Question to the audience, in terms of Optimization Tools. Looking at the ones from Citrix/Omnissa and the ones from the community (VDOT and the Windows Enterprise Defaults), at the end of the day how much difference there is between all of these? And what you guys think is the de-facto standard as of now? Or it does not matter, any will do the job?

Citrix guy here so I've only used theirs, but I remember years ago people saying they thought the Horizon optimizations were too aggressive, but I believe that was mainly due to the pcoip protocol.

Personally, I am revisiting the Omnissa optimization tool as they just updated that which caught my eye. Have used Microsoft's VDI optimization tools in the past and not so much lately. Citrix tool mostly here, but in the end, they all overlap quite a bit for the various optimization steps; just a matter of safer approach vs ignoring the ones that juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I've always felt that Citrix will use Citrix, and Horizon will use Horizon. I've tried both, and they get similar results. Both are invaluable in what they do and must be used. It's HOW you use that that can lead to issues in the image. You can misuse both tools. Example is removing AppX packages and wishing later that you'd not done that. Just take a lot of snapshots as you use and test.

Yep. That is always the approach as all these do have the potential to break things. I was just wondering if as of now you guys had a preferred one, including the stuff that Aaron Parker created

Well, I preferred the Horizon OSOT, but I mainly work with Horizon. I leverage the OSOT tool PLUS a bunch of registry 'hacks/tweaks' that perform additional lock-downs or specialized functions required in Healthcare environments. And many of these tools/tweaks can all be run from PowerShell so it can all be automated. So when it's time to crack open an image for Patch Tuesday, you can easily re-optimize when completed!

I see. I guess I will put a couple to their paces and see what happens

@Dave Brett actually measured some of this

Let’s wait for @Dave Brett to enlighten us

Both Citrix and Omnissa do a decent job and they make quite a difference, especially if you don’t have a settle time post boot. From what I have seen in the results OSOT is more aggressive and will give you slightly better results performance wise but could come at a cost. As always testing is key otherwise things break!!!

Quick note - my Windows Enterprise Defaults package isn't technically an optimisation tool, but it does tweak a few things that could improve performance and UX. It is intended to be complementary to the Citrix, Omnissa and Microsoft optimisation tools

I found if you run them all you get better logon performance than individual ones 🤷

It's an older research, but might be valuable. https://www.go-euc.com/optimizer-smackdown/

The defaults in the vmware one used to break stuff, you can use a customized xml with the Citrix one and apply what the vmware one would have done so you only need one tool. I think someone on here shared their template a while ago. The Citrix one also works pretty seamlessly with BISF.