View 5.1 performance issues with dual screen.

[WillFawkes]

Hardware version 8 esxi 5.0.0 update 1 and vmware agent and client at version 5.1     With one monitor everything is fine, but with 2 the keyboard will sporadically lock up and the performance for video is inconsistent as well, with some severe lag spikes.   If we remove the second monitor, its all back to normal.      These are linked clones and win7 desktops.

[JustMike2]

Are you by chance using thin clients to access the VM's.   We had to "upgrade" ours to compensate for poor video performance with two monitors.  

[Linjo]

If these are zero-clients then there is a known problem that sounds like yours.

The workaround is to disable any monitor-powersave functionality in the virtual desktop. (The one that is default on 10min)

// Linjo

[WillFawkes]

Sorry for missing the thin clients, they are hp 5740e.   win7 embedded and some with xp embedded 5740

[Linjo · Accepted solution]

If you can, try with a hw v7 machine, have seen some reported issues that could to point to hw v8 beeing the problem.

Anyway, you should contact VMware support and report it in so we can fix it if its a bug.

// Linjo

[BrandonJ]

The hardware version 8 is what's killing you.  You can roll back to v7 and it will fix the problem though there isn't a point and click way of doing this.  Simplest way is to create a new VM (has v7) with no vmdk, mount your old vmdk to it, and just to clean up the folder mess without manual file moves, sVMotion it to somewhere else (optional).

VMware has a workaround where you have to manually add a setting to the VMX file of every VM which is of course very time consuming and the workaround had some serious scalability issues.

The last option is to enable 3D video on the pool (and then power down every VM and allow View to power them back up to change VMX settings appropriately).  Enabling 3D will fix the problem and give a more native hardware user experience with Aero and all but it comes at the cost of not being able to use RDP on that pool....a problem if you want to support PocketCloud Pro or some other need for RDP as an option.  There may be some scalability issues as well....didn't take the time to measure 3D performance yet since we want to support PocketCloud Pro.

[WillFawkes]

It is indeed hw version 8 that causes the issue, reverted to a snapshot prior to implementing that change and its better.