InstallSite Blog : Virtualization

AdminStudio 9.5 will improve support for Windows 7 and App-V, but won't include a 64 bit Repackager

stefan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:23:09 GMT

Today at the Microsoft TechEd Europe conference in Berlin, Flexera Software announced a new version of their packaging and virtualization tool. AdminStudio 9.5 is scheduled to be released on November 23, 2009.

The AdminStudio Repackager has been improved to support Windows 7 requirements, including enhanced exclusion lists. AdminStudio 9.5 also includes InstallShield 2010 to edit MSI files.

AdminStudio 9.5 will also support the latest releases of the leading application virtualization products: Microsoft App-V 4.6 and VMware ThinApp 4.0.3.

Unfortunately, AdminStudio 9.5 will not include support for repackaging 64 bit applications, but Flexera Software told me that this is high on their priority list. If you’re interested in beta-testing this functionality, please contact me (skrueger -at- installsite -dot- org) and I will forward you e-mail to Flexera Software.

Press release

You can buy AdminStudio in the InstallSite Shop.

Application Virtualization for Developers - Webinar by Flexera Software

stefan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:13:59 GMT

I'm looking forward to this webinar because it's going to discuss a question that I'm also asking myself these days: "Is application virtualization the future of software installations?". Of course, the final answer will be "InstallShield" because it supports Microsoft App-V and it's the product that Flexera Software wants to sell. But I hope they'll cover some interesting points along the way. Some bullet points about the content of the webinar:

Why software developers are delivering applications in virtual formats
Best practices for developing a virtual version of an application
How to simultaneously build a MSI setup and Microsoft App-V™ virtual package with InstallShield

The webinar will be held twice on Thursday, November 5, 2009, at two different times to accommodate time zones.

First webinar: 15:00 UTC = 9am CT / 10am ET / 3pm London / 16:00 Germany / other time zones
Second webinar: 19:00 UTC = 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm London / 20:00 Germany / other time zones

Caveat: Registration required. Be careful with the information you enter in the registration form, because anyone who knows your e-mail address will be able to retrieve it. This includes your full name, phone number and the like.

Registration page

(German:) Kostenloses Kompendium zur Anwendungsvirtualiserung

stefan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:38:48 GMT

In der Reihe "Kompendium zur Virtualisierung" ist ein Heft mit Schwerpunkt Anwendungsvirtualisierung erschienen. Es behandelt unter anderem VMware ThinApp, Citrix XenApp, Microsoft App-V und InstallFree Bridge. Das 76-seitige Heft im DIN-A-5-Format erhält man kostenlos zugeschickt, wenn man sich auf SearchDataCenter.de registriert.

AdminStudio adds support for direct conversion to Microsoft App-V

stefan — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:19:57 GMT

On April 28, 2009 Acresso Software announced the release of App-V support for AdminStudio.

AdminStudio can now directly convert existing physical application packages to the virtual format for use with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, the most broadly distributed application virtualization technology. With the latest release of AdminStudio, organizations can accelerate the creation, testing and management of virtual applications being deployed through App-V, making AdminStudio a beneficial component to enable customers to rapidly prepare virtual applications and expedite App-V implementations.

AdminStudio accelerates virtual deployments by converting applications into the App-V format natively, without the use of the App-V Sequencer. AdminStudio also speeds virtual application packaging and deployment above and beyond the use of the native sequencing process, by offering vital time and effort saving tools, including:

an automated process to migrate a single application, a few .EXEs, or an entire library of MSI-based applications to the App-V virtual format
editing and customization of virtual and traditional applications via the award-winning InstallShield® technology built into AdminStudio
a pre-virtualization scan which helps to determine which existing applications are the best candidates for virtualization before being deployed in a virtual environment
a combined application catalog to manage package-centric business practices, including updates for virtual applications deployed via App-V and traditional applications deployed through System Center Configuration Manager
a direct integration with Acresso Workflow Manager, the blueprint tool for managing application readiness, application virtualization, OS migrations, and other desktop management processes.

In beta use, AdminStudio users have seen physical to virtual application conversion times reduced from weeks to just a few hours. AdminStudio automated tools for converting applications, including batch conversion functionality, have migrated application libraries of over 200 applications from the MSI format to the App-V format in less than two hours.

With the addition of App-V support, AdminStudio now supports three popular application virtualization formats:

VMware ThinApp (formerly known as Thinstall)
Citrix XenApp
Microsoft App-V (formerly known as SoftGrid)

And of course, AdminStudio continues to support Windows Installer (MSI) packaging. Application virtualization support is an add-on package that’s available for the Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions of AdminStudio.

AdminStudio is available in the InstallSite Shop.

