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  • 1.  How does one determine whether to increase a VM's available video RAM??

    Posted Jan 27, 2015 04:03 PM

    We have users complaining a particular app 'comes up slowly,' their phrase, not mine...

    The app is used through Remote Desktop Services over a VPN/WAN to the datacenter.

    We are trying to look at other things, cpu, ram, network are not maxed out so far as we can see..

    The people have big 24" monitors now and I got to wondering if the RDS hosts' video RAM should be increased from whatever is the default.

    The RDS hosts are running Windows Server 2012 R2 with Desktop Experience, themes service turned off, Aero is not being used...

    It would be only 5 VMs to change, so I could do it manually if I know what/where to change...

    And what would be the recommended new setting??

    This is purely research for now, it's also possible we need to increase our site bandwidth.

    Thank you, Tom



  • 2.  RE: How does one determine whether to increase a VM's available video RAM??

    Posted Jan 27, 2015 04:48 PM

    In the VI client, go to VM > Edit Settings >Video card, there is a button to calculate recommended video memory based on number of displays and the resolution.  That would seem to be for a dedicated vm not a shared RDS host.  As a test you might increase video RAM on one vm (RDS host) significantly and see if there is any difference reported by the users of that host.  There are VMware View related papers on RDS hosts and video performance tuning in general, you might look at some of those even though you're not using View.  Since you mention that it is via VPN/WAN have you tried a test to a hardbox PC at the datacenter to see if the application launches any faster?  It could just be slow no matter what you do with the VM.



  • 3.  RE: How does one determine whether to increase a VM's available video RAM??

    Posted Jan 27, 2015 04:54 PM

    I looked, it appears to be 4 MB is the default for custom...

    I will try adjusting to 16 MB on the host VMs and see what happens.

    They are not maxing out cpu or RAM so that should be okay...

    I just saw something that suggests it might be an RDS host issue with how much video the RDS host can use/manage/display etc.

    Must research further...

    Can ANYone comment if I must adjust RemoteFX settings in the RDS hosts like this article suggests?? (it is for Win7 but the idea is the same)

    Optimizing RDP for casual use (Windows 7 SP1, RemoteFX) | Tedds blog

    Thank you, Tom



  • 4.  RE: How does one determine whether to increase a VM's available video RAM??

    Posted Jan 27, 2015 05:09 PM

    Tom,

    FWIW in our View environment we have zero clients, PCoIP, and dual 24" running 1920 x 1200.  Each VM has 128MB of video RAM and that is to support one set of monitors not multiples as the RDS host does.  All that is a long way to say that 16MB isn't much to give them for video RAM (think about our hardbox cards with 1GB video RAM).  But so much is different (RDP v PCoIP), RDS vs ViewAgent, that it's hard to say how applicable our 128MB is to your situation.  No RDS hosts here so no comment on RemoteFX.

    Glenn



  • 5.  RE: How does one determine whether to increase a VM's available video RAM??

    Posted Jan 27, 2015 05:32 PM

    I went out for my lunch walk and thought perhaps I can go higher on video RAM if I increase the allocated memory RAM per se.

    The hosts are all doing well with 8 GB, I will try 9 GB and 128 MB video RAM, see what happens if anything...

    I'll make a new thread about RDS hosts and RemoteFX...

    Thank you, Tom