Tim Mangan

App-V versus ThinApp? That's an unfair question to me.

Tim Mangan — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 05:03:00 GMT

After my video comparing App-V 4 and 5 went up on BrianMadden.com, I was asked the following question on twitter:

Do you think new App-v could be better than ThinApp?"

In part, I tweeted back that is was an unfair question to ask me. Perhaps I should explain why I responded as I did. There are a few reasons that I can lay out here in this post.

The first reason it's an unfair question is that I'm biased. Now I try really hard to be fair and independent, but with App-V it's not completely possible for me. I built the original product at Softricity, so it's like one of my children. (And it's really hard to be unbiased about your children!) But at least I know and acknowledge this shortcoming.

Second, I don't use ThinApp. Oh I've kicked the tires (although not in some time), but I'm a consultant and customers are not beating down my doors about ThinApp. For the most part the customers I work with aren't using it. Even though they use ESX, they want App-V. The same goes for the many customers I have using XenApp. They want App-V. Sure there have been a few customers I work with who've tried ThinApp or are even using it for certain parts of the company, and while every one of them indicated they thought App-V was better, I can't be sure they weren't biased too. After all, if they're working with me then they are probably starting a sizable project that's heavily invested in App-V.

Third, I'm a Microsoft MVP for App-V. MVPs are not known to be "fan boys" and are usually willing to heap criticism on Microsoft when appropriate. But I do have inside access to the development team at Microsoft and, well, that just isn't happening for me at VMware. Of course to counter this, I'm also a Citrix CTP and have access to the team that develops their application virtualization product. But it doesn't sway me.

The other part of my response tweet was that I thought the old App-V was better than ThinApp. To be clear on terms here, the "new" App-V means version 5 and the "old" App-V means versions prior to version 5. The new version is a complete rewrite which I discussed in a blog post in November if you missed it.

Ruben's excellent "Smackdown" paper (http://www.pqr.com/application-virtualization-smackdown) lays out a comparison between the "old" App-V and ThinApp and others. Ruben, and the rest of the team that worked on the paper, had to work really hard to keep their own App-V biases out of that paper and probably go overboard to give others a fair shake.

The new App-V does do a lot to knock off a lot of the checkboxes that appear in that paper that don't have the "Applicable" check in them. For the most part, these changes makes the new App-V a much stronger product than the old one. But not always. Sometimes a change just opens App-V up to the same criticisms that apply to ThinApp. It's possible that the only remaining criticism that ThinApp fans can make of the new App-V 5 is that it still requires a client. But I have never considered that a weakness; only a point of strength.

But hey—I don't work for the vendor, but I am biased.

Tim Mangan is a Microsoft MVP for App-V and a Citrix CTP. He is the author of several books, including the new PowerShell for App-V 5 book, and can be found at TMurgent Technologies (www.tmurgent.com) where his title is "Kahuna".

An explanation of Microsoft App-V 4 versus 5

Tim Mangan — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 05:01:00 GMT

I am getting a lot of requests to help people understand the differences between the new Microsoft App-V 5 and the previous versions. Given the complete rewrite of the product, that is a multi-day conversation if you want all of the details.

So I threw an attempt to explain the differences between App-V before version 5 and version 5. It is a 16 minute video to explains the main differences at the client and how this affects your ability to deploy certain applications. Microsoft calls these virtual application extension points, which is confusing everyone. Hopefully this will help.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Click here to download this video in HD

What You Need To Know about Microsoft App-V 5

Tim Mangan — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:22:00 GMT

What You Need To Know about Microsoft App-V 5

Microsoft today released version 5.0 of App-V. This complete re-write of the application virtualization stack modernizes App-V. Tim Mangan, who developed the original stack for Softricity, talks about the changes in this article.

In November 2000 we started the project to build the original SoftGrid application virtualization platform. While the software has been enhanced, renamed, and expanded over the years, many of the fundamentals and design decisions that we made a dozen years ago remain in version 4.6.

With the release of App-V 5.0 today, Microsoft changes this. The release appears to be up on MSDN site as MDOP 2012, and here is a link to the TechNet documentation.

App-V 5 is the culmination of three years of work by the team at Microsoft. The software has been re-written from the ground up to meet the application challenges of today. About the only thing that will look the same to you is the user interface of the “sequencer” (a component used to prepare the applications for virtualization). So much changes in this release, that I can’t possibly cover it all in this article. Instead, I will try to focus on what you need to know right away (before your boss asks you about it).

App-V releases via Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for the desktop OSs, but also supports Remote Desktop Servers (i.e.: XenApp) where the client license is bundled in with the RDS CAL.

Previously, Microsoft announced that their new User Environment Virtualization (UE-V) product would be released in a November update to MDOP. So while I don't yet know if UE-V is also released as of today, it probably is also. It is also unclear to me if and how one licenses UE-V on RDS. UE-V, known to some as the "Park City" project, provides for real-time streaming of portions of the user registry hive. Customizable using community generated app "recipes", UE-V should be an improvement over roaming profiles, but keep in mind that it handles registry only -- not files. More on UE-V here in the official UEV Datasheet PDF from Microsoft. Ruben also talks about Local Storage/VDI/UE-V here.

Is this a forklift?

Well, Microsoft wouldn’t want me to use that term, but it kind of is.

The bad news: There is a brand new server, a new format for the virtualized packages, and a new client. And these components don’t understand the old stuff, so we’re talking a migration here.

The good news: There is a brand new server, a new format for the virtualized packages, and a new client. App-V 5 client also supports a “co-existence mode”, so you can deploy old and new to the same user in parallel. Add the new client to support new apps and slowly migrate old apps over. There is a package conversion software that will migrate some of your packages automatically. Personally, I am not a big fan of using the conversion software and prefer to re-sequence, but it might be useful for some customers.

SFT and RTSP goes away

The SFT file format is used to hold the virtualized application contents. In App-V 5, it at long last goes away. We designed the SFT format specifically to work with the specialized file system driver that we had to invent in order to stream applications. In 12 years, things have changed! Today, this can be accomplished with SMB or HTTP streams using specialized drivers that are not complete file systems. Both the format, which was not understood by many external tools, and the protocol, which was challenging to load balance, were sticking points that made it harder for some organizations to deploy App-V.

The new format is called “AppV”. The AppV file is basically a zip compression of the complete package (essentially everything that was the SFT, OSD, Icons, and Manifest) in a single file. I should note that while we can view the contents as a zip file, standard zip file utilities cannot write an App-V file today because the streaming data needs to match the actual file layout. This change is one of many changes that make App-V 5 act more transparently.

In App-V 5, the RTSP protocol also goes away. Originally we only had RTSP, but Microsoft enhanced this with SMB and HTTP streaming previously. For the past couple of years I have been advocating using either SMB or HTTP streaming instead of RTSP. This is a good thing!

Q Drive goes away

Back in 2000, when we were dealing with mostly Windows NT, and a few Windows 2000, machines, there was only one way to mount a file system in the OS. And that was to mount it as a drive letter. So to mount our SFT based file system we needed to use a letter.

Additionally, a lot (most?) applications used private configuration files containing file references. To make these applications work, we specified that you had to prepare the app using the same drive letter that would be used at the client. Based on something as stupid as having someone walk around the machines in our own office and look for a commonly unused drive letter, we settled on a default letter of “Q”. This has always been an issue to adoption. While it was OK to need a drive letter at the client, implementing the same letter companywide meant moving some existing applications. This isn’t insurmountable, but was a pain point to adoption.

Today, most applications use the windows registry to store these paths, so App-V can virtualize all of these settings correctly. In addition, we can now do the equivalent of mounting to a folder instead of a drive letter. So in App-V 5, the virtual drive letter completely goes away. To be honest, when I first heard of this change I expected there to still be a lot of legacy applications that would not work with App-V 5, but I have been testing an awful lot of apps and they just work.

Extension Points

The most challenging part of application deployments (whether you virtualize or not) is managing the integrations that the application vendor creates. These can be integrations with the OS itself, or integrations with other applications. In some cases, virtualizing the application would help by allowing IT to eliminate unwanted integrations (especially those causing conflict), but in others virtualizing the app restricted app functionality in undesirable ways.

