How fast is Windows remote desktop
It's less about the speed of the connection and more about the latency of the connection. I use a similar arrangement for consulting and monitoring from a central data center-based environment. Anything under 50ms is more than acceptable. Ideally, you'll have a connection speed greater than 1.5-megabits/second. If using raw RDP, setting a lower color depth and resolution will help. On your hosted system, disable themes and use a basic desktop background. Show
One thing that's helped me when I'm farther away or have higher-latency links is using an RDP accelerator. I use a single instance of Ericom Blaze, which employs compression and other techniques, for this.
This topic discusses how to select Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) hardware, tune the host, and tune applications. In this topic: Selecting the proper hardware for performanceFor an RD Session Host server deployment, the choice of hardware is governed by the application set and how users use them. The key factors that affect the number of users and their experience are CPU, memory, disk, and graphics. This section contains additional guidelines that are specific to RD Session Host servers and is mostly related to the multi-user environment of RD Session Host servers. CPU configurationCPU configuration is conceptually determined by multiplying the required CPU to support a session by the number of sessions that the system is expected to support, while maintaining a buffer zone to handle temporary spikes. Multiple logical processors can help reduce abnormal CPU congestion situations, which are usually caused by a few overactive threads that are contained by a similar number of logical processors. Therefore, the more logical processors on a system, the lower the cushion margin that must be built in to the CPU usage estimate, which results in a larger percentage of active load per CPU. One important factor to remember is that doubling the number of CPUs does not double CPU capacity. Memory configurationMemory configuration is dependent on the applications that users employ; however, the required amount of memory can be estimated by using the following formula: TotalMem = OSMem + SessionMem * NS OSMem is how much memory the operating system requires to run (such as system binary images, data structures, and so on), SessionMem is how much memory processes running in one session require, and NS is the target number of active sessions. The amount of required memory for a session is mostly determined by the private memory reference set for applications and system processes that are running inside the session. Shared code or data pages have little effect because only one copy is present on the system. One interesting observation (assuming the disk system that is backing up the page file does not change) is that the larger the number of concurrent active sessions the system plans to support, the bigger the per-session memory allocation must be. If the amount of memory that is allocated per session is not increased, the number of page faults that active sessions generate increases with the number of sessions. These faults eventually overwhelm the I/O subsystem. By increasing the amount of memory that is allocated per session, the probability of incurring page faults decreases, which helps reduce the overall rate of page faults. Disk configurationStorage is one of the most overlooked aspects when you configure RD Session Host servers, and it can be the most common limitation in systems that are deployed in the field. The disk activity that is generated on a typical RD Session Host server affects the following areas:
Ideally, these areas should be backed up by distinct storage devices. Using striped RAID configurations or other types of high-performance storage further improves performance. We highly recommend that you use storage adapters with battery-backed write caching. Controllers with disk write caching offer improved support for synchronous write operations. Because all users have a separate hive, synchronous write operations are significantly more common on an RD Session Host server. Registry hives are periodically saved to disk by using synchronous write operations. To enable these optimizations, from the Disk Management console, open the Properties dialog box for the destination disk and, on the Policies tab, select the Enable write caching on the disk and Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device check boxes. Network configurationNetwork usage for an RD Session Host server includes two main categories:
Tuning applications for Remote Desktop Session HostMost of the CPU usage on an RD Session Host server is driven by apps. Desktop apps are usually optimized toward responsiveness with the goal of minimizing how long it takes an application to respond to a user request. However in a server environment, it is equally important to minimize the total amount of CPU usage that is needed to complete an action to avoid adversely affecting other sessions. Consider the following suggestions when you configure apps that are to be used on an RD Session Host server:
For memory consumption, you should consider the following:
Remote Desktop Session Host tuning parametersPage fileInsufficient page file size can cause memory allocation failures in apps or system components. You can use the memory-to-committed bytes performance counter to monitor how much committed virtual memory is on the system. AntivirusInstalling antivirus software on an RD Session Host server greatly affects overall system performance, especially CPU usage. We highly recommend that you exclude from the active monitoring list all the folders that hold temporary files, especially those that services and other system components generate. Task SchedulerTask Scheduler lets you examine the list of tasks that are scheduled for different events. For an RD Session Host server, it is useful to focus specifically on the tasks that are configured to run on idle, at user sign-in, or on session connect and disconnect. Because of the specifics of the deployment, many of these tasks might be unnecessary. Desktop notification iconsNotification icons on the desktop can have fairly expensive refreshing mechanisms. You should disable any notifications by removing the component that registers them from the startup list or by changing the configuration on apps and system components to disable them. You can use Customize Notifications Icons to examine the list of notifications that are available on the server. Remote Desktop Protocol data compressionRemote Desktop Protocol compression can be configured by using Group Policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Remote Session Environment > Configure compression for RemoteFX data. Three values are possible:
You can also choose to not use a Remote Desktop Protocol compression algorithm, so we only recommend using it with a hardware device designed to optimize network traffic. Even if you choose not to use a compression algorithm, some graphics data will be compressed. Device redirectionDevice redirection can be configured by using Group Policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Device and Resource Redirection or by using the Session Collection properties box in Server Manager. Generally, device redirection increases how much network bandwidth RD Session Host server connections use because data is exchanged between devices on the client computers and processes that are running in the server session. The extent of the increase is a function of the frequency of operations that are performed by the applications that are running on the server against the redirected devices. Printer redirection and Plug and Play device redirection also increases CPU usage at sign-in. You can redirect printers in two ways:
We recommend the Easy Print method because it causes less CPU usage for printer installation at connection time. The matching driver method causes increased CPU usage because it requires the spooler service to load different drivers. For bandwidth usage, Easy Print causes slightly increased network bandwidth usage, but not significant enough to offset the other performance, manageability, and reliability benefits. Audio redirection causes a steady stream of network traffic. Audio redirection also enables users to run multimedia apps that typically have high CPU consumption. Client experience settingsBy default, Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) automatically chooses the right experience setting based on the suitability of the network connection between the server and client computers. We recommend that the RDC configuration remain at Detect connection quality automatically. For advanced users, RDC provides control over a range of settings that influence network bandwidth performance for the Remote Desktop Services connection. You can access the following settings by using the Experience tab in Remote Desktop Connection or as settings in the RDP file. The following settings apply when connecting to any computer:
The following settings only apply when connecting to computers running Windows 7 and earlier operating system versions:
By using the Experience tab within Remote Desktop Connection, you can choose your connection speed to influence network bandwidth performance. The following lists the options that are available to configure your connection speed:
Desktop SizeDesktop size for remote sessions can be controlled by using the Display tab in Remote Desktop Connection or by using the RDP configuration file (desktopwidth:i:1152 and desktopheight:i:864). The larger the desktop size, the greater the memory and bandwidth consumption that is associated with that session. The current maximum desktop size is 4096 x 2048. |