Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop | VMware

• Physical desktops – Resource usage on a physical
  machine impacts only the user who is using that machine. The operating
  system on a physical machine determines whether or not resources are
  available. One-time actions impact the user only the first time they are
  performed because the machine is never refreshed. For example, a user
  typically gets a new user profile the first time they log on, and they
  continue to use that same profile with all subsequent logons.
• Virtual desktops – In contrast, in a virtual
  environment, the guest operating system behaves as if it has exclusive
  access to the CPU cores, but in reality the cores are shared between 2
  to 8 virtual machines. When using nonpersistent VMs or user profiles,
  the actions that are intended to run only once could run every time a
  user logs on.

Therefore, with virtual desktops, one-time system actions must be
configured in the base image, and one-time user actions must be
configured in the default user profile. In addition, to reach a higher
consolidation ratio, increasing the number of VMs hosted on a single VMware vSphere^® host, VMware recommends turning off features that are not needed.