App-V 5 expands the integration points that are supported. Previously we had integrations to the start menu, file associations, and some COM objects. In App-V 5, these are now called “Extensions”. Importantly, Microsoft has expanded the kind of extensions that we can have. Among these are COM based protocol handlers, such as “mailto”. The expansion of these extension points significantly increases the number of apps that can be virtualized. And many of the new apps working under App-V 5 are some of the most complex to deploy as native apps.

Connection Groups

While virtualizing applications to isolate apps from each other is fantastic to help eliminate conflict between applications, sometimes we need them to work together. When Microsoft announced Dynamic Suite Connection (DSC) we were excited because before then we had to package up everything that had to work together in a single package. Now we could package separately, and then define what needed to work together. Unfortunately, the implementation proved difficult to manage if you used a lot of DSC because the linkage was buried within the OSD file that was part of the base application.

In App-V 5, Microsoft redesigns this capability, making the connection a separately publishable component. This allows us to properly manage these connections and will greatly expand the use of “package to package” integrations.

Did I mention the OSD goes away?

As Softricity, there were limits on what we could do in the OS kernel that Microsoft doesn’t have to live by. Previously, we had a file with an extension of OSD that was the launch point for virtualized applications. Application shortcuts and file associations would point to a single executable (the virtual application launcher utility) with this XML file as input. The launcher utility would read this OSD file as a kind of script to tell the client how to start the app. All that goes away in App-V 5. Sometimes this caused a challenge when users or applications would try to access the application directly.

In App-V 5, the virtual application executable are directly accessible. So if they are launched in any way, the App-V client intercepts and runs it in the appropriate virtual environment. This makes the app deployments more transparent. For example, that shortcuts now point to the actual program being launched means we don’t to do “special work” to get things like the icon to look right when publishing via XenApp.

App-V Server

Yes, there is a new App-V Server. Or should I say Servers? The old App-V server had two components which performed several functions: A management interface to configure, a server to publish, authorize usage, stream, and collect usage statistics.

The new App-V server has three servers. For a small implementation, these can still all be placed on a single OS, but the Microsoft design is for scalability, and it follows the SCCM scale out model.

The new Management Server, is used to configure and assign applications. If you know SCCM, this is the equivalent of a Site Server. It sports a new management console that isn’t written as an MMC app. Did I mention that they started this work three years ago? Well it is written in Silverlight.

The new Publishing Server you can think of being like a Distribution Point, but probably without the files to be transferred. The Publishing server is responsible for telling the client apps that have been published to the user or to the machine. Machine based publishing was previously only available if you used SCCM, so this is a long sought after enhancement to the App-V server implementation.

The new Reporting Server is separate and optional. Interestingly, the reporting server will gather information on App-V 5 apps delivered via SCCM or stand-alone clients too. Many enterprises have other tools to monitor application use, but this server will record every use of every virtual application.

SCCM 2012 SP1 Integration

If you want to deploy App-V 5 apps via SCCM and use SCCM 2007 or 2012, you can use the virtual MSI method. But in reality you are going to want to plan your move to SCCM 2012 SP1 (Note: at the time of this writing I do not know the release date for SP1). With SP1 there is built in support for App-V 5. And just like the App-V Server, you can target virtual apps to either devices or users.

Dynamic Configuration and Enhanced Scripting

Microsoft really upped the game with Dynamic Configuration files. These files allow you to package the app once and configure separately. This does require manual XML editing today, but the flexibility is great.

Best of all is the enhanced scripting. In particular, I love that we can target a script to run when the virtual app is published. The machine deployment time scripts run in the local system space instead of the user’s own security context. This allows us to specify actions like to natively install a required device driver even though the user has standard rights. This requires publishing to the machine (without shortcuts) for this scripting, and then publishing to the user with the shortcuts and without the script.

Scripts may not only be defined for publishing, but for unpublishing, and package or application start/stops.

Streaming and Cacheless Mode

The “read-only” cache in App-V 4.6 SP1 was interesting but was not practical due to the maintenance aspects when you have to update the single cache file containing all of the apps.

5.0 has a cacheless mode that eliminates the headaches and is a winner. It works directly with the server share App-V file. This is my preferred mode for any XenApp or VDI deployments. It might be interesting for other well-connected desktop clients as well, but if they have the disk space I would prefer to let the
client cache to disk. Obviously any mobile clients need to get cached to disk. The directory listing below shows the cached file area for a typical application in App-V 5. Previously we could not get a view of the files of the package from outside the virtual environment, so that we can even see this is part of the new transparency. The uncached files of the package appear differently in this list, with the icon slightly greyed out and with an X placed over it.

Previously, App-V packages could either be created optimized for streaming (The initial portion of the app delivered immediately with rest on demand) or for offline use (everything delivered initially). In version 5, we now have three options:

Optimized for Delivery. Only the Metadata is delivered initially with the rest on demand.
Optimized for Streaming. Only the Metadata and initial portion is delivered initially.
Optimized for Offline. Everything delivered initially.

And just as in the past, if you are not configured in cacheless mode, background streaming options are available. The client background caching in 5 has slowed down and will no longer overload the network. If anything, I think the background streaming is too slow. But you don’t have to wait. Just launch the app and it will stream right away.

Package Upgrades and Coexistence Mode

App-V packages are usually backward compatible, but this release is so different that this isn't possible.

To help, Microsoft has a powershell tool that will attempt to upgrade packages. The tool, which is part of the Sequencer, is just a formatter so you can try running all of your packages through without the need to revert a VM for each. The tool has a test option to pre-determine many of the things that prevent the converter from working, but just because the tool works doesn't mean the package is good. You still need to test.

A first for App-V, it is possible to have both a App-V 5 client and a 4.6 SP2 client on the same machine. This would let you 4.6 for a while, but use 5 to cover one or two apps that don't work well under 4.6. Or conversely, move fully to 5.0 even if you find that odd app that doesn't work well on 5 yet. Personally, I have apprehensions about having a fully mixed environment with half of your apps on each client; I wouldn't be surprised to find some odd app interaction issues if you did that.

Client OS Support

As you would expect, 5.0 (as well as 4.6SP2) supports Windows 8 and Server 2012. But notice that support for Windows XP goes away in the 5.0 release.

What does Tim think: Should I use 5 or stay with 4.6SP2?

I really like what Microsoft has done with App-V 5. So much has changed, and I think that for the most part Microsoft has clearly thought through what AppVirt means today. These virtualized apps will work more like Native Apps, and things hidden away in poorly documented and complex black holes (like the FSD or PKG) are now transparent. But even though I have worked with early builds for over a year, I am still cautious. So much has changed in this release; we should expect to hit some unexpected bumps in the upcoming months and will need to work around what we find. Probably the least understood to me right now is the impact of running in compatibility mode. Customers should fully evaluate and test thoroughly if they want to go into production soon.

So the answer to what version to use depends on a lot of details in your environment, but since I don't know your environment details I will suggest the following framework to help you answer this yourself.

If you cannot get off of Windows XP, at least those clients will not be able to upgrade to 5.0.

If you are starting a new deployment, or are still just starting your Windows 7 migration, then I would jump to 5. I think you will prepare more apps and faster.

If you currently use 4.6SP1 and are heavy into (or just finished) your migration to Windows 7, I would hold off for a while. Most likely you should upgrade the clients to 4.6SP2 as soon as possible. If you have some troublesome apps that you still need to deal with, try them in 5.0 and consider adding the 5.0 client in compatibility mode. Over time, you can slowly migrate apps over. How long you live with compatibility mode is up to you.

If you currently use 4.6SP1, and are not into a Migration, you might stay pat for now. Start testing with 5 and know your options. While the range of apps that App-V 5 can do will be greater than for 4.6SP1, we don’t really know if it will be a proper superset, or if we will find some that no longer work with 5.0. So far, things look pretty good in this regard, but it is not unconceivable that some applications might fall off the list.

