7.0

Optimizing Windows for Instant-Clone and View Composer Linked-
Clone Virtual Machines
By disabling certain Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10 services and tasks, you can reduce the
growth in disk usage of instant clones and View Composer linked clones. 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 instant clones and
View Composer linked clones to grow, even when the machines are idle. The incremental growth of the OS
disk can undo the storage savings that you achieve when you first create the clones. You can reduce growth
in disk size 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. Disabling these services can
reduce IOPS (input/output operations per second) and improve performance for any type of desktop
machines.
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 for instant clones because the OS is refreshed
each time a user logs off, and for View Composer linked clones if you refresh or recompose regularly.
Windows Services and Tasks That Cause Disk Growth in Instant Clones and
Linked Clones
Certain services and tasks in Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10 can cause the OS disk of an
instant clone or a View Composer linked clone to grow incrementally, even when the machine is idle. If you
disable these services and tasks, you can control the OS disk growth.
Services that affect OS disk growth also generate I/O operations. You can evaluate the benefits of disabling
these services for full clones as well.
Before you disable the Windows services that are shown in Table 3-8, verify that you took the optimization
steps in “Optimize Guest Operating System Performance,” on page 37.
Chapter 3 Creating and Preparing a Parent Virtual Machine for Cloning
VMware, Inc. 39