(Text based on a press release from Acresso Software)

Acresso released AdminStudio 9 and announced end of life for AdminStudio 7.x

stefan — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:20:28 GMT

On August 29, 2008 Acresso released version 9.0 of AdminStudio Enterprise, Professional and Standard editions.

AdminStudio 9 Release Notes (PDF)
Webinar: What's New in AdminStudio 9.0 and Workflow Manager 5.0
Registration required. WARNING: Anyone who knows your e-mail address can retrieve the information you entered during registration, so be careful what you enter as address, phone number, company revenue, etc.

At the same time, Acresso announced the end of life of AdminStudio 7.0 and 7.5. This includes Enterprise, Professional and Standard Editions. To stay current with the latest Acresso release, AdminStudio 7.x users can purchase the latest version of AdminStudio at the upgrade price through December 31, 2008. After December 31, 2008, they will need to purchase a new license of the latest version of AdminStudio at the regular full license price in order to stay current.

AdminStudio End-of-Life Notice

You can buy AdminStudio in the InstallSite Shop

VMware Update fixes Security Vulnerabilities

stefan — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:53:45 GMT

On May 30 VMware Inc. announced updates to VMware Workstation, VMware Player, VMware ACE and VMware Fusion to resolve critical security issues.

A heap buffer overflow could allow a process to break out of the guest VM and execute code on the host. In the Windows versions there's an additional vulnerability in the VMCI component.

The vulnerability affects Windows and Linux versions of VMware Workstation 6 and VMware Player 2.x, the Windows version of VMware ACE 2.x and VMware Fusion 1.x for Mac OS/X.

Additional details and download information:

Security announcement from VMware

Webcast: Application Virtualization with AdminStudio and Thinstall

stefan — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:13:44 GMT

On Wednesday, May 14, VMware (makers of Thinstall) and Acresso (makers of AdminStudio) will hold a free online webcast titled "Application Virtualization Reduces Costs with Conflict Free Applications".

Description:

Use Thinstall and AdminStudio to reduce costs by delivering conflict free, virtualized applications. VMware Thinstall lets you deploy virtual applications that require no client-side agents or server infrastructure, making them ideal for many environments. AdminStudio now gives you the power to quickly create, edit and test Thinstall virtual applications with the ability to automatically convert MSIs directly to Thinstall virtual packages and deploy via your software delivery tool of choice. When used in combination, these solutions help to cut IT costs by eliminating potential conflicts between applications, reducing OS migration dependencies and leveraging existing infrastructure. Whether you are working with one or several management tools, the combined solution enables you to standardize your packaging processes to deploy conflict free applications across virtual and physical desktops throughout the extended enterprise.

View this Webcast to learn how VMware Thinstall and Acresso AdminStudio can help you:

Slash support costs by 25% by eliminating application conflicts
Cut application time to deployment from months to days
Eliminate costly conversion and testing overhead
Reduce application and OS (XP, Vista) migration costs and user impact

Date and Time:
May 14th 2008
16:00 UTC = 09:00 AM Pacific = 18:00 Germany
other time zones

Register for the webcast

You can buy Thinstall and AdminStudio from the InstallSite Shop.

VMware to acquire Thinstall

stefan — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:54:23 GMT

On January 15, 2008, VMware, Inc. announced plans to acquire Thinstall.

VMware is well known for its operating system virtualization products, both for desktops (VMware Workstation) and for servers.

Thinstall Virtualization suite is an application virtualization solution which is unique because it doesn't require a server or an agent installation on the client. Therefore it can also be used by ISVs as an alternative to setup programs.

More information:

Announcement and FAQ from VMware/Thinstall (PDF)
www.thinstall.com
www.vmware.com
Application Virtualization information at InstallSite.org

Free e-books about Virtualization

stefan — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:51:35 GMT

There are two e-books about virtualization available from Realtime Publishers as free download. Both books are not completed yet, new chapters being published regularly.

The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management by Anil Desai covers various virtualization technologies, including OS virtualization and application virtualization. The following chapters are already available:

Chapter 1: The Business Value of Virtualization
Chapter 2: Virtualization Scenarios and Applications
Chapter 3: Comparing Virtualization Approaches
Chapter 4: Virtualization Management Challenges
Chapter 5: Managing Heterogeneous Virtual Environments
Chapter 6: Monitoring Virtualization Performance
Chapter 7: Optimizing Virtualization Performance
Chapter 8: Virtualization Management: Policies and Processes

The following chapters are still in the making:

Chapter 9: Virtualization Management: Datacenter Automation
Chapter 10: Evaluating Virtualization Management Solutions

This e-book is sponsored by ca.