Tim Mangan is a Microsoft MVP for App-V and a Citrix CTP. He is the author of several books and can be found at TMurgent Technologies (www.tmurgent.com) where his title is "Kahuna".

And here we talk about Citrix, Users, Apps, and Data

Tim Mangan — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 13:17:00 GMT

Tim Mangan chimes in on post Synergy Barcelona 2012 thoughts on Citrix, Apps, and Data. Any-Any-Any becomes Many-Many-Many and then Right-Right-Right.

...(read more)

Microsoft talks WinRT, Server 2012, Hyper-V, WinXP, at WorldWide Partner Conference

Tim Mangan — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 04:01:00 GMT

Tim Mangan is at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference , in Toronto Canada, this week, and sent in this report on the happenings there:

Following up on the Report from Day 1 of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference I am now into Day 3.

The day 2 Keynote started with Satya Nadella, President of the Server and Tools Business area. I remember meeting Satya over dinner at the .NET launch event 11 years ago and he was impressive even back then. Satya talked about three announcements for the day. First, he covered the gap I noticed in the first day’s keynote. Windows Server 2012 will RTM in August with GA in September. This is actually ahead of the desktop GA plan, because they don’t need to wait for Hardware manufactures to complete their OEM process on the build. The second was a Tech Preview that allows hosting partners to offer Azure like services . The third announcement is a Hyper-V Switch program, designed to encourage customers to switch to Hyper-V R3.

We saw Microsoft do a decent job of blending traditional, private cloud, and public cloud options. Microsoft has a slight twist on the distinction between those first two in that they refer to private cloud as being if the OS is virtualized. This compares with the language Citrix uses where private cloud means that you have automated the deployment and management. So using Microsoft’s definition we have been doing private cloud for a while, and with Citrix’s we need to buy a bunch of new capabilities first.

We also heard a lot about Windows RT (the version of Windows 8 for ARM processors) and apps. What became clear to me through this keynote and other conversations I had with some Microsofties, is that on Windows RT, ONLY Metro apps will work, except for Word/Excel/PowerPoint. Previously I had thought this meant that existing x86 apps wouldn’t work because of the difference in the processors. But what became clear to me this day is that only the three parts of Office (notice Outlook is not in that list) would work as Desktop apps. No other desktop apps will work, and even office plugins will not work. Our friends at Citrix are probably not lost on that difference and I would expect them to push their receiver to XenApp as the way for enterprises to handle BYOD of those devices.

Next up on the Day 2 Keynote was Kirill Tatarinov, President of the Microsoft Business Solutions Division, which means Microsoft Dynamics. He had some cool stuff to talk about that I couldn’t care less about, so you can watch the video here www.digitalwpc.com if it is important to you.

We then heard from Laura Ipsen, from the Public Sector group, followed up by Thom Gruhler from the Windows Phone group. He “announced” Windows Phone 8 (not sure that was new news?) and spent some time showing it off. Although a different OS than the desktop OS, the design does share much of the core code and takes advantage of this. They showed being able to resize the tiles (so why can’t you to that on the Windows 8 start screen?). Is what they showed significant? I’m not a phone guy, but being better might not mean anything in a market driven by cool.

The end of the Tuesday keynote was a collection of demos of things being done in Microsoft Research and some partners. One interesting demo was a use of Kinect. They used the camera, with its positioning sensor, to move it around a person to create a 3d model of the person, then used a 3d-printer to create a plastic version of him. Another used Kinnect with a white wall and projector to be a very cheap version of a multi-touch enabled tablet (although obviously with only one camera it can’t have the detail control over one of those Perceptual Pixel devices. Some new work on Bing was also showcased, where search becomes smarter to bring multiple related ideas together into a single search.

The Day 3 keynote, on Wednesday, was all about getting the partners charged up for the next year. Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer took to the stage to talk about “Leveraging a new era”, playing off of the Balmer comment about this being an Epic year. He listed eight technology trends that Microsoft feels are significant right now: Cloud, Data Explosion, Social Computing, Natural Interaction, Ecosystem of Computers, Consumerization of IT, Ubiquitous Connectivity, Machine Learning. He emphasized the breadth of changes that Microsoft is providing this year, refactoring just about every product they offer in a short 12 month period. One great line given was an exhortation for partners to help “rescue people from Oracle and IBM”.

He also touched on the controversy over whether Windows 8 Metro is a tablet OS only by referring to the new OS as a “No Compromises” operating system that works as well with touch or mouse. While my initial reaction to new the OS interface wasn’t all that positive, with time I am warming a little (as in “it isn’t that bad). Once you get used to is, flipping between desktop and metro isn’t that bad, so maybe after a year or so we’ll all be used to it.

Kevin also touched on the end of Windows XP, commenting that they will have a big party for the 15^th birthday of Windows XP, and then they will put it to sleep. He committed that they will not extend that date. He reminded partners that this was a $12B opportunity, and advised partners that the best way to get customers to Windows 8 is to get them to Windows 7 now. He reiterated a commitment that any PC running Windows 7 will run Windows 8. He followed that up with a comment that the best way to get customers ready for the cloud, whether that means this year or down the road, it to get Active Directory fully deployed and up to date, and System Center too. Federated Identity is still a touchy subject with customers, so it might not be as simple as that, but those are two essentials before shifting loads out to Azure.

There were a few claims made in the 60+ minute talk. He claimed that in the most recent quarter, Hyper-V is winning share from VMware for first time ever. SQL is now Worldwide unit share leader 46% of new shipments, (2.5x Oracles ( probably by unit and not by dollar?). Bing now leading Google in search relevance was another claim. In predictions, he predicted that by next year Office 365 will become the fastest growing product in the company. That news is likely not welcome to hosted exchange providers that will need to retool if it becomes reality.

In a shift towards consumer, Kevin talked about the new Microsoft Retail stores. He told retail partners, don’t worry about our stores as they will still be selling the bulk of the retail stuff. It seems as though those stores are more to counter the Apple image rather than become a revenue stream. To poke more fun ge showed a video of the Siri request about what the best smart phone ever (with a response showing the Nokia with Windows Phone). The video was shot before Apple tweaked that response in the service after being embarrassed by that answer. He also spent some time debunking the “Post PC Era” talk. In Microsoft’s view, Win8 is the new era and it is both a PC and a personal touch device. One thought I had in listening to all of this was whether Microsoft needs to sell a single Windows Surface PC for their recent event to be a success? Is the surface PC more message or more product? Considering I haven’t seen one (yet) this week, I wonder.

Closing the session out, Kevin finished by emphasizing the ”No compromises” message and charging the partners to be bold and help the customers adopt to the New Era. Microsoft is spending a lot of money refreshing pretty much all of their product line in a short 12 month period to greet and create this new era, and customers will need their help to move along.

Microsoft talks consumerization, Windows 8 release at Worldwide Partner Conference: Tim Mangan's recap

Tim Mangan — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 18:01:00 GMT

Tim Mangan is at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference , in Toronto Canada, this week, and sent in this report on the happenings there:

I am at my first WPC this week, along with about 16,000 other of the 640,000 people working for Microsoft Partners around the world. You can catch the remaining morning keynotes and much more with live streaming from the conference here: www.digitalwpc.com.

Microsoft kicked off the event with a keynote at the packed Air Canada Center (where the Candians play hockey and Raptors play at Basketball). The morning keynote on day one, kicked off with fire breathing dancers and singers from Circque du Soleil, featured Mr. Congeniality (aka Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft). Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to the be stage hand that he chats with about the 4 Microphones he needed during that keynote! Steve was aided by a research analyst who in theory was interviewing Steve but would just occasionally throw a softball question to remind people that he was also on stage, but then quickly get out of the way for Steve to show his passion.

Balmer described 2012 as an “Epic Year” for Microsoft, listing only the founding, 1981 (launch of the PC), 1995 (launch of Windows 95) as the other epics in Microsoft history. He made his case that it is a great time to be a Microsoft partner, and with the new products coming out the possibilities are endless. He noted that even last year (in what I would call a “muddling economy”) partner revenues grew 13%.

