I have a question that I having a hard time finding an answer for. I have a large Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (terminial services) environment where i host multiple user sessions per VM. In my (never ending) attempt at trying to improve resource utilization and performance of my systems, I have been trying to ascertain if the vmtoolsd.exe process needs to run for every user on every VM logging in via remote desktop. We hide the vmtools icon in the system tray, but this process still runs (and occupies about 4MB of RAM for each user logged in...I have 40,000+ users...so you can understand my concern.) I see that it is lauching as a startup item (via msconfig...I also see it in the registry.)
What is the functional purpose of this process and is it needed for every user logging into the VM. I want to remove it from the startup config, but i am not sure what impacts it is going to have. (when i tested it in an isolated environment, it did not 'appear' to cause any issue, but i may also not be looking in all the right places.)
Any feedback/thoughts would be much appreciated.