The results of my last poll are somewhat surprising. I asked if you plan to introduce an application virtualization solution in your organization. 69% of you responded with “yes.” It appears that more admins than expected know about the benefits of application virtualization. However, one should know that the participation was lower than in my other polls.

[poll id="6"]

I admit that I only had a vague idea of application virtualization before I actually started testing different products. It was only when I saw how easy it is to virtualize applications that I became more interested in this technology. I suppose the relatively low poll participation can be explained by the fact that many admins don’t really know what application virtualization is. Thus, they just ignored this poll when they stumbled across it. Perhaps if I had added a third possible answer like “I don’t know,” participation would have been higher.

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• MailEssentials version 14 is available. New features: additional anti-spam engine, a new dashboard, new reporting.
• Microsoft AppV Application Virtualization podcast with Karri Alexion-Tiernan, Director in the Windows Client division.
• Virtualfuture.info has a great application virtualization comparison chart! It compares all major products.
• VMC to Hyper-V Import Tool. This tool eases the transition from Virtual Server to Hyper-V.
• The UKs first Virtualization Expo event. 1-2 Oct. 2008. With all major players. Entrance is free. Will you come too?
• MDOP 2008 R2 (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) Release to Manufacturing! Most important: It includes App-V 4.5.
• Symantec’s new Backup Exec 12.5 supports Hyper-V This is certainly an important feature. When will DPM support Hyper-V?

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• Do Zebras get more Spam than Aardvarks?
• Whitepaper on Group Policy Preferences.
• Novell enters the application virtualization market with XenoCode.
• Why too much memory can hurt Exchange Server 2007 performance.
• Microsoft liberalizes desktop virtualization options, but they will cost you.
• VMware ESX is the Industry’s First Hypervisor to be Validated by Microsoft.
• Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 RTMs.
• You think Vista is bloated? IE8 consumes more RAM than all of XP.
• The Microsoft Optimized Desktop Strategy by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
• Configuration Manager 2007 R2 Evaluation. New: App-V, Forefront support, Client Status Reporting and more
• Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0 x86. New: User Profile Replication Engine, MSI is customizable.
• The Blind Men and the Cloud - It was six men of Info Tech - To learning much inclined - Who went to see the Cloud

You might have already heard about the Virtualization Congress in London taking place October 14-16, 2008. I am glad to announce that Alessandro Perilli, founder of virtualization.info and organizer of this event, has offered a 25% discount to all 4sysops readers.

Many important vendors in the virtualization market will be present. In particular, the three major players, i.e. VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix are sending high-profile representatives. You are probably familiar with Mark Russinovich, one of the founders of Sysinternals. I suppose there are not many at Microsoft who have as much detailed technical knowledge about Windows he does. He describes his keynote at the Virtualization Congress in the video below.

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It seems that this was the longest series I ever wrote in this blog. The more I learned about this relatively new technology the more I was fascinated about it. By the way, German speaking readers might be interested in my new article about “Applikationsvirtualisierung” at Computerwoche. This post is probably the last one about software virtualization for the moment, although I might review another product sometime later. There might also be an article about the results of this poll.

I don’t want to influence your decision too much, thus I will keep this post short. I just want to add one further note. The funny thing about application virtualization is that it brings us back to the pre-Windows period. Do you remember the good old DOS times when applications were residing on a Novel Netware server? No installation was required on desktop computers, the term “registry” was only associated with public authorities, and administrators (called supervisors at the time) didn’t have the slightest idea that, only a few years later, Microsoft would send them to “DLL hell!”

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The features of software virtualization solutions that I address in this article are special in the sense that they don’t stand for conceptual differences. Nevertheless, they might turn out to be important or even decisive for your environment.

Settings: You might want to allow end users to configure their applications or install plug-ins by themselves. This means that they have to have the ability to modify the virtual environment. The various products solve this problem in different ways. Some tools allow you to store these settings on a server, thereby supporting application roaming.

Linking: This feature is related to the one above. Some products enable you to link virtualized apps. For example, one virtual environment could host the .Net Framework for .Net apps running in other virtualized environments. This feature can also be used to deploy add-ons. The more sophisticated solutions enable you to centrally manage the links between virtualized apps for your whole network. For instance, you could assign the Google Toolbar to a certain user group with just a mouse click.

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When I started this series I thought application virtualization solutions to be rather simple tools. In the meantime, I tested some of them and read quite a few white papers about the topic. I discovered that there are far more products than I imagined and that the technological differences between the different solutions are substantial. In this and the next article I will summarize all the features that I am aware of.

Thus, if you have to evaluate some of the products, you can use this feature list to make sure that the solution of your choice supports everything you need in your environment. This post covers the conceptual differences between the various application virtualization products. In my next my post I will discuss the special features. Please note that it is not always obvious to which list a certain feature belongs.

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My list of advantages of application virtualization did get quite long. My list of the disadvantages is shorter which doesn’t necessarily mean that the upsides outweigh the downsides.

A new complexity layer: Most Windows apps were not developed to run in a virtual environment. This might cause unforeseen problems. Whenever problems occur, you will wonder whether the app itself or the virtualized environment is the cause.

Vendor might deny support: If you tell your vendor that you are running their application in a virtual environment, they might deny support.

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It has been a while since I posted the last article in my series about software virtualization. I have been working on a German article about this topic. During my research I learned new things which I am going to share in the next posts in this series. Today’s post covers the advantages of application virtualization. Of course, there also disadvantages which I will address in the next post.

No installation required: Installing an application on hundreds or thousands of computers is prone to error. Application virtualization simplifies software deployment.

Application retirement simplified: Getting rid of an app in your whole network is much easier as well. Since virtual apps just have to be deleted, uninstalling them is usually not required.

No more application conflicts: Sometimes installing an app corrupts another app. Application virtualization helps reduce the risks of application conflicts.

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Two weeks ago I reviewed Symantec’s application virtualization solution Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS). In that review I described how virtualized apps can be created, I explained the layer concept, and I outlined how layers can be activated locally or remotely via the command line. Symantec offers a more professional way to deploy such virtualized apps: the Altiris Streaming System. Streaming means that only those parts of an application that are actually required to run the functions accessed by the user are transmitted to the client.

Symantec purchased AppStream some months ago and renamed their streaming solution. It is a bit strange that the new name contains “Altiris,” because this is another company recently acquired by Symantec. It seems like Symantec wants to keep the well-known Altiris brand alive. Like AppStream, Altiris Streaming System 5.2.2 allows you to stream not only virtualized Altiris applications (SVS apps), but also “conventional applications.” The corresponding packages have to be created with the Streaming Composer (a tool that comes with the Streaming System). There are three ways to package conventional apps, i.e. programs that are not virtualized. You can import an MSI file, track the application’s installation procedure, or create snapshots before and after the installation of the application. I won’t discuss streaming of conventional apps in this article because I want to focus on application virtualization in this series.

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