Unlike a Citrix keynote, where The Cloud everything, this keynote was clearly not focused on driving partners to the cloud. Oh it was there in the keynote, but only as examples of real things today and opportunities for the future. One of those examples was Lowes (a home improvement store chain) that signed on for 200,000 users of Office 365. This slow filtering in of cloud things, sometimes viral and sometimes strategic, seems more realistic to me than the "get with the cloud or perish" approach.

Steve was aided by some helpers for the keynote. First Kurt DelBene, President of the Office Division came on stage to talk about a few things. He announced that as of today, Microsoft Partners can now directly sell Office 365 through the Open program (a sales program where the partner takes the revenue for Microsoft products directly, and then pays Microsoft). This has been a sore point with partners, and has help slow down the adoption.

Kurt also talked about the Yammer acquisition. He talked about integration with Sharepoint today, and Link and Office integration down the road as key features of the collaboration tool. Having been busy playing with Podio (the Citrix acquisition in the same space), I haven’t had time to play with Yammer yet, so I’m not sure how it stacks up.

Kurt and Steve made a point about what they termed “Viral Adoption”, which is what we also think of as “Consumerization of IT”. They described it in terms of being inevitable, but that the enterprise needs to make is “appropriately secure”.

Kurt also talked about Office 15. This new version, in Tech Preview since earlier this year, he intoned would ship the same time as the server and phone products. Note that he didn’t say desktop and he didn’t give any dates to that. Sometimes what they don’t say is important!

Steve again took center stage and talked a little about Windows 8, but he surprisingly said nothing all remarkable about it. When Rich asked about Surface, which is a touchy subject among a few of the OEM partners, Steve said that there are about 375million new PCs every year, and hinted that if Microsoft sells a few million of those devices there is still a lot of opportunity for the OEMs.

Then Steve brought out Tami Reller, CMO of the Windows and Windows Live division to show off some of the partner devices. It wasn’t lost on me that the Microsoft Surface was not shown! I counted 17 devices on stage, from Acer, Asus, HP, Lenova, Samsung, Toshiba, and Qualcom (others may have been there, but those are the ones I detected). The first 8 of those devices were touch enabled devices loaded with Windows 8, and showed the various form factors that partners are making, from thin notebook design, to tablets, including one that docks into a keyboard, to a “Yoga” design that flips a full 180 degrees. One Samsung device was touch, but instead of touch screen used an oversized touchpad. The large Lenovo display boasted a 10 point multi-touch screen. I think that only one of the devices was a WinRT (but I’m not entirely sure).

The other devices were Windows 7, but Tami talked about a new program that will allow devices sold with Windows 7 today to be eligible for an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro at $14.99. That is far better than the general upgrade pricing ($49.99) announced last week.

Tami also performed a Windows-to-go demo. This is where you can put your complete windows image on a bootable flash drive and plug it into any Windows 7 PC (eh, one that has the bios set to allow you to boot from a flash device) and boot to it. The demo looks cool (not the first time I have seen it), but I am not sure how many people will really use it.

Tami did give us dates, not necessarily firm ones but probably pretty solid at this point. Technically she didn’t commit to these dates, but said that they were on track for them. Windows 8 will RTM to manufacturers on the 1^st week in August. Enterprise availability would be “in August”, and General Availability (when any shmo with a credit card can buy it) is end of October. Again, I will note that nothing was said about release of Windows Server 2012, so I assume that comes later. If it tracks like the Windows 7/Server 2010 dates, that would mean November/December for manufactures and enterprises, and Jan/Feb for GA.

Next up, Balmer announced a new acquisition today. Microsoft acquired Perceptual Pixel. They are the folks who make those wall sized multi-touch displays you see on TV. PPI is a six year old company, and Balmer has one of these devices in his office (maybe he can do a Remmington Shaver like commercial). Jeff Hahn, from PPI demoed their largest device, an 82-inch multi-touch device. Maybe “massively multi-touch” would be appropriate as it can handle 100 simultaneous touches. Hahn showed how OneNote can instinctively understand the difference between his finger (used to pan) and a pen (used to draw), making for a more natural use as a “whiteboard”. The key point that was important for the acquisition is that it is just a PC with Windows sitting behind a massively impressive input/output display device. Steve mentioned that the device shown is about $80,000 per unit today (dashed any thoughts running through my head at the time), and that they need to get volume to drive the prices down so that conference rooms can afford to get one.

I look forward to a week of great conversations with other partners this week. I will report back later this week on what else I learn.

Thought on App-V 5.0 Beta: Don't stop your Windows 7 Migration

Tim Mangan — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:05:00 GMT

In a blog post this week, Microsoft's Karri Alexion-Tiernan announced the Beta for App-V 5.0, plus an additional MDOP add-on called UE-V. (The App-V 5.0 Beta is available from Connect). I want to provide all of those people in the mist of their Windows 7 migrations that are putting a lot of effort into App-V 4.6 Sp1 some advice. And there are a heck of a lot of people right in the middle of that migration right now!

Take a deep breath. It's OK. You are not wasting time or money. I'll explain...

App-V 5.0 is the most dramatic change to App-V in a really long time, possibly the biggest since the initial release by Softricity. While I have been working with previous private releases for some time, I was surprised by the Beta release this week. Microsoft doesn't reveal dates to us, even under NDA, but I didn't expect a public beta until probably the end of June.

If you don't know the NDA process, it works like this. Microsoft reveals a lot of stuff to us in advance, to get our feedback and help tune what they are building. Some of what they reveal might not make it into the final product, while some of it might not be in the Beta version and will appear later. Then they don't let us know what is in or out when they announce. We can only talk about the things that are publicly visible (in announcements or the actual product), so when the beta happens we have to download the Beta to determine what is or isn't in there with our own two eyes. I have been making a few posts in my private blog here: http://www.tmurgent.com/TMblog. This will be on ongoing effort.

The release sports a more modern replacement for the current App-V Server, and the biggest impact of the release will only be to folks using the App-V Server. The Sequencer looks mostly the same, however the output has a new APPV format that replaces the SFT format. The Client is also updated, with the biggest change being the removal of the virtual drive letter that was a pain point for anyone moving to App-V in the past (although once you find an available drive letter it isn't a problem any more). In between, the plumbing is all changed, with RTSP and block level streaming replaced by HTTP and SMB streaming. These changes have less impact to those using SCCM or the Stand-alone client, but they are significant. There are a ton of other things to talk about also, but those will have to wait.

With the dramatic change in format, there is a package converter to help. You better learn powershell (and I have a tool to help with the conversion). But the process of sequencing is pretty much the same (other than the new output format) -- after all the real effort is figuring out how the apps really work and how you want them to work differently than what the ISV thinks.

The changes in this release are probably the biggest since the original release of SoftGrid. Do not expect Microsoft to have a final release quickly. This feels like a long release cycle to me, with such dramatic changes. Features may come and go in that process as well. Some still remember the features added in the App-V 4.5 RTM version that were not even visible in RC1! And once we have a final release, we all will need time to find and determine how to handle apps that no longer work in the new version. While I expect to be able to add many more apps to App-V that weren't possible/worth-it in the past with 5.0, I can't imagine such radical changes not leaving one or two behind.

Finally, I'll just mention that it is not insignificant that Microsoft also released a Beta for 4.6SP2 last month. The purpose of that Beta is to support Windows 8. I can't say more yet, but if 4.6SP2 gives you a better feeling that packaging and deploying in App-V 4.6SP1 today has more legs to it, that would be a good thing.

So when the guy or gal down the hall asks if what you are doing now with 4.6SP1 makes any sense, the answer is YES! Do play with the beta. But don't let a future product announcement slow down your current migration to Windows 7.

Mulligan: Did Citrix CTO Martin Duursma signal a change at Citrix Synergy Barcelona?

Tim Mangan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:01:00 GMT

I have been trying to get my head wrapped around the CTO Supersession at Synergy Barcelona last week. I wrote my initial impressions of the session in an article here right after the session. Later on, Benny Tritsch, who sat beside me at the presentation, wrote his views as "impressive and confusing" in his blog here. But given a little time to think about it, I wonder if Martin perhaps was signaling a strategy change within Citrix. I want a mulligan on my take of the session.