The Shortcut Guide to Selecting the Right Virtualization Solution by Greg Shields appears to focus on operating system virtualization - from what I can see so far. Only the first chapter is available yet:

Chapter 1: The Virtualization Assessment

The following additional chapters are planned:

Chapter 2: Virtualization Software Options
Chapter 3: Best Practices in Implementing Virtualization
Chapter 4: Managing Virtualization Environments

This e-book is sponsored by SWsoft, makers of server virtualization product Virtuozzo, who also announced its acquisition of Parallels, Inc. earlier this year.

AdminStudio 8.6 supports Thinstall and Citrix virtualization / Webinar Nov. 8

stefan — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:46:00 GMT

On November 1, 2007, Macrovision Corp. released a new version of AdminStudio, extending its application virtualization integration with support for the Thinstall Virtualization Suite. As an independent player, Macrovision is now partnering with two well-known virtualization vendors: Citrix and Thinstall.

Joint press release vom Macrovision and Thinstall

On November 8, 2007 there will be two (to accomodate time zones) webinars about AdminStudio 8.6 and its support for multiple virtualization formats.

15:00 UTC / 7am PT / 10am ET / 3pm UK / 16:00 CET / other time zones
19:00 UTC / 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm UK / 20:00 CET / other time zones

Webinar registration page (potential privacy issue: use valid e-mail address but avoid personal data when registering)

AdminStudio and Thinstall are available in the InstallSite Shop

Application Virtualization

stefan — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:42:46 GMT

Applicaton virtualization aims to combine the best of both worlds: the efficiency of locally installed software and the convenience of virtual machines. While the techology has been around for quite some time, it was almost unnoticed. But recently the market is evolving, and you can read about company acquisitions and strategic partnerships frequently.

Application virtualization works by placing an application in a "semi-transparent petri-dish". The application runs on the local operating system, but its access to the file system and registry gets filtered and redirected to a virtual store on a case-by-case basis. This means that the program can load system DLLs from the real machine, but if it requests a DLL that's specific to the virtualized application, this read access is redirected to the virtual file system. The same is true for registry access.

Benefits compared to operating system virtualization:

No need to include the whole operating system in the package, thus saving space and avoiding licensing hassles.
Application has physical access to devices like printers, USB ports or the graphics card, resulting in higher performance.

Benefits compared to local software installation:

No need to put application specific DLLs and registry entries (like COM registration) on the real machine. Thus no installation program is required, and the application can be easily removed without traces.
Applications can run from removable media like a CD-ROM or a USB memory stick.

There are various application virtualization solutions available. Some require a client or a server, others are self contained. Streaming support, network bandwidth usage and application startup times are also quite different, as discussed recently in an InfoWorld article.

A related trend is to combine virtualization and Windows Installer (MSI): Microsoft offers a utility which wraps a SoftGrid virtualized application in a .msi file to make it easily deployable with existing systems like SMS. Macrovision's AdminStudio can repackage applications as .msi file or for Citrix Presentation Server, or convert MSI packages to Citrix virtual profiles.

This is part three of my series about virtualization technologies. Here are links to all parts (will be updated when additional articles are published):

Virtualization Technologies Overview
Operating System Virtualization
Application Virtualization (this article)

AdminStudio and Thinstall are available in the InstallSite Shop

Using virtual machines or disk images to test setups

stefan — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:35:15 GMT

Bob Arnson of the WiX team has some recommendations for tresting your setups. He discusses virtual machines vs. disk imaging, and briefly compares some virtual machine software products.

Test your setups virtually

Comparison of Application Virtualization Solutions

stefan — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:48:30 GMT

InfoWorld published an article about application virtualization on Windows. It compares three popular solutions: SoftGrid from Microsoft, Altiris SVS from Symantec, and Thinstall.

On the road to the virtual desktop

Security Update for VMware Products

stefan — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:54:00 GMT

VMware has published critical security updates for VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, VMware Workstation, VMware ACE, and VMware Player. The updates fix several problems, including vulnerabilities that could allow a malicious program to break out of the virtual machine and attack the host computer.

VMware Security Advisory:

VMSA-2007-0006 Critical security updates for all supported versions of VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, VMware Workstation, VMware ACE, and VMware Player

Get the updates:

VMware Downloads

Operating System Virtualization

stefan — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:55:00 GMT

In this second article of my series about virtualization, I'll describe what used to be the typical meaning of the word "virtualization" for me until recently: virtual operatig systems.

The virtualization software creates virtualized hardware, in which the guest operating system and its applications run. So there can be mutiple "virtual PCs" (pieces of virtualized hardware) running on one physical PC. There are actually two sub-types in this category: the virtualization software can either run on a host operating system (VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC) or directly on the hardware (VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server).

