The 1st Microsoft Office 2019 Performance Impact Results

Microsoft Office, you can find it in nearly every enterprise IT environment and this week Microsoft has released Office 2019 to the first group of volume license customers.

Since the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Login VSI has always been keen to show the impact a new version has on scalability of your centralized desktop environment, whether its VMware Horizon, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops or plain RDSH and we of course did the same for this version.

Source: VDILikeAPro.com

Testing the latest changes in Microsoft Office with Login VSI

For those who are not on Microsoft Office 365 with monthly updates, it's mostly features that have been added to Office 365 over the last three years. The register has already referred to it as: “The last non-cloudy version”. You read it right, new features are unlikely to come to this on-premises edition. These are, for example, AI and collaboration tools. But Microsoft is still committed to delivering an on-premises version in the future.

Another change to a more cloud-based model can be found in the setup, no longer can you find an MSI to use with your favorite software distribution solution but only a click-to-run setup (C2R) is offered. This means that with every installation of Microsoft Office 2019, you’ll get the latest build and updates. Great for consumers, but what if you are worried about application or plugin compatibility? Make sure to download the version of Microsoft Office that you are installing to prevent surprises there and to make sure you have a roll-back possibility when something doesn’t work. Microsoft will provide Office 2019 with five years of mainstream support and an additional two years of extended support, ending Oct 2025.

Immediately we received questions regarding scalability, so naturally we’ve setup the test in our validation labs. As Office 2019 only supports Microsoft Windows 10 and Server 2019 it shortens the list of tests we need to execute.

Results of testing Office 2019 with Login VSI validation labs

To start I’ve created a Windows 10 VDI environment on one of our three R730’s running Windows 10 1803 with 2GB of memory, basic VM’s with and without a GPU. For starters here are the results without a GPU in the virtual machine.

Microsoft Windows 10 1803 and Office 2016 with 150 Login VSI knowledge worker users:

Microsoft Windows 10 1803 and Office 2019 with 150 Login VSI knowledge worker users:

Interestingly we can see fluctuations in the Maximum Response Time: they are around 5 second spikes. We’ve also identified these delays in customer environments recently and are working to find a solution. These spikes however are not significant enough to influence the VSImax results.

CPU and Memory usage

How-to use Login VSI with Microsoft Office 2019:

If you’d like to use Login VSI with Microsoft Office 2019 today, then there are a few simple steps to configure the test.

1. Install Microsoft Office 2019, remember no more MSI, so Click 2 Run
2. In the Login VSI management console select Microsoft Office 2016 as office version. They are compatible
3. Replace your Outlook PRF file at \\Server\VSIshare\_VSI_Binaries\Target with this new version (backwards compatible).

Lab description:

Conclusion:

As this is a continuous update, no significant performance hit is measured. I’m planning to check earlier versions of Microsoft Office 2016 vs the later Office releases to see if there are significant changes but so far, so good. The spikes in the NFO counter are under investigation currently, so check back for updates soon, they might skew the results. Please do keep in mind that this is a clean environment, with no policies, no anti-virus and plugins so mileage will vary if you implement this into your own environment.