Citrix has become a big company in the last ten years that I have been watching them. No longer a "one trick pony", the company has grown through acquisitions and expansion of the product line into entirely new areas.

When the CTPs gathered in Fort Lauderdale a year ago to meet, we had a great session with then CTO Harry Labana. One of the comments from the CTPs at that meeting struck home - that Citrix has grown so wide that they now compete with everybody. Microsoft on the remote protocols and terminal servers (see Shawn Bass take on Citrix vs Microsoft here), VMware (and Microsoft) on the Hypervisor, Cisco and others on the WAN edge devices, and a slew of folks like WebEx on the collaboration front.

Even the CTO office was a diverse bunch. Where many companies have one CTO, Citrix had a (virtual) office of them. This was part of Citrix growing up also. Enabling multiple, highly skilled professionals, to lead the company in sometimes seemingly conflicting directions. At Synergy in SanFrancisco this spring, we had a great opportunity to hear from the CTOs together on stage. Normally the large keynote-like sessions are dominated by Mark Templeton, but for a change the company gave these guys a chance to talk about what they are doing and why.

In the year since our meeting last fall, some of the prominent CTOs have moved on. Harry is now at AppSense , while CTO Simon Crosby and CTO Ian Pratt both departed to start Bromium. Citrix is retooling at the CTO office. I'm not even sure who all of the CTOs are right now. For sure, I know of three of them.

Martin Duursma, who heads up Citrix Labs
Bert Christiansen, from the Citrix OnLine division
Sheng Liang, CTO for the Cloud Division

I know Martin has been around for years driving Citrix to be innovative. I think Bert joined when Citrix bought the company Expertcity (known for their GoToMyPC and GoToAssist products) in 2003, but the OnLine division has always been off to the side so we rarely hear much from them at the big meetings. Sheng came with the Cloud.Com acquisition this summer so he is brand new.

So when Citrix decided to give the second day keynote completely to the three CTOs for the first time, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the result wasn't a Mark Templeton style orchestrated event. After the blizzard of announcements in the day 1 keynote that was choreographed by Templeton, we expected to hear how these new things all fit together and how we might use them. Instead, we had three seemingly independent presentations from the CTOs in three different divisions. But while disappointed that I didn't hear what I expected, it was a worthwhile glimpse into the inner workings at Citrix, or at least a tool to speculate at it.

Bert's presentation, on the surface, was about how the recently announced ShareFile acquisition fits into the OnLine division. In announcing GoToMeeting Workspaces, Citrix might be bringing the OnLine division more into the fold. No longer are they only that one-off thing people do at an enterprise for external communication. Workspaces is a play to get into the middle of every day activity as part of the desktop (little 'd') landscape. Perhaps this division is becoming a little more integrated?

Sheng's portion of the presentation was on the surface more of an introduction. But more than an introduction, his message was more like "we do cloud for the big boys, but you can easily use it to build a private cloud and gain the benefits".

But it was Martin's presentation that needed a mulligan. In his presentation, we spent a while talking about how companies need to go vertical. He used some good examples of successful companies got that way by a focus on combining a vertical solution for their customers. Unfortunately, he also used some examples that were questionable on their face (Google/Motorola?). But he failed to connect that meaning of going vertical to the rest of the presentation for the audience.

In looking back at the event, perhaps I've now made that connection. Martin might be addressing that concern that Citrix is so wide, that it is time for some vertical thinking within Citrix to balance that out. In the realm of his focus, Citrix wants to own the remote desktop space. The AppDNA purchase helps to fill a hole in that space -- helping their customers with their existing app migration. Another demo in his presentation also is aimed at filling that hole. The XenApp SDK is aimed at helping developers modify their apps to run centrally yet leverage the power of the local client device. [By the way, don't be fooled by the name, you know it is bound to work on XenDesktop apps too.] The reference design for HDX silicon also fits into this vertical thinking. While these are simple steps right now, some vertical thinking might be just what Citrix needs right now. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Citrix Synergy Barcelona Day 2 Keynote (aka "Super Session")

Tim Mangan — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:43:00 GMT

Citrix "Super Session", Synergy Barcelona Oct 27, 2011

Tim Mangan reports on the second day "Super Session".

Otherwise called a Keynote, this morning's session focused on three topics: Collaboration, Cloud, and Mobility. While Wednesday's session was about announcements, this morning was about explaining the message. Mark T left the work to his minions (not sure if he was sleeping in or off somewhere). Can't believe I am saying this, but I missed him (but only a little). Lots of people slept off the party so the audience was a little light this morning!

Kicked off by Citrix Online CTO Bert Christiansen, the first session on Collaboration was really about positioning the technologies that Citrix is involved with as being about changing the way work is done. There must have been something subliminal in the messaging yesterday, because that was exactly what I was thinking about over breakfast this morning.

I am convinced that we are in the throws of a serious change in how business gets done. Unfortunately, the "solutions" being sold are to today's and yesterday's problems. We think about enterprise employees as "task" or "knowledge" workers today, and part of what we need to do is change that thinking. Task worker jobs are jobs that either need to be replaced by automation, or fundamentally rethought of. We should be thinking about workers in categories of those that do their job by implementing processes and those that do their job by collaborating with others. For example, Call Center workers do the former. Today we treat them in a way that leads directly to customer dis-satisfaction. Rather than provide closed minded tools and encourage call volume handling to move the business forward, we should be enabling them to have better interaction with the customer to truly solve the callers problems. But how does the change being sold do this? No clue.

But the last 40 years have shown that businesses will need to use new technology to change the ways in which they get work done or they become less efficient and die. The keys, which were part of the messaging this morning are about transforming the infrastructure to get the work done. Each of the CTOs in essence talked about this, each in their own focused way.

CTO Bert used GoToMeeting, especially GTM HD Faces and the new Workspaces as a model to redefine how collaboration happens in the enterprise. More and more, getting work done involves working with people who may not be sitting right next to you. Structuring that work around tools to enable collaboration is nothing new, but kudos to Citrix for having a good one. Unfortunately, along the way, there was a very lame demo involving LinkedIn that looked to me like a perfect example of "because it can be done doesn't mean it should".

The demo involved Bert getting a request in Facebook for a video meeting, which he could launch right from Facebook. Really? Who spends all of their time in LinkedIn that I should receive the message there? Just send me via email, please, or else you won't be there when I get around to noticing the request in a few weeks.

Second up was Sheng Liang, CTO of Citrix's Cloud division, formerly from Cloud.com. I had a great opportunity to meet Sheng and part of his team earlier this week at the CTP summit, and I was quite impressed. Again, theme was change, which of course is a necessary theme to sell cloud.

But Sheng's message wasn't that you need to go to the public cloud. One stat that came out of his session was the 2010 hardware shipments worldwide. 8.8M servers, 350.9M PCs. Desktops matter folks! Sheng's message was more about using the lessons of the large public cloud to transform how you privately provide desktops. Not just hosting, but planning for disaster.

A XenDesktop deployment, managed via a private cloud using Cloud Portal was shown. It looked no harder than any other XenDesktop deployment in a demo (in other works: much easier than reality).

Although Sheng described it as "Desktop bursting into the cloud", a great term to use with your CTO to get buy-in, I'm thinking of this more in terms of the initial part of this morning's presentation. Creation of temporary work spaces (desktops) for a project. As you dynamically create a team for a project, create specially crafted desktops to enable them to do that job. Accessed from their permanent desktop, the user gets everything they need.

Third up was Martin Duursma, head of Citrix Labs and Chair of the office of the CTOs at Citrix. Martin's theme was the importance of enabling Mobility. I still get a creepy feeling when the CTOs tell me that the iPhone and iPad require us to reinvent the workplace, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the things.

Martin went into a segment about "vertical stacks" which was lost on me. Maybe it was just me, but I felt that it was either a poorly communicated message or the wrong audience for the message. I'm not even sure that the vertical stack concept is even a good one at a strategy (a good tactic for some yes, but not all).

