Building a virtual desktop

Trade mags are talking these days about how server consolidation is only the leading edge of virtualization in the enterprise. According to Gartner, virtualization will be the No. 1 technology issue this year, as organizations look for additional cost savings due to the down economy.

What does desktop virtualization consist of? The theory is replacing hardware and software with a virtual machine, eliminating the need for upgrades.  

Storing an entire desktop in a datacenter for all your users is a bit more interesting – with potentially enormous storage requirements. Another method is to have a master copy of the operating system as a virtual image, and then create variations based on group profiles.

The other approach is through virtual applications. This actually isn’t a new concept, running applications on thin clients is something Citrix and Microsoft have espoused for years. The technology is changing a bit though – as VMWare, Citrix, and Microsoft are each making strides in the application virtualization area. The advantage of virtual apps over "non-virtual ones" is app compatibility; if the application doesn’t run on the physical hardware of the client, you don’t have to worry about the underlying version of the operating system and upgrades. This saves time for desktop administrators, money by being able to delay desktop upgrades, and reduces headaches for the users. 

We can look at Microsoft’s strides in this direction. The company acquired Softricity in 2006, and initially rebranded their application virtualization solution as Microsoft SoftGrid – now known as App-V. Using virtual applications with App-V makes it unnecessary to install them on the client system – each application is instead streamed to the client, which only needs the App-V client software installed on the host system.  

To make it even easier to implement virtual applications on the desktop, Configuration Manager 2007 R2 incorporates App-V support. Configuration Manager treats virtualized applications just as it does any other package. The app is imported into ConfigMgr and placed on a streaming-enabled distribution point. It then is advertised to a collection of ConfigMgr clients with the App-V client component installed. Not to say this process doesn’t have some quirks, but once you get past them, application virtualization is definitely work the time it takes to learn the process! 

Some good references on App-V with ConfigMgr are available at

• http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2008/12/22/app-v-introduction-components-and-sccm-integration.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2008/12/22/deploying-virtual-apps-with-sccm.aspx by Steve Rachui of Microsoft
• http://mymomexperience.blogspot.com/2008/05/marrying-sccm-r2-and-softgrid-45.html by fellow MVP Raymond Chou of Malaysia
• http://desktopcontrol.blogspot.com/2008/09/app-v-application-deployment-in.html by Ment van Der Plas in the Netherlands

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed, to be released later this year, also covers App-V software distribution in ConfigMgr 2007 R2.

• Microsoft
• App-V
• application virtualization
• ConfigMgr
• Configuration Manager 2007 R2
• SCCM
• SoftGrid
• Softricity