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.
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.
Disable Scheduled Disk Defragmentation on Windows Parent Virtual Machines Before you create linked clones, you must disable scheduled defragmentations on Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10 parent virtual machines. Windows guest operating systems schedule weekly disk defragmentations by default. Repeated defragmentation operations significantly increase the size of linked-clone OS disks and do not make disk access more efficient on linked clones.
Disable the Windows Update Service on Windows Virtual Machines Disabling the Windows Update Service can reduce the number of files that are created and writes that occur when updates are downloaded and installed. This action can reduce linked-clone growth and reduce IOPS in linked clones and full virtual machines.
Disable the Diagnostic Policy Service on Windows Virtual Machines Disabling the Windows Diagnostic Policy Service can minimize the number of system writes and reduce the growth of linked-clone machines.
Disable the Prefetch and Superfetch Features on Windows Virtual Machines By disabling the Windows prefetch and superfetch features, you can avoid generating prefetch files and the overhead associated with prefetch and superfetch operations. This action can reduce the growth of linked-clone machines and minimize IOPS on full virtual machines and linked clones.
Disable Windows Registry Backup on Windows Virtual Machines Disabling the Windows registry backup feature, RegIdleBackup , can minimize the number of system writes and reduce the growth of linked-clone machines.
Disable the System Restore on Windows Virtual Machines You do not need to use the Windows System Restore feature if you use View Composer refresh to restore linked-clone OS disks to their original snapshots.
Disable Windows Defender on Windows Virtual Machines Microsoft Windows Defender can contribute to linked-clone OS disk growth and increase IOPS in linked clones and full virtual machines. Disable Windows Defender if you install other anti-spyware software on the virtual machine.
Disable Microsoft Feeds Synchronization on Windows Virtual Machines Windows Internet Explorer uses the Microsoft Feeds Synchronization task to update RSS feeds in users' Web browsers. This task can contribute to linked-clone growth. Disable this task if your users do not require automatic RSS feed updates in their browsers.