Fortunately he moved on and we got our first announcement of the day. Martin brought Adam Jaques on stage and they made a XenApp announcement. Yes, the product was actually mentioned on stage for more than 5 seconds!

XenApp 6.5 Mobility Pack was announced. This is an SDK that developers can use to transform boring apps into ones that can use the rich local resources at the other end of receiver. Think things like display form factors and GPS and the like. In a likely first for Synergy, Visual Studio was shown and an app was transformed to work with the phone. It wasn't anything as easy as shown to transform that app, but the concept was cool. Project GoldenGate was also shown (as a simple screen shot).

Martin also brought Ryan McCune, from Citrix partner Avanade on stage to demo using the SDK. In another likely first for a Citrix keynote, this wasn't a live demo but a pre-recorded video of a demo. Something must have gone horribly wrong for this to happen at a Citrix keynote, but it was a demo of what the partner did and not a demo of a Citrix product directly.

It isn't clear what Citrix Customers were suppose to take away from the keynote this morning. As my friend Dr. Benny suggested to me afterwards, there were no actions for the customers. Perhaps this was a result of Mark T not driving the show this morning, perhaps because Citrix hasn't had enough time to absorb the new acquisitions, or perhaps Citrix themselves aren't sure where customers should be going.

Change, yes. But change to what?

How to describe layering: the "blob," cake, or 3D Tetris?

Tim Mangan — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:00:00 GMT

While we're in the process of figuring out the new “desktop” (small “d”), we have a lot of different ideas and models for how to layer and manage our stuff. None of the models seems quite right to me, and over the past few months I've been struggling for a way to describe why. I think I finally have some ideas down that I think I’m ready to share:

The traditional PC: The "Blob" Model

The traditional PC can be described as “The Blob”. In “The Blob”, there is no real separation between the operating system, applications, and the other stuff which for simplicity I will call “Application Related Data” (or ARD). There are files all over the place in the file system and crud all over the registry. Not organized and certainly not a pretty sight. When we want to do unnatural acts, such as to replace out the hardware or operating system, or more bizarre things like allow the user to roam to different operating systems, or even to be logged into multiple operating systems at the same time, I think we can all agree that the model of “The Blob” is butt ugly.

To some extent, we have not had to worry too much about the blob in the enterprise. Vista was widely ignored and the major concern was when a user got new hardware. Sometimes that meant just copying over the partition image, but when not we could build an OS and App image that matched and then use tools to migrate the user data. This apples-to-apples copy works reasonably because it is simple.

In a session I did at BriForum in Darmstadt a number of years back, I attempted to frame the problem. I broke the “ARD” category into eight different sub-categories of stuff that might need to be treated differently if we could only do the categorization properly. This proved way too complicated for people to deal comprehend easily, and certainly well beyond the ability for anyone to act upon after the blob is already created. In fact I concluded in that session that we really need the app developers to help us out of the problem, and that we really need Microsoft to lead them to start making new applications with organized data into these sub-categories. This isn't happening and isn't about to. Oh if I could be Bill Gates, just for one day...

The “Layer Cake” Model

Today people are busy migrating from the Windows XP blobs they have to Windows 7. Most are at least playing with VDI, and hoping that they can make it work with a shared OS image. The model that we typically see is referred to as “The Layer Cake”. By separating all of the stuff that is in The Blob into three different layers we, in theory, could have a simple model to deal with that would allow portability and flexibility in deployment. The claim is made that it is as simple as swapping out the OS layer to perform an upgrade.

When you see this model, you first need to recognize that we are talking about only a new deployment. You don’t really transform The Blob, but lay out an image in this format from the start. There are migration tools and vendors to help bring things over, but fundamentally you want to think of this as a fresh deployment. But I don’t like Layer Cake as a model at all. Unfortunately, it is too simplistic to work well enough in complex application environments in the long run. I’ll explain that statement in a long-winded way.

“The AppVirt” Model

Another trend I see happening as companies move to Windows 7 is that they are adopting application virtualization in a widespread way. They know that they have lots of application issues, and the major one is conflict between applications. AppVirt has proven itself as the best solution to this problem. [Side note: It is ironic that it took so long for mass adoption of AppVirt. While we still have significant application conflict issues, much of the worst applications are being or have been retired. But I guess you only need one business critical app to be the problem!] But containerizing and isolating applications is also a smart move to enable flexibility and portability, both today and in the future. But the AppVirt model looks like the drawing on the left.

We have been successfully using this model for ten years now. AppVirt allows us to deliver and maintain OS, App (Application components and base configuration), and User-based-ARD separately from each other, with proven ability to roam between machines and operating systems and considerable ability to upgrade the application without losing the user’s ARD. Unfortunately AppVirt isn’t perfect either. Not every app can be put into a container. The list of applications not supported by AppVirt grows smaller each year, but it is still significant enough that AppVirt by itself is not a 100% solution.

The “Pillar Cake” Model

So what do people do, combine these models? They are trying to. I don’t see vendors show the model drawing I have below, but they certainly feel that combing “User Environment” products with AppVirt solves all of you problems. I see customers struggle with implementing this, and probably mostly because nobody wants to understand the application details enough. The first attempt typically looks like this:

A nice simple picture that combines the best of both worlds, right? No. Application conflict, it turns out is about more than conflict of the App later, but also often conflict at the ARD layer as well. We see this all the time when two versions of an app are needed by the same user, maybe Office 2010 for general use but Word 2003 needed for another app. If you take out the ARD separation, you have a problem. So what do you do?

The “Chinese Menu” Model

Here in the US when I was younger you might go to a “Chinese” Restaurant and rather than the combination plates you see on the menu today, they had columns with the different types of food. To order, you picked the items you wanted from each column. For those unfamiliar, we refer to this as a Chinese Menu. To combine AppVirt with User Environment you need to use the “Chinese Menu” Model.

In reality it becomes more complicated than the drawing above; with any given application there may be need for some ARD to stay in the AppVirt layer and some to be in the user layer. But there are still more complications. First, let’s look at the latest complications in AppVirt.

The “AppVirt DSC” Model

Applications sometimes integrate with each other, so full separation isn’t always a good thing. Often, the integration is just on a file basis and this isn’t a problem. Other times, we just build an application suite container with all of the inter-dependent applications and it acts as a single application for the purpose of our models. But some applications are more like application platforms with lots of tentacles. Microsoft Office is a prime example. The single package approach quickly turns into a nightmare there. So instead we create application suites. App-V uses the term “Dynamic Suite Composition” (DSC) and so I’ll use DSC here as a generic term. Depending on how DSC is done, you might end up with a model that looks like either of the drawings below:

The “Tetris 3D” Model

When I start thinking about combining all of this into a single model my mind currently turns to an old video game, Tetris3D (I can’t find the original DOS game, but here is a clone called 3dTetris ). Tetris3D was a game where you had all sorts of odd shaped blocks that dropped into box and you had to rotate them in three dimentions into position while dropping to get them all to fit. When you filled a layer it was removed from the game to make room for more blocks. In the PC image model game, we don’t get layers removed when a layer gets filled, but right now that is my working model. Maybe one of those wooden puzzles where you have to put all of the pieces in the right order could be the model also, but I think what we have is more complex: more parts, more than one “right” answer, and I like the never ending aspect of Tetris3D (there is always another app to add to the mix). It may not be the best model, since it took all of the above to explain it, but it is the best I have right now.

Conclusion

My belief is that we don’t have good enough solutions for handling applications and related data today. I conclude this because, in part, we do not know what the right model to frame the problem is. By no means do I claim that the Tetris3D model the right model; I’m simply using it as a way to convey how messed up our other models are.

The ultimate model and solutions must be simple, like the layer cake, to just catch everything automatically, but must also involve the deep understanding of App/ARD separation to make everything work. Separation into manageable categories is required for the flexibilities we desire. Otherwise, I just VM the problem away (leaving it to the user to figure out where there stuff is) or re-write everything as a cloud app.

Author: Tim Mangan is a Microsoft MVP for App-V, a Citrix CTP (I know, redundancy) and holds the position of Kahuna at TMurgent Technologies. He has spoken at every BriForum and at many other venues. Read more at his home blog or website, or follow him on Twitter as @TimothyMangan.

