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Christiaan_Brinkhoff's avatar
Christiaan_Brinkhoff
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jul 31, 2020

(Azure) Virtual Desktop Optimization Tool now available

  Optimizing images has always been an important component of preparing images as part of a traditional  Remote Desktop Services (RDS) infrastructure or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)....
RDS
VDI
Windows 10
Windows Virtual Desktop
WVD_Learner88's avatar
WVD_Learner88
Copper Contributor
Jul 31, 2020

I think this article did not do justice in terms of spelling out what the optimizer does. I was not expecting it to remove more  Windows 10 AppX packages.

Christiaan_Brinkhoff 

  • Christiaan_Brinkhoff's avatar
    Christiaan_Brinkhoff
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Jul 31, 2020
    More documentation on what happens is coming online (hopefully) next week as referred to in the article.
  • Robert_Smith's avatar
    Robert_Smith
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 03, 2020

    Hello WVD_Learner88 ,

     

    We have published a document on optimizing Windows 10, 1909, here:

     

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/rds_vdi-recommendations-1909

     

    We have a new version for 2004 that is in publication review at the moment.

     

    There are several changes from milestone to milestone, but much of the information is pertinent to Windows 10 2004.  The scripts are designed to be easily customized.  There are sections of work in the .JSON input files, such as removing the Appx packages that are not going to be used in a particular environment.  If there are apps that you do not wish to be removed, you can edit the .JSON file to remove the entry for the app you wish to keep.

     

    For example, if you wish to keep the Weather app, you would go to the appropriate folder for your Windows 10 build, (ex. \2004), then go to the 'ConfigurationFiles' subfolder (ex. \2004\ConfigurationFiles), then edit the input file 'AppxPackages.json'. in one of two ways:

     

    1. Change the value of 'VDIState' to "enabled":
      1. Locate the block of JSON code with the text "AppxPackage": "Microsoft.BingWeather"
      2. Within that block of JSON code, change the value of 'VDIState' from "disabled" to "enabled"
    2. Delete out the entire block of code for the Weather app:
      1. Locate the block of JSON code with the text "AppxPackage": "Microsoft.BingWeather"
      2. Delete out all of the following code, including the trailing comma, then save the changes locally:

     

      {
    "AppxPackage": "Microsoft.BingWeather",
    "VDIState": "Disabled",
    "URL": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/msn-weather/9wzdncrfj3q2",
    "Description": "MSN Weather app"
  },

     

    For either method, test to ensure you receive the results you expect.  Most of the time I test on my local device using a local virtual machine, that has been checkpointed to the time just after the initial installation.  That way it is easy and only takes seconds to roll back to that point after a test.

     

    I hope this information is helpful.

     

    Thanks,

     

    Robert M. Smith

     

     

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