October 15, 2019

Announcing an Update to Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop

This document, updated in October 2019, provides step-by-step procedures for creating golden VMs whose Windows OS is optimized for use as a virtual desktop or RDSH server. These procedures include creating a VM, installing and configuring a Windows operating system, optimizing the OS, and installing the various VMware agents required for desktop pool or server farm deployment.

The most popular document on EUC Tech Zone, Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop, has been updated to include the most recent Windows OS versions. Windows 10 versions 1809, 1903, and 1909 have been added to the list of Tested Operating Systems.

This document has also been updated to correspond to the newly released update of the VMware OS Optimization Tool fling.

With this updated version of the OSOT, you no longer have to perform some of the tasks that were spelled out in the previous version of Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop. Indeed, this doc is 25 percent shorter than the previous version—for the PDF, that’s 30 pages shorter!

Another change that accounts for the page count reduction is the removal of instructions for using Windows mandatory user profiles. In our testing, we found that this feature does not work reliably when used with Windows 10 version 1809 and later. We decided that, for consistency’s sake, we would remove the recommendation for all versions. We found that login times are nearly equivalent if you use default user profiles instead of mandatory user profiles.

Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop provides step-by-step procedures for creating optimized images. These procedures include creating a VM, installing and configuring a Windows operating system, optimizing the OS, and installing the various VMware agents required for desktop pool deployment.

We also want to thank readers of the previous version for all their helpful comments and suggestions. Keep the feedback coming!

Filter Tags

Horizon App Volumes Dynamic Environment Manager Horizon Horizon Apps Horizon Cloud Service Blog Announcement Overview Deploy Optimize App & Access Management Modern Management Windows Delivery