Infrastructure Optimization

Although we typically work in the enterprise customer space, we have to acknowledge (and thank) the posting of www.virtualization.info team for their article “Is Microsoft MDOP slowing down virtualization adoption?” for bringing this issue to light.

The article speaks to the fact that that the small / medium business market segment has little to no choice if they want to take advantage of application virtualization technology.

Microsoft’s MDOP product offering - which, as you know, we love - is only offered as a bundle for those customers who have or purchase Software Assurance, a rather high bar for many small- to medium-sized business to hurdle.

This is a conversation, I myself, have had with several Microsoft folks, and am still hoping that at some point in the not so distant future they open up to the masses for adoption.

From  Microsoft’s business point of view, their decision to limit the product has not been a bad one: (6.5Million licenses sold to-date, the fastest selling volume-licensing product ever.)

I can’t say it has been a bad decision for them, but deep down I say, application virtualization should not be an option but the default standard!

Just listened to an MP3, er, uh boss - I was working on the word doc you wanted me to update and was multi-tasking. Ya, that’s it. I was working and learning at the same time.

Technet Radio has a soup-to-nuts coverage of SoftGrid and AppVirt and it’s best practice application for where it fits best for what kinds of apps sequence best and which apps should be core to the OS. If you didn’t know SoftGrid as a name is used to differentiate between 4.2 and lower while AppVirt is used for 4.5 and higher.

“How Microsoft IT Approached the Deployment of Microsoft Application Virtualization v4.5″ covers Microsoft’s directive internally to virtualize just about everything that isn’t nailed down or doesn’t meet best practice – they are “eating their own dog food.” The MP3 covered applications and processes that can’t be sequenced, talked about 32 bit SoftGrid and the path to 64 bit version of AppVirt as well as Microsoft’s path to not install the SoftGrid streaming server and to fully embrace SCCM distribution of AppVirt enabled packages.

Worth a listen to - while you’re multi-tasking, of course.

In the old days, Softricity was a partner of Citrix. Citrix is a partner of Microsoft. And Softricity was a partner of Microsoft, but is now part of Microsoft. See where this is going?

When Softricity was acquired, there was some industry speculation as to what would happen to the great interoperability between SoftGrid and Citrix’s presentation virtualization server product, MetaFrame, now called XenApp.

Chad Jones, Senior Product Manager for SoftGrid/MS AppVirt has posted a blog entry to a blog entry (ain’t the web meta-cool?) that dispels any remaining doubt, and demonstrates how Citrix and Microsoft continue to be “better together” as partners when it comes to application virtualization.

The article in question outlines how their two products work together for optimized interoperability. We’ve known this story for a long time, and in fact, Citrix has been the “gateway” technology for getting SoftGrid into many of our customer’s environments. We still believe that the two solutions work great together, and are quick to recommend their combination.

There are several jumps here - all of them are interesting reading:

Chad Jones’ article on the SoftGrid Team Blog

(There are two good KB articles on Citrix/MS AppVirt on this post.)

Working Together - Application Virtualization from Citrix & Microsoft (Citrix Community Blog)

My favorite highlights from the Citrix post:

There are several scenarios in which the application virtualization capabilities of both Citrix and Microsoft work together:

…

3.     Publish MS App Virtualization sequences in XenApp - In addition, it is possible for Citrix XenApp and Microsoft Application Virtualization to work together. Microsoft Application Virtualization packages can be published in XenApp.
4.     Apply XenApp policies to Microsoft Application Virtualization packages - This interoperability can be taken a step further. Existing Microsoft Application Virtualization sequences can interoperate with the XenApp policy features like SmartAccess and the XenApp Profiler, further extending the overall manageability of the joint solution.

For those of you who have jobs and can’t watch the Microsoft KB article feed, you may have missed a couple of Hotfix Rollups for SoftGrid 4.1 and 4.2. For the impatient, here are the links:

SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 HFRU2

SoftGrid 4.2 HFRU 1

And here’s what’s new:

SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 Hotfix Rollup Package 2

This cumulative update for SoftGrid v4.1 SP1 provides the latest updates to SoftGrid v4.1 SP1. In addition to stability improvements, this update contains the following changes:

• The log level of the “Error reading from socket” message is now Debug. Therefore, the message does not appear in the Sft-server.log and the Windows event log at the default log level when you use SoftGrid Virtual Application Servers together with a hardware load balancer.
• SoftGrid Sequencer now preserves OSD GUIDs when it opens SoftGrid v3.2 sequencings for a package upgrade.
• Intermittent “0xBE” Stop errors that occur at system start on multiprocessor computers have been addressed.

