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Virtual Machine tweaks for a better performance

Duncan Epping · Jun 20, 2008 ·

Over the last couple of months I gathered the following tweaks for a better performance insight the virtual machine, besides disabling / uninstalling useless services and devices:

  1. Disable the pre-logon screensaver:
    Open Regedit
    HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
    Change the value of “ScreenSaveActive” to 0.
  2. Disable updates of the last access time attribute for your NTFS filesystem, especially for i/o intensive vm’s this is a real boost:
    Open CMD
    fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1
  3. Disable all visual effects:
    Properties on your desktop
    Appearance -> Effects
    Disable all options.
  4. Disable mouse pointer shadow:
    Control Panel -> Mouse
    Click on the tab “pointers” and switch “enable pointer shadow” off.

So if you’ve got an addition, please post it and I’ll keep updating this blog post!

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Server ESX, Howto, performance, VirtualCenter, vm, VMware

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Comments

  1. Scott says

    21 June, 2008 at 23:57

    Another way to do step two is in the registry itself:

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
    Value Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
    Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
    Value Data: 1

    … but your command line way is “safer”!

    Quick question on steps 3 & 4: The methods that you outline only affects the current person logged in; do you know of a way to set this for the entire machine? I haven’t found an obvious group policy setting to do as such.

  2. Duncan Epping says

    23 June, 2008 at 08:40

    I usually copy the administrator profile to the default user profile.

  3. storm says

    25 June, 2008 at 13:34

    Can you document the useless drivers and services?

  4. Wanderer says

    26 June, 2008 at 14:10

    If it’s Active Directory using Group Policy is the best approach.

  5. Jaron says

    6 August, 2008 at 17:23

    With Virtual Consolidated Backup and Backup Exec you can only do incremental or differential backups based on a file’s last modified date because you cannot change the files archive bit during the backup. Will step 2 of these tweaks cause any problems with this kind of backup?

  6. Nick78 says

    8 January, 2009 at 22:17

    Jaron,

    I don’t think it will cause a problem because the incremental/differential backups look at the time the file was modified, not accessed if I remember correctly.

  7. Ray Siracusa says

    17 July, 2009 at 14:41

    I have made many attempts to run the FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess o. So far i have had no success in getting into the site and nothig happens

  8. Duncan says

    17 July, 2009 at 19:58

    how do you mean getting in to the site? it’s a “0” (zero) by the way and not an o.

  9. bish says

    17 June, 2013 at 01:49

    I usually disable turning off the screen (Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings) , aka Screen Blanking whenever I can. It’s no performance increase but slows down usability a tiny but — and just annoying when it’s a VM . 😉

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

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