System Performance: It's (still) time to change the timers!

Tim Mangan — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 04:10:00 GMT

While working on my presentation for BriForum on Perceived Performance, I was reminded of another performance related white paper that I wrote seven years ago titled It's Time to Change the Timers, which was about the need to change the basic system clock interrupt provided by the Hardware Abstraction Layer (or HAL) that sets timer granularity in the OS. With Microsoft working on Windows 8, maybe it is finally time to look again at this issue. During those seven years, the examples I gave have only been amplified by even faster technology, both in processors and peripherals, and the simplification of the windows HAL to assume multiple processors. Our systems could perform better.

The crux of the issue

At the heart of the Windows Operating System is the windows timer. My first PC, a Compaq clone called Deskpro, used a 55ms timer back in the good old DOS days. I think it was around 1984 and yeah, it booted off of floppy drives. The CPU ran at 4mhz (7mhz if you pushed the "turbo" button). In the 1990s, Microsoft introduced Windows NT. I ran it on single CPU machines with a 333mhz processor. The basic clock provided 10ms granularity. If you put it on a dual processor machine, this jumped to 15ms. Microsoft used two different HAL packages, one for single processor and another for multi-processor. The clock is dictated by that HAL.

The timer plays several important roles in the system. An obvious one is that if some software wants to sleep for a period of time, then wake up, it sets a timer to do this. The system timer dictates the granularity, and importantly the minimum wait period. So if the software wants to wait 3ms, it is going to wait for the full timer length. This timer also affects things like thread scheduling, the effective quantum time (how long a thread can chew up a processor before being thrown out), and even how often certain other kernel activities can happen.

What's in your PC?

Chances are you are reading this using a computer with multiple processors (in this audience I'd guess 4 logical processors present), probably running in the ballpark of 3Ghz. The clock you get is set to 15ms (rather than 10ms) because Microsoft got rid of the two HAL images and always use the multi-processor one, even if you had only a single processor.

In one time interval my Compaq Deskpro with the turbo on could execute potentially 440 thousand instructions (Note: the reality is that instructions take more than one machine cycle but let's just ignore that complication in the math - it washes out). Using that math, the NT system could execute 3.3 million instructions in its timer interval. On the system I'm guessing you are using, it would be over 80 million instructions executed before the timer expires. That is a heck of a lot of instructions.

Why should you care?

Modern software design practices tend to avoid setting short term timers because, in part, the granularity of clock is not small enough for todays systems. Instead, they use asynchronous calls which instead puts the burden on the kernel of the OS. But there is still a lot of software out there depending on the timer that would work better if Microsoft made the timer shorter. Rogue processes would be better controlled, and VM clock slew might just be lowered. Ultimately, I believe users will receive better "perceived performance".

Sometimes timers need to be appropriate for off CPU activities. But even many of these activities have significantly sped up since I wrote the original paper in 2004. Our networks are faster (although there is no solution to the speed of light latency over long distance) and our peripherals run at faster interfaces as well. Speeding up the timer would allow some applications to perform better with todays hardware.

The downside

The downside is what would break. But Microsoft has some smart people and I'm betting they can work out a way. Even if it is to implement a faster clock, say 1ms granularity, for the kernel itself and for applications that specifically request the more granular clock.

And it might be too late for Windows 8 (or whatever it gets called when it is released), since Microsoft is well into the design. But I assume there will be a 9. Eventually this needs to change.

Someone's got your back with IE6 apps in Windows 7

Tim Mangan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:00:00 GMT

I have been looking for a decent solution handling apps that require Internet Explorer 6, and maybe we have a good one now from Browsium.

One problem faced by many enterprises in moving to Windows 7 from Windows XP is that they have applications that only work in Internet Explorer version 6. Microsoft made significant changes in the IE7 rendering engine that broke many plug-ins and web applications. Windows Vista ships with IE7 and Windows 7 ships with IE8, and there isn't a way to downgrade your browser. You might think by now that companies would have fixed those applications, but they haven't because they stayed with Windows XP and could ignore the problem. But now these enterprises are moving their desktops to Windows 7, and are finding that they finally need to fix or replace these outdated applications. While they knew this, they are stunned at how very costly it will be to do so now - up to a million dollars in some cases.

A few people have found ways to hack their way around the problem, but it isn't easy. Usually, these solutions involve application virtualization, but as Spoon found out, a vendor has to be really careful not to run afoul of Microsoft licensing restrictions on distribution of their components. I hear that VMware and Symantec had similar problems and you can only find some very complicated instructions on how to hack it yourself. CSS Security also demonstrated they had crafted some sort of a solution, but they too have been strangely quiet after announcing.

For some time, Microsoft has been telling customers that running multiple instances of Internet Explorer on a single instance of Windows is not supported. Microsoft says that their supported ways to handle IE6 on Windows 7 is to use Med-V, which runs Windows XP as a virtual machine, or to stand up a 2003 Terminal Server, often using Citrix, to provide remote IE6 access. The latter has become "the norm" for customers moving to Windows 7 and still needing IE6. Now Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign to convince companies that IE6 is a big security issue. You can bet what Microsoft's reaction to anyone saying that would have been 10 years ago when the Beta was released!

The internet is a bad place today with a lot of ways to break IE6, so Microsoft has a point about using IE6 for all your browsing. But for companies that want to use IE6 for internal sites, I just don't see the risk. I don't agree with Microsoft's stance on supporting IE6, and have certainly let them know this on many occasions (as have so many customers). But they are not budging on this.

Along comes a new company called Browsium. Managed by three former Microsoft executives that helped build the Internet Explorer, they have come up with a solution that doesn't seem to run afoul of Microsoft licensing. As a plug-in, it even avoids the idea of running multiple instances of Internet Explorer. While this might not get you Microsoft support, the Browsium solution does not run multiple instances of IE- which seems to be Microsoft's concern.

The product, which if It dropped the final 's' would easily win the award for best product name of the year, is called UniBrows. UniBrows, released last week, is an internet explorer plug-in that supports site specific invocation of different rendering engines, including IE6 and IE7. Using configurable rules, you designate URLs or sites that need specific support. One instance of Internet Explorer, but using different rendering engines for different sites. UniBrows works by utilizing their own magic code to manage and invoke the appropriate dlls for the rendering you need for that page. But unlike attempts by others to include parts of IE6 in their solution, they have the customer repackage their client after downloading some publicly available distributable components that Microsoft has on their download sites. Once repackaged, and they make this very easy for you, you can deploy this to your machines.

I support a lot of customers using App-V, so naturally I wanted to make sure that I could sequence this plug-in and understand how to do the configuration of sites. I contacted Gary Schare, the President of Browsium, and after talking about what they are doing, he was happy to point me to the free 60 day download available to anyone on their website. I sequenced the plug-in using the latest 4.6 SP1 sequencer for App-V from Microsoft on Windows 7 SP1. The package worked well, although I had to be careful about creating rules.

There is a separate management app to aid in configuring when to invoke different rendering engines. This configuration is rules based, making it quite flexible. You can define a set of rules that look at the URL for different patterns, such as starting with a particular string, containing a string, or from a domain name. You can also specify what to do with cross site content on a page (for example, a site that pulls content from another site). The rules definitions seem well thought out.

The rules may be designated as machine or user specific. This would allow you to push out a set of rules across the company, and let users supplement their own rules. For some reason, with App-V, I had to use rules that were "machine based" and not "user based" to get them to work at the client. Possibly this was my fault, and it will need a look when I have more time, but if you are into App-V you probably want to use the same rule-set across the enterprise anyway so I didn't look into it further yet.

The rules may be deployed in three ways; via Registry, Group Policy Preferences, or File based. I went with registry based inside the App-V package. Group Policy method should work well with App-V, although you might need to tweak the transparency settings of a few keys in the virtual registry to get that to work. Because you may be unlikely to know every URL upfront for the rules, you probably want to keep the rules out of the App-V package. So Group Policy might be the way to go. Another potential is to configure the plug-in to use the file based rule set, and point it to a central share. I'm not sure if this would create a performance issue for launching, especially for laptop users using a VPN back to the office, but if that was a problem you could probably use an OSD script to help.

