Quest has released a free Virtual Desktop Optimizer that also works for Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View!

Optimizations applied by the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer the IOPS – both read and write – were reduced by more than 90%. This has a huge effect on the scalability and CAPEX of your VDI environments since (lack of) IOPS is currently the most common bottleneck in VDI deployments.

In the realm of disk space the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer also was able to make a huge difference. We deployed two virtual desktops via the Quest vWorkspace rapid provisioning options (Differencing Disks / Linked Clones) and then we compared the vanilla Windows 7 virtual desktop to the virtual desktop optimized with the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer. The virtual desktop optimized with the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer consumed 43% less disk space. This also has a big positive effect on CAPEX of your VDI environments.

In addition, the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer also introduced RAM savings of up to 10%. To be honest, we expected to see more but didn’t. Please let us know if you do see higher savings.

Finally, a virtual desktop optimized by Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer also consumed up to 37% less CPU although it has to be stated that this was measured on (as stated earlier) a desktop with no users logged on so even though the relative savings are high, the absolute savings are not that dramatic.

How to use the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer

You can run the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer both on already deployed desktops as well as on reference machines (templates / golden images), where our best practise is to apply the optimizations to the latter. No matter where you run the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer it’s important to always test the optimizations applied by the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer in a test environment! Even though we have put a lot of work into creating the list of optimizations, not all optimizations will make equal sense for everybody. For example, if you use Windows Search regularly, you might not want to disable the service. Finally, it should go without saying that the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer should be run as an administrator.

Download the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer here: https://bit.ly/VDIopt