Who would want to use this for a business?
Because of the added portability of the virtualized software, many of the available solutions have included functionality that makes the technology quite a bit more interesting for business use. Software distribution in general can be quite a bothersome task in an environment with a large number of clients and many different software combinations. Keeping everything up to date and properly licensed can also become a time sink. On top of that, issues tend to pop up with installed software all over the place, and updating the software does not always guarantee an improvement. Being able to run two versions of a software package concurrently for testing purposes is not always an option, leaving many system administrators craving a powerful and automated software distribution system.
This is where application virtualization comes into play. Its portability allows it to run in any situation, and its isolation from everything else prevents harm to the rest of the system. This is how several application virtualization solutions have turned the slight disadvantage of needing the management software present on the client into an advantage, since it provides the possibility to add additional functionality. Implementing flexible streaming and software deployment solutions fits right into the idea of application virtualization, and that's why this technology is so interesting.
Application virtualization is a very solid way to accompany the transition from the traditional fat clients to thinner, more easily managed systems. The required software only needs to be virtualized once, and then it can be provided from a central software management server. From there, administrators can decide to deploy certain applications to certain clients, and update/remove them just as easily. The actual users of the software do not notice a difference, and user error recovery becomes much easier, as the administrator can easily roll back any damaging changes to the software.
Currently, many of the available application virtualization solutions are in fierce competition to provide the best possible user experience, which makes for many interesting flavors in this field - and undoubtedly we'll see many new developments in the near future. Businesses interested in implementing an application virtualization solution should therefore research each possibility very carefully, as their options are continually evolving and expanding.
Now, let us have a quick look at some of the interesting solutions currently on the market.
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Genx87 - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
About 18 months ago I was introduced to VMWares virtual server. Right now I am in the beginning phases of planning for a Hyper-V envrionment which should consolidate nearly all of our servers onto a few boxes. Easier to manage, easier to backup, easier to migrate, and easier to recover from a disaster.Software virtualization looks like an awesome technology for the IT admins around the world. Being able to spit out a package to a client and roll it back if there is an issue with the latest patch while preserving the OS is a godsend.
I appluad Anandtech for taking a look at these technologies. Virtualization is the way of the future imo.
Olaf van der Spek - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Doesn't this basically show that installing applications and keeping them up-to-date is too hard on Windows?Sounds like proper package management instead of virtualization would go a long way to fixing this.
lopri - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
but intro only.. :PJokes aside, I thought there would be a lot more pages in this article, until I turned to the last page. Great job, wetting others' appetite! Also a joke. Grr..
Anyway, great article and lots of information. Thanks.
ninjit - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Reading the article, I kept thinking of Valve's Steam game/content delivery system.If you've ever looked at at the files with the Steam folder, they look nothing like the files that would normally be installed if you had bought the game traditionally on CD/DVD (or direct download from the publisher), yet I don't believe developer's have to change much (if anything at all) in order to have their game delivered through steam.
It appears a game's installed files are placed within virtual disk-files that Steam then manages.
I'm not sure, but I think steam also virtualizes many user settings/ registry entries a game may require - I've been able to move my steam folder about willy-nilly (e.g. from my main drive to a new faster secondary one) and steam (+ my games) still work fine, the only thing that gets broken are shortcuts.
GTVic - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Nice article. I believe AMD and Intel are touting virtualization support in their newest CPUs/chipsets particularly on the server side.Is this "hardware" virtualization another type of virtualization. Some info on that would be a nice addition.
Lizz - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
That is in fact a different kind of virtualization, as explained on page 2 of the article.A more in-depth article on hardware virtualization will be posted very soon, so if you're interested in this subject, I'd suggest waiting on that. Johan will be putting it up later today, I believe. :)
smitty3268 - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
There's an interesting Linux project called Klik2 in development that aims to provide application virtualization.Less as an enterprise solution and more as an easy way of demoing apps across multiple linux distros, I think.
Doormat - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
"Using MAV in a streaming environment prevents any of the applications from actually being installed on the client computer (apart from the user's local settings). This means that all applications need to stream to the system over the network every time they are requested, and nothing is actually saved on the client. However, MAV does provide the option to run virtualized apps locally without the use of streaming, should the need arise."Most situations would run the streamed apps over the network the first time, and run them locally from then on. I know thats how our Softgrid is implemented at work. The plus is that Softgrid checks for upgrades whenever the app is started.
Lizz - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
I was under the impression that only the user's local settings and profiles were saved, to minimize the amount of data saved locally on the client computer. I'll have another look at this in a bit, thanks for pointing it out!anandtech02148 - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Overpaid and always whinning, sure its only a few hundred machines to installed, but hey.. overtime is even better pays right?Interesting, will google's cloud computing replace this virtualization someday?