Home > Storage > PowerStore > Virtualization and Cloud > VMware Horizon 8 with Dell EMC PowerEdge R6525 Servers and Dell EMC PowerStore 9000 > Windows I/O patterns
The evolution of Windows has brought new features to users, but these features require additional host resources. Windows 10 desktop requires significantly more resources than older desktop versions. A large portion of the increase is due to added services. Encryption and memory-protection schemes that are built into Windows serve to reduce the attack surface but also generate additional load.
As Windows 10 has evolved, more security and features have been added that have increased the load even further. This constant increase in I/O load with newer Windows 10 versions requires matching increases in host server and storage performance.
Consider standardizing on an older long-term servicing channel (LTSC) version of Windows 10 that is still fully supported and fully updated. This strategy can help avoid the undesirable impact of increased I/O, CPU, and memory requirements with newer Windows 10 releases. The gold image for Horizon 8 pool creation in this testing uses Windows 10 version 21H1.
As stated previously, the typical I/O pattern for a VDI workload is 70-80% writes during steady state when users are logged in.