New capabilities

SoftGrid now supports deployment of Virtual Application .msi files that are generated by the MSI Utility for Microsoft Application Virtualization to SoftGrid clients that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and that have Terminal Services enabled.

SoftGrid 4.2 Hotfix Rollup Package 2

This cumulative update for SoftGrid v4.2 provides the latest updates to SoftGrid v4.2. In addition to stability improvements, this update contains the following changes:

• The log level of the “Error reading from socket” message is now Debug. Therefore, the message does not appear in the Sft-server.log and the Windows event log at the default log level when you use SoftGrid Virtual Application Servers together with a hardware load balancer.
• SoftGrid Sequencer now preserves OSD GUIDs when it opens SoftGrid v3.2 sequencings for a package upgrade.
• Intermittent “0xBE” Stop errors that occur at system start on multiprocessor computers have been addressed.

New capabilities

This update provides the following new capabilities:

• SoftGrid now supports Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).
• SoftGrid now supports deployment of Virtual Application .msi files that are generated by the MSI Utility for Microsoft Application Virtualization to SoftGrid clients that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and that have Terminal Services enabled.

Hello, dear readers - I thought some of you might be interested in a free event that our team is putting on, centered around the business value of virtualizing applications. For Infrastructure Optimization wonks like myself, this technology is poised to become the centerpiece of many future IO engagements for me and our team.

The webinar should prove to be a great introduction to the benefits of the technology, both from an administrator’s and IT management perspectives.

Registration is free, and the webinar is an hour long. I’ll be there - and hopefully, I’ll be able to meet a few of you “in person.”

Details:

Desktop Management - The Business Value of Application Virtualization

March 18, 2008 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM EST

This is a FREE event. Registration link is below.

Attendees will understand how organizations around the world have leveraged application virtualization, to realize measurable business value. Both Gartner and Forrester have called application virtualization the technology to watch in 2008. Learn how businesses combined the newest technology, desktop management best practices and support changes to achieve significant savings.

Planned 45-minute agenda follows:

• Introductions
• Business Drivers
• Application Virtualization and Desktop Management Overview
• Business Value
• Demo
• Questions and Discussion

For more information please contact: IOConsulting@getronics.com

Registration page at:
http://www.getronics.com/us/en-us/getronics/events_data/desktop_management_form.htm

If you haven’t already heard of it, you will: The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, or MDOP for short, is an add-on subscription for customers with Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) coverage for their Windows desktops.

The five core components of MDOP are SoftGrid Application Virtualization, System Center Desktop Error Monitoring, Asset Inventory Service, Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, and Advanced Group Policy Management.

There’s a lot of great stuff in MDOP, but the application virtualization and error/diagnostics/recovery tools really caught my eye.

Application Virtualization with SoftGrid

Microsoft Application Virtualization (as you know from reading this blog, the word “SoftGrid” is disappearing, sadly!) transforms applications into virtualized network-available services that are not installed on user desktops or laptops, but are instead delivered as a service. This allows you to centralize your applications and the management of those applications. We’ve looked at (we think) all of the application virtualization products out there, and AppVirt gets it right.

As opposed to the ways of traditional Electronic Software Distribution (ESD), when users need new applications, you simply add those users to the list of users authorized for those applications, and voila, the application icon appears on their desktop. There is no installation, and no desktop visit required. None! This feature alone has sold more copies of MDOP than I can count.

This technology also makes having roaming users and disaster recovery easier with applications being centrally managed and delivered since the applications are tied to the user’s logon and not the machine.

Another really unique use is when new versions of an application need to be tested side-by-side with the previous version(s) of the application. Each version is isolated from the other in their own virtual “bubble,” so there’s no conflict and you can quickly see the results without the need to use different machines or load/unload different versions. I could have used this back in my application development days.

Decreased PC Sick Days with MDOP

We’ve all had the experience of encountering a PC that is either failing, generating an error (or the dreaded “unknown error” – my personal favorite!), or, if you’re having a really super day, won’t even boot.

