Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Release Candidate Availability!

A new release candidate for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) is now available!!  Along with building new features, the team has been working hard to bring the product into compliance with Microsoft shipping standards.  TAP customers will be expanding their deployments to thousands of production users with this release to help validate the product’s full feature set, as well as performance and scalability.  Major highlights include:

· HTTP streaming. We now support streaming virtual applications from an IIS server (v6 or v7). This will provide dramatic performance and scalability improvements for customers with large App-V deployments.

· Re-designed Sequencer.  Simplifies the process and reduces the complexity of creating virtual application packages. There is now a single wizard for creating a new package and advanced settings have been put into an optional screen.

· Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) for MSI packages allows the flexibility to control virtual application interaction. Administrators wanting to consolidate virtual environments, and enable faster, easier administration, can use the product’s Dynamic Suite Composition, which sequences and manages packages for middleware applications separately from the main application.

· Seamless integration with SCCM 2007 R2. Allows customers to easily deploy virtual applications through the SCCM 2007 R2 infrastructure and scale their deployments.

· Client cache improvements. The maximum size of the client cache has been increased to 1 TB.

· Improved Manageability. Integration and support for VSS writer, MOM Pack, ADM template

· Accessibility. The product is now Section 508 compliant, bringing App-V in line with other Microsoft products.

With this release we will also deliver:

· The Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Planning and Deployment Guide

· Upgrading to Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 FAQ

The RC Candidate is available publicly via Microsoft Connect -http://connect.microsoft.com
For more information please visit http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx
App-V Blog (Full Announcement) - http://blogs.technet.com/softgrid/default.aspx

Congratulations team!!

School District Uses Virtualization to 'Kid-Proof' 10,000 Student PCs

You can read an excerpt of the article here:

The small IT staff of the Kent School District in Kent, Wash., has discovered a way to nearly kid-proof the thousands of notebook PCs it’s phasing in for all grade levels.

The district uses the notebooks simply as a repository for groups of applications that are virtualized using the Microsoft Application Virtualization software (formerly SoftGrid). Each application is packaged with Microsoft’s virtual runtime, stored on a server, and then downloaded to a notebook or desktop PC when a student logs on and clicks the corresponding icon. On a notebook, the package runs in a protective virtual “bubble,” instead of actually being installed on the PC.

That means district IT staff largely avoid the plague of application conflicts, changes, DLL snafus, and all the other software-based problems that are routine for large laptop deployments. Because the PCs share a common, standard Windows XP software image, spares can be stored at every school. If a student’s laptop stops working for any reason, he or she can swap it for a spare, fire it up, download the virtualized application set and get back to work.

Sidestepping the typical hardware and software support burden is critical to the district’s ambitious goal of equipping all students in grades 7-12 with a laptop PC that could be taken home. But to truly realize the notebook’s potential, district officials realized they also had to revamp the curriculum to make use of it, and train and support teachers to exploit both. The expanded laptop program got under way with an extensive pilot in September 2005.

Click to see: Diagram of Kent Schools use of virtualization

Currently there are about 10,000 computers for 27,000 students in 40 buildings spread over 72 square miles just south of Seattle. Of those machines, 3,000 are notebooks, the rest desktops. The district will be adding up to 2,500 notebooks per year until it reaches the target goal of 15,000 for the upper grades, says Thuan Nguyen, the district’s director of information technology. All are currently running Windows XP, but the district will be shifting to Vista in 2009.

So, one of these I gave a presentation about Softgrid in an MDOP session, and one of the presents asked me the following question:

"So, if we have an Administrator's console to enable the streaming of the applications to the clients, why do we need SCCM 2007 (former SMS)?"

Obviously, I knew that Softgrid would have an integration with SCCM, but I didn't know what kind. But after doing some research, I found that this integration is arriving in the summer of 2008 and has some of the following features:

· Distribution Points are enabled to stream virtual applications to clients

· SCCM clients are configured to interact with the SoftGrid client to evaluate policy

· SCCM administrators use the SCCM Administrator Console to create virtual application packages and send them to distribution points

· SCCM Advertisements are used to deliver applications to clients

Hopefully the amount of features will increase, but after seeing these features, my question is... why are needing now the Softgrid's console if we have SCCM?

As seen here the team from Login Consultants released a new version of their OSD editor and Softgrid Migration Tools to support Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5. There's a brief overview lifted from there website and a download link below.

Login Consultants releases updated versions of the SoftGrid OSD Editor and SoftGrid Migration Tool to support the upcoming version of Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (formerly SoftGrid) which is now still in beta.

New in the SoftGrid OSD Editor 2.1, besides some minor fixes, is the ability to support and manage Dynamic Suiting Composition in OSD files. This is a new feature of SoftGrid 4.5 which allows interaction between different virtualized applications which run in their own “sandboxed” environment. The SoftGrid Migration Tool (SGMT) 1.1 has also been updated to work with SoftGrid 4.5. This version of the SGMT also supports new features of the latest SoftGrid Sequencer version, like the ability to set type of Compression, Block Size and save a Virtual Application in Microsoft Installer (MSI) format.

