client Configuration:
- 32 bit or 64 bit Windows 7 VM's : 64 bit requires more memory capacity but, has been reported to run faster than 32 bit VM's due to better memory mapping to the hyper-v Host
- Anti-Virus :
- SuperFetch :
Host density calculation : see http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=17190
Network Bandwidth : see http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=23236
IOPS: Disk I/O per second is a key resource to track for VDI performance. The number of concurrent VM's, the OS and usage scenario should be considered to determine the total IOPS at boot time and, steady state that are needed and compared to the hardware being used. Some data that can be used for this is here: http://jimmoyle.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/05/Windows_7_IOPS_for_VDI_a_Deep_Dive_1_0.pdf
Gateway tuning:
Slow logon times thru gateway could be caused by clients not correctly bypassing RD Gateway. See article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772479.aspx
Also review the idle settings on RD Gateway http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771956(v=ws.10).aspx