Windows 10 vda logon speed

[Jamie Childs]

I’m curious to know what average logon speed people are getting with windows 10?

 

we are currently using Windows 10 1709 with Citrix xendesktop 7.15ltsr CU3. Each desktop has 2vCPU and 6GB Ram. We are also using pvs server with ram cache overflow to disk. All storage is SSD and runing on a 10GB ISCI backbone. We are also using upm for profile management with all Optimization done via Citrix Optimizer tool. 

 

we are averaging a logon time of between 40-60 seconds (from clicking storefront icon to getting to desktop).

 

does this seem about right or should I be able to get it lower?

[James Kindon]

You should be able to get sub 30 on windows 10 if tuned nicely and the infrastructure is up to it (Typically disk is the problem but yours sounds hefty) - James Rankin has the best collection of all things logon speed - George Spiers also has some great write ups

https://james-rankin.com/articles/how-to-get-the-fastest-possible-citrix-logon-times/ 

 

WEM is also a huge helper in getting logon speeds nice and fast

[Michael McCourt1709158491]

That is a great article. Be sure to setup the auto logon after reboot. That saves a ton of time.

 

I personally have not had good luck with WEM. Getting policies to consistently apply even in my test environment was next to impossible for me. So I stick to as bare a GPO as I can instead. Put as much into your base image as you can and be sure to document it all.

 

We also use FSLogix Profile Containers here rather than UPM (if you are using roaming profiles). It has helped us a great deal in keeping our login times low.

[Jamie Childs]

I agree its a very good article with lots of tips.

 

I have followed a lot of them such as minimum GPO's, using Citrix Optimizer, folder redirection but could probably look at implementing a few more.

 

has anyone used the autologon feature with random desktops? we currently have it set to always reboot the machines after logon for security reasons, which means the autologon option isn't really feasible.

 

from Director the overall figures shown arent to bad. gpo processing (4-9 sec), login script (5 sec) - have to use this as office has an issue with single sign on in that I have to delete cached credentials on each login. profile load,authentication and brokering are all less then a second. but when timing it ourselves we get 40-50 seconds.

 

We also use desktop lock on the internal machines which seems to elongate the whole login process.

 

The combination of desktop lock taking 20 seconds to actually launch the desktop plus the 40-50 second logon time of the VDI doesn't give a very good user experience,

 

If anyone has any tips for improving the desktop lock initiation phase as well that would be good.

 

WEM was also my next option to see if it made any difference, but most of our customer base uses VDI base licenses for cost reasons, but if WEM improved things massively its justifiable,

 

 

 

[James Kindon]

autologon won't work with pooled VDI with reboot configurations - its neat for the XenApp world, but not so good for VDI (I wrote a powershell script using Control Up Logon Sim to handle the auto logon component)

 

You can however use some startup scripts to pre-launch applications to warm up the VDI rather than the whole logon, as well as dealing with Serializestartupdelay

https://www.jgspiers.com/citrix-director-reduce-logon-times/#StartupDelayInMSec

 

See comments at the bottom of George's post around the startup apps

https://www.jgspiers.com/citrix-director-reduce-logon-times

 

Desktop Lock will be replaced with WEM Transformer in the future as i understand it, so that might help. WEM will help you move things to process at a different time - your logon script for example - you could look to move that to an external task that runs just after the user logs in rather than waiting for it to run before logging you in. 

 

I have had a massive amount of success in the WEM space, but its important to understand where the delays are before putting in a tool to help

 

AutoRuns from sysinternals helps, same with the controlUp SBA's updated by Guy Leech

https://www.controlup.com/script-library/Analyze-Logon-Duration/b636f434-2843-4a5c-a21a-eed7a02d0946/

https://www.controlup.com/script-library/Analyze-GPO-Extensions-Load-Time/ee682d01-81c4-4495-85a7-4c03c88d7263/

 

[Jamie Childs]

So I have looked at implementing WEM 1808 and while I have noticed an improvement in login times, its definitely not as quick as WEM reports.

 

Also why is WEMs login durations report so different to Director? from WEM its reporting 15-20 seconds whereas Director is reporting between 40-50 seconds.

 

what does WEM do to calculate the login time compared to WEM?

 

Also would you recommend using WEM for UPM config or leave it via GPO?

[James Kindon]

there is a lot of marketing fluff that hangs around with WEM.....but you can get some huge results if you take the time. It means moving configurations out of GPP and into WEM, optimizing your images, understanding what else goes on in the environment and where the trigger points are, and moving them also....lots of work, but huge results.

 

WEM logon times will be quite different between 7.15 LTSR VDA stats and its own - i would like at George Spiers article around reducing interactive logon duration times etc in Director, they should then line up a little closer (though they will always differ) as they judge things differently - Director is a lot more session focused 

 

I typically prefer profile management in GPO, but i have environments that do both. GPO is bulletproof and its machine config, so no performance difference

[D Gibbs]

AppVCacher (google it) can perform a prelogon to XenDesktop (Single User) VDAs. When you configure it, it will disable the Citrix Desktop Service. The VDA logs onto itself at startup using either dynamically created local user or a domain user, using RDP. After logoff the Citrix Desktop service is started - therefore no reboot by power management.
It can reduce the interactive session stage by approx 50%

 

If you are using a dedicated storefront site for your INTERNAL desktop lock devices, have a look at https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136516
Turning the proxy off can reduce connection time by a few secs

 

If AppData is redirected, have a look at https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133595/ - there may be some gains to be had

 

Profile Size - Exclude %LocalAppData% and only include known required subfolders of %LocalAppData% - the Citrix preconfigured exclusions are not sufficient - %localAppdata% used to be fully excluded by defauly in years gone by - This is the default MS profile behaviour - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ExcludeProfileDirs
Consider a .Net Click Once app that installs to a new %localappdata% subfolder every day - superbloat
Java too

Application specific temp folders
Chrome and Firefox can add 10-20MB after just one logon

 

%localAppdata% subfolders that may require inclusions
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX222433
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX213190
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX224498
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX213703
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX232587
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130665
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX215853

Ensure that your file server for profiles and redirected appdata is dedicated to Citrix Users' data and suitably sized (Mem, CPU, Disk, NICs)
And optimised - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/performance-tuning/role/file-server/
Ideally placed on the  same subnet as the VDAs too (or as close as poss)