The SoftGrid OSD Editor 2.1 and the SoftGrid Migration Tool 1.1 can be downloaded through our downloads section.

Some things to do when finishing installing Softgrid.

Who knows the one of the main steps till the application's publish is the sequencing phase? In simple words, sequencing is the taks of monitoring, capturing and create the project of one app so that the same can be distributed in a virtualized way by Softgrid. What I'm about to post today is how to sequence Office 2007 with some details for the pt-PT version. These are the steps and best practices to do it.

Step 1: Be aware of all the possible problems that you can face distributing virtualized apps to desktops or servers with Operating System with a different language pack.
Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935684/en-us

Step 2: Be aware of the best practices of sequencing. They must be applied for any app, not only for Office 2007.
Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932137/en-us

Step 3: Know how to customize the instalation of Office 2007 so that the sequencing occurs with success.
Article: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/8faae8a0-a12c-4f7b-839c-24a66a531bb51033.mspx?mfr=true

Passo 4: See how you should procede during the sequencing of Office 2007.
Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939796/en-us

Probably for the US-English version, those steps should be enough.

But for the pt-PT version of Office 2007, we have to do some adjustments on the OSD archives for each product that may present some problems in their publishment. How to do that?

Step A: If some Office 2007 app was not correctly published (the icon didn't appear in the desktop or start menu), check the archive SFTLOG.TXT (Ex. %ProgramFiles%\Softricity\Softgrid).

Step B: Look for flaws in the construction of the OSD (XML Parsing Failure) of the app that was not published with success. The error code is useful to find a solution.

Step C: The flaws caused but invalid characters in the OSD archive or not supporting codification of the archive can be adjusted only by the edition of the OSD archive of the app with problems.
Articles: KB938625, KB930709 e KB931245.

Note: For the error 00E01005-00000016, try the procedure KB931245 before any other.

Please let me know if this was useful for you.

So, many people wonder nowadays, what is the new Microsoft's MDOP pack what does it stand for. To give an incite about what it is, I leave you with this link about the new:

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

Recently I had the chance to start working with Softgrid, a Microsoft's application virtualization and I'm really stunned about the potential of virtualization in future. But let's stop the chit-chat and go to the fundamental point.

The goal was to sequence Internet Explorer 7 with JInitiator's plug-in in Windows Vista. It doesn't matter the version of JInitiator but what matters is that has to work. Well it's known that Oracle is not supporting JInitiator on Vista, so Softgrid is coming handy on this. So the steps are quite simple and if you follow them, you should get the job done.

1.Create a folder in "Q:" with the name you want. I've called it "JavaJInitiator". Inside create two folders. I've called them "Java" and "JInitiator".

2.Install Sofgrid's Sequencer on a Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 7.

3.Open the Sequencer and start a sequence task and give the name you want to give to each points. Remember: in the Path textbox you have to enter the same name on which later you will save the package. I've entered as "JavaJInitiator".

4.Start Begin Monitoring. Then install JRE (well I managed to work with the 1.5 version, but I guess any version should work) on "Q:\JavaJInitiator\Java". When it finishes install JInitiator on "Q:\JavaJInitiator\JInitiator".

5.What we're gonna do now is part of what does the trick so we can manage it to work on Vista. It's pretty simple. Only what you have to do is to open the folder: "Q:\JavaJInitiator\Java\bin\client\" and copy the file "jvm.dll" to the folder "Q:\JavaJInitiator\JInitiator\bin\hotspot\" and replace with the one that is there.

6.Now if needed, you should go to Control Panel and click on the JInitiator's icon to increase the cache size in order to guarantee your application doesn't fail. By default is 50mb.

7.So, now we're gonna test the application. Go and link to your Oracle Forms Application site and wait for the application to open. It may ask to register a .dll, do it and the application should open. Now, in order to guarantee that will work as virtualized you should go to Internet Explorer Tools, Internet Options, Programs and click Manage Add-Ons. There, choose Download ActiveX Controls (32 bit) and certify that JInitiator's plugin is Enabled, if not, enable it. Restart your Internet Explorer and test the application again. After, Stop Monitoring.

8.The next step is to choose the path, so select "Q:\JavaJInitiator" . After that, when choosing what goes in the package, remove Java and JInitiator and just leave Internet Explorer on the list. Edit Internet Explorer and give the name "Internet Explorer with JInitiator", the Version "7" and give the OSD file name as "JavaJInitiator.osd".

9.Launch the application in order to test it and now you're ready to save it. Save your package as "JavaJInitiator" in the directory "C:\JavaJInitiator".

10.Copy the package to "Content" folder of your Softgrid server, import it and you're ready to stream it.

Well, I hope it helps you understanding how softgrid can help you with the various versions of JInitiator and how to run multiple applications in Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 7.