6.2

7 In the Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows node, open the Customer Experience
Improvement Program folder.
8 Disable the Consolidator, KernelCEIPTask, and UsbCEIP tasks.
9 In the Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows node, open the Autochk folder.
10 Disable the Proxy task.
What to do next
Perform other Windows optimization tasks. See “Optimize Guest Operating System Performance,” on
page 37.
Optimizing Windows for Linked-Clone Virtual Machines
By disabling certain Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10 services and tasks, you can reduce the
growth of View Composer linked-clone virtual machines. Disabling certain services and tasks can also result
in performance benefits for full virtual machines.
Benefits of Disabling Windows Services and Tasks
Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10 schedule services and tasks that can cause View Composer
linked clones to grow, even when the linked-clone machines are idle. The incremental growth of linked-
clone OS disks can undo the storage savings that you achieve when you first create the linked-clone
machines. You can reduce linked-clone growth by disabling these Windows services.
Windows guest operating systems schedule services such as disk defragmentation to run by default. These
services run in the background if you do not disable them.
Services that affect OS disk growth also generate input/output operations per second (IOPS) on the
Windows virtual machines. Disabling these services can reduce IOPS and improve performance on full
virtual machines and linked clones.
These best practices for optimizing Windows apply to most user environments. However, you must
evaluate the effect of disabling each service on your users, applications, and desktops. You might require
certain services to stay active.
For example, disabling Windows Update Service makes sense if you refresh and recompose the linked
clones. A refresh operation restores the OS disks to their last snapshots, deleting all automatic Windows
updates since the last snapshots were taken. A recompose operation recreates the OS disks from a new
snapshot that can contain the current Windows updates, making automatic Windows updates redundant.
If you do not use refresh and recompose regularly, you might decide to keep Windows Update Service
active.
Overview of Windows Services and Tasks That Cause Linked-Clone Growth
Certain services and tasks in Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10 can cause linked-clone OS disks
to grow incrementally every few hours, even when the linked-clone machines are idle. If you disable these
services and tasks, you can control the OS disk growth.
Services that affect OS disk growth also generate IOPS on Windows virtual machines. You can evaluate the
benefits of disabling these services on full virtual machines as well as linked clones.
Before you disable the Windows services that are shown in Table 3-9, verify that you took the optimization
steps in “Optimize Guest Operating System Performance,” on page 37.
Chapter 3 Creating and Preparing Virtual Machines
VMware, Inc. 39