Of course the kicker is the cost, but in the face of not moving off of Windows XP or rewriting/abandoning your IE6 based apps, it could be well worth it. Pricing is yearly subscription based, so even as an interim solution while you move your apps it can be worth it. Pricing, when I looked, included a $5000 base, plus a per seat ranging from $4 to $20 depending on volume, plus a support plan. I queried Gary on what a seat meant for Terminal Servers, and he replied that it meant "maximum concurrent users". He said they would update the notes on the website to make that clearer.

It is great to see a professional product that addresses this important need to enterprises. Ultimately, you are going to want to replace those old applications, but at least for now, someone's got your back.

10 years after the Wow! (A look back at Softricity by an insider, 10 years after their founding)

Tim Mangan — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:05:00 GMT

Tim Mangan was at Softricity ten years ago, when application virtualization was in its infancy. In this article he looks back at the history and what's happening now.

On February 26th this year, Softricity, the creators of what is now called App-V, turns 10 years old. Well... sort of. Softricity was a rename from the previous company name, "Software Wow." Actually we really did the rename in the previous November, but we kept it private for three months to get our new act together before going public with the name. February 26th, 2001 seems to be the first public record of the name Softricity that I can find, so I'll just go with that date -- ten years ago today.

The biggest hit of the English band "10 Years After" was probably the song "I'd Love To Change The World", a title that embodies what we thought we were going to do with Application Virtualization. We were a really hot and new startup company. We were going to turn applications into a utility, like water or electricity that you just turn on when you need them. David Greschler loved to tell potential customers that "this is the last install you'll ever have to do." Perhaps a bit of marketing hyperbole? Of course! But we did believe that we were going to forever change the way companies dealt with distributing software. ASPs (the forerunner of "Clouds") were the next big thing. 10 years later we can look back and ask, "did we do that?" Not so much as we thought at the time... But not that the company and ideas weren't a rousing success.

Back then, we were replacing "sneakernet." The vast majority of application installs in the enterprise ten years ago were manually performed with the technician going to the desktop with the installation media in hand. Automation was being used by some, but not many. Originally, SoftGrid could help on a majority of those applications, but there were still many that it didn't work for. For companies that have gone this route, some claim today to virtualize over 95% of their applications. We will probably never get 100% coverage, but then we don't have to. The enterprise today has many choices to automate application deployment, and they will multiple methods to get to the 100%.

Another sign of success, Microsoft bought the company (rumored to be about a $250M purchase) and App-V (the new name under Microsoft) today has tens of millions of licenses out there. Over the years the capabilities of SoftGrid have steadily, if slowly, evolved to cover many of the problems we knew needed to be addressed even early on. Like how different terminal services and desktops are. Handing temporary offline usage cases. Covering a wider array of applications, including those with services. A solution to the "bubble to bubble" issue, or at least part of a solution. And it seems that today everyone talking about the new greatest thing, virtual desktops, acknowledges that application virtualization must be used to layer apps in if you are doing VDI.

Another sign of success may be the others out there virtualizing applications. Citrix, VMware, Symantec, and a host of other companies have parallel capabilities in this space. Each has their own take on how to handle applications and each has strengths and weaknesses, depending on your needs. New companies are also still entering this space, like App Zero. And one could argue others are embracing the ideas in new ways; with ideas like MokaFive's application and user layers.

By many yardsticks application virtualization has been a winner. But we didn't solve everything. Fundamentally, massive deployment of applications is hard. It doesn't matter how you try to do it, it will be hard. Each application has its own unique quirks. Each enterprise also has its own unique needs; needs that often were not under consideration of the developer. Heck, we keep these apps around through multiple generations of hardware and OS technology and that they work AT ALL should be considered a minor miracle. As much as we like to bash Microsoft (and who doesn't like to do that?) one thing that Microsoft has been pretty good at is providing a platform that tries to embrace the older applications as the platform evolves. Heck, you could still run those old 16-bit DOS apps from the early 80's on Vista.

The newest incarnation of App-V 4.6 SP1 is expected out sometime this quarter. From the previews at Tech-Ed Berlin, it is clear that Microsoft is squarely taking aim at making applications easier to deal with. And while the videos look cool and I'll be excited to work with the new version and will find it easier, virtualizing applications are still going to be hard. Because applications are hard.

So we didn't get it all right in the last 10 years, but I think that we got some of what we were dreaming of. At times I feel like "if we just rewrote these old apps the problems would go away." But the reality would just be another version of the same problem a few years down the road. We heard that story with Java. We heard it with web apps. We are hearing it again with Cloud apps. But we cannot write applications today that anticipate the changes of tomorrow, either in the surrounding technology or in what a business will need. So dealing with apps will remain hard. This means we need good tools to help with the bulk, and smart people to deal with the rest.

Not that the software vendor community can't help. I really don't think that the ISVs really understand how the enterprise modifies their products to make them work the way the enterprise needs them to work. Better information on what the applications touch is sorely needed across the board. Support for enterprise customizations -- things as simple as allowing IT to easily disable the update menu -- should be standard across the board.

So while application virtualization may have made great strides in the last 10 years, the adage "garbage in, garbage out" remains true. We will continue to want to evolve our environments, embracing new technologies and new concepts. Unfortunately, as the next evolution occurs we will need to bring much of the garbage along, hopefully cleaning up some of it from time to time, but only when we have to. As the song said:

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Virtual Desktops, The Cloud , and User Mobility, let's face it: we all want to change the world. In the next ten years we will make great strides, but you can bet that the world won't look like we think it will today anyway. Grand visions are great, but at the end of the month you need to improve your operations today. We need to be thinking at both levels.

Disappointed! (the true sad story of client hypervisor meloncholy)

Tim Mangan — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Attribution: OpenPhoto.net All I wanted for Christmas was a decent client hypervisor . Two years in a row now. Was that really too much to ask for? Last year at Christmas I was only a little disappointed because I had kept my expectations in check. But...(read more)

"A Failure to Launch:" a new free tool for App-V troubleshooting

Tim Mangan — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 04:00:00 GMT

I have another free tool for people that work with App-V. One of the challenges of working with App-V is dealing with situations when things don't work right, especially when using the full infrastructure model. Since you have a multi-part delivery system involved, the component that tells you about the problem--the Client--doesn't necessarily have a clue to what the real problem is. Instead you get a cryptic error code:

It's hard enough for experts who work with the product daily to understand these. (We google the community sites for ideas.) Your typical help desk person doesn't have a chance. To help with this, I created a new free tool to provide some organized help with App-V Client errors.

This tool, called A Failure To Launch, is a Silverlight app that allows you to search for information on an error code produced by the App-V Client by using the last 8 or 10 digits. But rather than a search list of a bunch of people that had the problem, you get a concise set of information for the error code.

For each of the codes covered, the tool provides information about the cause (or possible causes), troubleshooting techniques or recommended actions, and links to Microsoft KB Articles when they exist. The tool also explains the error code format, and has an interesting flow chart showing the steps that the client and server go through to launch an application with links to the various errors.

Not all client errors are covered, and the flow chart is a “best guess” and is known to be inaccurate on some details. Most of the information in the tool can be found on the web somewhere, but some is not. Some comes from painstaking attempts to break the system in ingenious ways, and some comes from tips provided to be by friends. (A special mention goes out to fellow MVP Nicke Kallen.) I'll update the tool from time to time with these. Ultimately, the tool makes for a convenient first place to look. If you don't find it there, please send me some information on the error code and what you found to solve it. I will update the tool every so often!

I wrote the tool in Silverlight because you can install the app on any Silverlight-enabled device and then run the tool offline. To do so, just go to the tool off of the website. When it loads, right click in an open area and select the “install” option for the app. Now you can launch it anytime from your start menu, even disconnected from the Internet! Since I will be updating, you might want to check back now and then and download the latest version.

The "Failure to Launch" tool is available from the Application Virtualization Central page of my website, just below the "OSD Illustrated" tool.