Remote Desktop and Terminal Server Performance Settings

Note: This section describes how to manually optimize remote desktop and terminal server performance. Beginning with RAS 18, these and other settings can be optimized automatically using the new Optimizations functionality.

The default Windows performance settings are intended for general purpose servers. In order to maximize application or desktop hosting server performance, the default Windows performance settings should be adjusted on Windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Servers.

From the Control Panel go to System and click on Advanced System Settings. Under the Advanced tab in the System Properties dialog box, click on Settings under the Performance section.

Performance Options settings

Under the Visual Effects tab from the Performance Options dialog box, change the setting to Adjust for best performance.

If a specific application has a custom setting recommendation, you should use it, but in general, the Adjust for best performance option will provide the best overall performance in a Parallels RAS environment.

Windows paging file settings

Set the Windows paging file to twice the amount of RAM. For heavier workloads, a paging file of three times the amount of physical memory might be required. For more information on how to determine the exact page file size, please visit https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2860880/how-to-determine-the-appropriate-page-file-size-for-64-bit-versions-of-windows.

By default, Microsoft Windows page file size is automatically managed for all drives and grows dynamically as necessary. However, as the system ramps up to intended capacity, dynamic page file growth can result in a fragmented page file, so it is best to set a fixed page file size upfront.

Typically, page file settings are configured when the server is first installed. However, if the server remained in production for a while, Parallels recommends optimizing and defragmenting the drive prior to setting paging options described below.

Note: If the size of the page file is too small, system will generate a mini dump and will log an event in the System event log during boot to inform you about this condition.

In the example below, the server has 8 GB of RAM:

Note that Microsoft sets it to 1280 but recommends 4607. Parallels recommends to double it and use a new page file on the disk. Therefore the number is 16384 (8 GB in block of 8192 x2 = 16384). Make sure you have enough free disk space to use this setting.

Please also make sure to configure antivirus exclusions for FSLogix Profile Container virtual hard drives as described in Antivirus Exclusions.