The virtual PCs are isolated from each other and from the host operating system, but can communicate via (virtual) network adapters or drive shares, and can access devices on the host machine such as the CD-ROM drive or USB devices (there's no USB support in Virtual PC).

The advantage of this technology is that you can run any operating systems side by side: you can run a Linux and a Windows Vista guest on a Windows XP host for instance. VMware even supports Linux as a host.

Virtual machines can easily be reset to their previous configuration which makes them a great tool for testing software in a reproducible configuration. It also helps to test your (setup) program on older versions of Windows and on different service pack levels. And if your setup wrecked the operating system, just reset and you're ready for another try.

For a systems administrator, running multiple operating systems on one piece of hardware can reduce IT costs by consolidating multiple servers into one machine. Virtual machines can also easily be moved from one physical machine to another, for instance in case of a hardware failure.

The disadvantages of operating system virtualization are the disk space and memory use and CPU load they create. All the virtual machines share the resources of the host machine with each other and with the host itself. Another disadvantage is a result of isolation: by default applications in virtual machines can't read or write to the physical hard disk in a way that the host or other virtual machines can share the data. Also an application running in the virtual machine can't integrate or interact with applications on the host (as an office add-in for instance).

Note that there are ways for an application to detect that it is running in a virtual machine, so that it might refuse to run to avoid by-passing of license enforcement tools. It's also possible that malware behaves differently on virtual machines to make it harder for anti-virus experts to analyze it. Malware authors also found ways to escape the virtual glass tube and to infect the host operating system.

You may also need to acquire additional licenses for each operating system instance you install in a virtual machine, depending on the respective license agreement. Therefore it's typically not an option for ISVs to ship their (Windows) software in form of a virtual machine, because they would have to redistribute the operating system with it. Microsoft however uses this technology to make pre-release builds of products like the next version of Visual Studio (code named Orcas) available for download as virtual disk images.

Related information

VMware products

Microsoft products

This was part two of my series about virtualization technologies. Here are links to all parts (will be updated when additional articles are published):

Virtualization Technologies Overview
Operating System Virtualization (this article)
Application Virtualization

Virtualization Technologies Overview

stefan — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:36:00 GMT

"Virtualization" isn't new, but it's becoming more prevalent lately - at least in my perception. There are various types of virtualization: virtual machine software like VMware Workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC are commonly used in software and setup develoment and testing. But I also find application virtualization particularly interesting as an alternative approach to software packaging and deployment, and it might even be an alternative to setup programs for ISVs.

While I'm learning more about virtualization, I plan to blog along the way. As a start, I'll try to summarize the different virtualization technologies.

Operating System Virtualization

Products in this category are for example: VMware Workstation and Server, Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server.

Application Virtualization

In contrast to the previous category, only a single application is executed in a partially virtualized operating system. It's running on the physical hardware and is using most of the resources from the "real" operating system. This is another topic for a separate blog article.

Products in this category include Microsoft SoftGrid (formerly Softricity), Altiris SVS, or Thinstall virtualization suite.

Resource Virtualization

This is a shim that Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista to enable restriction of user rights without breaking too many existing applications. If an application tries to write data into locations like the Windows or the Program Files folder, those write accesses are redirected to a special directory in the user's data folder. This happens transparently so the application doesn't notice. The same happens if the application tries to write to the local machine hive of the registry.

The redirection only happens if User Account Control (UAC) is enabled and it doesn't apply to setup programs.

The advantage is that older applications that don't follow Microsoft's application development guidelines and best practices still work on Windows Vista. The disadvantage is that these redirected data are kept in a per-user location so the changes of user A are not visible to user B.

According to Microsoft this shim is going to be removed in some future version. So if your application writes to the Windows or Program files folder you better fix it sooner than later.

Sandboxes and Interpretors

Here the application runs in a sandbox and is often not compiled in native machine code but run though an interpreter.

Java and the Visual Basic Virtual Machine fall in this category.

This was part one of my series about virtualization technologies. Here are links to all parts (will be updated when additional articles are published):

Virtualization Technologies Overview (this article)
Operating System Virtualization
Application Virtualization

New AdminStudio 8.5 supports Citrix Virtualization

stefan — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:49:00 GMT

Macrovision Corp. today released a new version of AdminStudio, their solution for packaging, customization and testing software for deployment. AdminStudio 8.5 now includes the latest version of InstallShield 2008 as Editor, which includes improved Windows Vista support and other enhancements.

The Enterprise Edition of AdminStudio 8.5 also supports Citrix Application Virtualization. It can convert MSIs to Citrix virtual profiles and can also repackage legacy applications into Citrix virtual profiles without using snapshots.

What's new in AdminStudio 8.5

AdminStudio 8.5 is available in the InstallSite Shop