System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) is one of the unsung heroes of MDOP. It provides an insight into application and operating systems issues.

You know the routine: many times if a PC “hangs” or at least stops responding, your users will merely turn the power off and re-boot the machine. Problem solved for today, but what about tomorrow? Will this error happen again? Will this error spread and begin to affect your other users? Will your users throw up their hands and say ”Nothing Changed! I Swear!” or “I don’t know why it’s hanging! But I just flip the power switch and it works again!”

Enter System Center Desktop Error Monitoring.

DEM provides an agentless way to track these events, identify their frequency, and provide crash details and automated responses to a centralized console that you control. This gives you a better clue as to what’s been going on and where to look in the PC, without relying on silent or unreliable user reports.

Having this head-start is so much better than just a short time ago (perhaps last week for some of you?) when you needed to look at everything on a sick PC just to try to figure out where to start diagnosing the real problem. Seriously: I’m sure you can imagine how the time savings from not having to do this is worth it. On top of this, DEM arms you with the tools to forecast problems down the road, and gives you the chance to take corrective steps before things get out of hand.

BUT: what if you’ve got a PC that is totally busted? DEM can tell you about it but it seems quite certain that once you know about it, you’ll be expected to do something about it. Well, MDOP’s got some IT Admin love for that too: a Swiss Army toolkit to allow you to resurrect dead PCs and pro-actively manage PC failures leading to better stability and reduced downtime.

The Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) can help you save time and reduce the challenges associated with troubleshooting and repairing system failures. The challenges include unusable PCs, issue diagnosis, and repairing unbootable or locked-out systems.

The toolset provides options for recovery, even when Windows Safe Mode or normal boot will not function. That’s a big benefit right there since you now have a better chance of not needing to reload or re-image the entire PC!

DaRT’s off-line boot environment helps you quickly restart computers, recover deleted files, remove malware whilst the computer is off-line and therefore protect the other computers on the network. Your desktop technicians will thank you if they have this tied to their utility belt.

Other coolness: DaRT’s ERD Commander boots PCs into a windows-like repair environment. Crash Analyzer determines the most likely cause of a crash. System Restore lets you safely remove changes that could be causing the system to malfunction. Taken together, this toolset allows you to work more quickly to minimize downtime due to lost productivity thus reducing associated support costs. Copy and paste that last sentence: your boss is going to love it.

Real quick: if you’re an SA customer with Microsoft, and are managing PCs, you are going to really want to get your hands on MDOP. It’s a great suite of products that we’re really excited about here on the team, as we’ve seen our customers’ real-world solutions reduce costs and downtime as well as increase productivity not only of information workers, but of over-taxed IT staff.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

My colleagues and I have been hearing a lot about Windows Server 2008 and Terminal Services RemoteApps. Very cool stuff: it’s a great way to publish applications to your users (thin or thick clients) especially if you’re not ready to make a heavy Citrix investment. But, a few of us are refugees from the old Softricity days, where we fell in love with a web-based application provisioning workflow called Softricity ZeroTouch. It was sweet: log into a website, and self-provision SoftGrid apps to yourself, basically. In a former incarnation, I installed this application as a matter of course on engagements where SoftGrid was a component - it just made too much sense not to.

Microsoft, soon after, and rightly, acquired Softricity and its products. In that process, SoftGrid has become Microsoft Application Virtualization, but due to an internal decision, ZeroTouch was retired. This, for old SG hacks, was a sad day. ZeroTouch was a great customer story, and remains so today. Today, however, we have to say that “such an app could easily be written” rather than “let’s install ZeroTouch on a pilot server and see how you like it.”

After our own experience with Server 2008 builds, and a few presentations in Redmond, a couple of us noticed that some of the screenshots of TS Web Access stunningly resemble the old ZeroTouch interface:

With all of Microsoft’s strategic force in the virtualization market, it’s good to see that they are including presentation virtualization and self-service provisioning portal technology into their out-of-the-box Server 2008 experience.

But, I’m still left with a nagging nostalgia. Bring me both. I love TS Web Access. But, bring me self-service AppVirt(SoftGrid) ZeroTouch. Or make some more noise on USSP with Microsoft Deployment - it’s gone pretty quiet, or else I’m reading the wrong blogs. I’m hoping that TS Web Access is only a harbinger of a unified solution.

