Virtualizing applications

[WheatonCollege]

This might open a huge can of worms but ..... our environment has gotten to the point where installing applications in the master images is causing some serious bloat and pool-sprawl (specific pools created for specific apps). We recently upgraded to View 5.2 and use Persona Management and we are looking for a solution that will let us do the following.

- Virtualize a large number of applications easily

- quickly deploy apps to different groups of people with an easy to use management interface

- give the end user some flexibility with installing apps/drivers into their non-persistent linked clone desktops

We have a license for ThinApp but our consultant showed it to us and it doesn't seem to fit the bill. We've seen other products from companies like Liquidware Labs and UniDesk and were wondering what others out there suggest. I want to get back to managing the infrastructure side of things and hand a tool over to the desktop support folks so they can manage virtual desktops like they do the physical desktops.

Thanks

[Jarlrmai]

Your gonna need to rethink your strategy, you need to use ThinApp and then have someone manage it backend.

[rcmcguir]

I'd have to know more about your environment to give a good answer.  I work for a large school district (K12) and we haven't been able to use ThinApp much ourselves just due to not enough man hours available.  Why has installing software into images caused issues?  Is it all software that is limited in licensing?

Generally I'd say if you have a lot of campus wide licensed software you could install as much as possible on one master image and then use linked clones.  But again its all really situational.  It's hard to say without a better idea of your software.

[WheatonCollege]

Hi rcmcguir,

We do use Link Clones so the virtual desktops that get created in a pool are small in size. The issue is we have probably 30-40 different applications we need to deliver and we do not have site licenses for all of them. One app might be licensed for use on 2 desktops and another on 4 desktops. To work within these conditions we've created separate pools with a limited number of desktops in the pool and one app installed in each. An example of this would be our OMR scanning software, we have 8 users that want to use it but it can only be installed on 2 desktops so we created a pool with 2 desktops in it and entitled it for the 8 users and it becomes first come first serve. The problem with this is desktop-pool sprawl. It would be nice to manage 1 (maybe 2) master images and then just use a tool (some tool) to layer the virtualized versions of the apps into the user's session. I saw a cool demo by Unidesk that does this and a whole lot more and was wondering if anyone has used it.

Thanks

[rcmcguir]

Well ThinApp can be easily delivered though I don't know how you could deliver it to 8 users but only allow 2 concurrent launches at a time.  As I said we don't use it much.

We have been setting up specialty stations as persistent desktops that get tied to specific Zero Clients or desktops.  So I have a single pool of persistent desktops for these that have all the base software any desktop would, and then I just treat it like a physical workstation after that.

It can be very difficult to manage lots of unique situations like that.  You have to ask yourself.  Is it easier to install the software like you always have and then potentially have to re-install a year later or so if something changes.  Or is it easier to virtualize everything and implement a new management system.  You still have to update the virtualized software if the software itself updates.  Also virtualizing software can lead to a whole lot of tweaking itself to make it work right in some cases.