If I had to guess, I’d say that this unified SCCM/AppVirt/TS application provisioning workflow is in the works, and we mere mortals just don’t know about it yet. I’m hoping that someone’s reading this post, and has the time to point out something that I’ve missed. I know it would be a pretty easy thing for some of my crack ASP.NET developers to write, since app provisioning in SoftGrid/AppVirt is as simple as adding/removing users from AD security groups (or now, in 4.5, modifying ACLs on SFT packages) but this product already exists, and I hate the thought of reinventing the wheel.

Time will tell, and if a solution doesn’t come from the mothership, one is bound to come from the cloud. That’ll be a good day for us all.

Buckle up AppVirt drivers! Microsoft has just released a set of “hands-on labs” for those of us that need to break something before we learn it. Good thing it’s virtual!

Books, papers and PDF’s are great but if you’re looking for a way to check out many of the features and concepts through a set of step-by-step, hands-on exercises these labs are for you.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Basic Sequencing
• Advanced Sequencing
• Advanced Sequencing for VFS (virtual file share)
• Active Upgrades
• Publishing

The easiest way to see all of the lab offerings and their course discriptions is through the SoftGrid Team Blog.

Now, get out there and break something - virtually, of course.

Best Practice Alert – did you folks in the app-virtusphere know that Office 2k7 was not initially designed for virtualization?

I’m a bit bemused by the SoftGrid Blog team using that phrase “not designed.” I just wonder, with my tin-hat on, waiting for the black helicopters – did MS do this with intention? Will Biff go into rehab?

From the SG Blog – (link) Microsoft Office Support of SoftGrid Outlined

“Keep in mind that Office 2007 was not designed for virtualization, so there are some features that will not work in a virtualized environment. Find out more about best practices and limitations at www.windowsvista.com/optimizeddesktop.”

With intention? I don’t think so - along the sequencing path there have been a few add-ons to achieve packaging nirvana as well as updates to the AppVirt client. For instance to the AppVirt sequencer base image - we’ve added Windows Installer, .Net and VC++ redistributables as needed. Hey, even the AppVirt sequencer needs a nip and a tuck every once in a while - don’t hate it becuase its beautiful!

Reading on -

“Depending on the usage scenario, we recommend that customers install Office 2007 on their client machines to ensure access to all of the product features, and use virtualization for older versions of Office in cases where they need to run multiple versions of office at the same time. “

Best Practice-

This last quote is the “one ring” to rule them all that falls into “best practice.” We have found in our AppVirt deployments that its beneficial for long term support – from within your own enterprise and from Microsoft to follow best practice and install Office locally and sequence other versions for AppVirt delivery. We learned this lesson back in the version 2.x days on a two thousand plus seat deployment. While Office sequenced and streamed it was trial and error to find all the touch-points where other applications needed Office connectivity. It became very clear we needed to install locally and sequence and stream older versions.

Biff did go into rehab - my helicoptor awaits.

As pointed out by my colleague Danny, and trumpeted in The Register, VMWare has recently purchased Thinstall.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/vmware_buys_thinstall/

This puts some heavy muscle behind one of SoftGrid/AppVirt’s competitors. One can only speculate what the San Francisco to Palo Alto move will mean for the product, but personally, I hope they invest heavily in bringing Thinstall’s feature set into parity or dramatic competition with AppVirt. My colleagues here in Seattle and I are passionate SoftGrid-ites from back in the dizay and have, on more than one occasion, evaluated Thinstall as a potential technology for our customers. We found it somewhat lacking, but definitely “one to watch.”

It’s no news to anyone that VMWare and Microsoft are on a collision course for domination of the burgeoning virtualization market. If one believes the free market theories, competition will only make both products stronger, meaning that our collective hallucinations and passionate ramblings about “Software as a Service” and the Zero-Touch Desktop will only solidify faster. This move is a big win for IT departments considering application virtualization as part of their overall strategy for decreased TCO on desktops, more centralized administration, and self-service application provisioning. Oh, and if you’re among those IT departments not considering this technology, I’d love to know why not! I’m not being flip here: after working with this technology and envisioning the new avenues these products and methodologies open up, I strain to consider how this could be a bad thing.

The IOTeam will be watching Thinstall with a greedy hunger. We’ll let you know what we find.