VMware View 4 and ThinApp Integration Guide · 2012. 7. 20. · VMware ThinApp allows IT...

VMware® View 4™ and ThinApp™ Integration Guide

I N T E G R AT I O N G U I D E

VMware® View 4™ and ThinApp ™ Integration Guide

I N T E R G R AT I O N G U I D E / 2

Table of Contents

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Introduction: The Composite Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Conceptual Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Packaging and Updating Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8VMware View Composer Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Integration Scenarios. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Scenario 1: Persistent Desktop with User Data Disk Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Scenario 2: Non-Persistent Desktop with Active Directory Configuration . . . . . . . . . 20Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26


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Abstract

This guide describes the integration of VMware View and ThinApp and reviews the concepts of design, use case development, and specific configuration scenarios.

Introduction: The Composite Desktop

The composite desktop describes the combination of a stateless operating system with user driven stateful application settings, user identity, preferences, and data. By integrating VMware View 4 and ThinApp, IT organizations can benefit from an easily managed and scalable desktop, while providing end-users with additional flexibility and mobility and the same personalized experience they enjoyed with a physical desktop. VMware View Premier Edition makes the stateless desktop an achievable and deliverable solution, which IT can deliver and manage as a Service (DaaS).

Desktop and Application Virtualization working togetherDesktop virtualization o!ers significant benefits of increased density and reduced scope of management for IT, making it feasible to deliver hundreds and thousands of desktops based on a small number of images that can be updated routinely without downtime or costly distribution mechanisms. Application virtualization complements this larger desktop economy of scale by abstracting the application set and user customizations from the highly standardized desktop instance. Applications become containers that are executed rather than burdens to install, configure, and maintain. The desktop operating system becomes a stateless disposable platform to execute virtualized applications and provide a personalized experience to the end user.

Benefits OverviewDesktop VirtualizationVMware View 4 is the leading desktop virtualization solution built for delivering desktops as a managed service—from the platform to the protocol. This solution lets enterprise IT manage operating systems, applications, and user persona independently of each other. VMware View 4 simplifies desktop management, reduces desktop operational costs, and increases control for IT while providing end users with flexible access, creating a superior desktop experience for end users—over any network.

Benefits:



Application VirtualizationVMware ThinApp is an agentless application virtualization solution that allows IT organizations to provide applications to end users without managing the complexity of application conflicts and prerequisites or operating system dependencies. VMware ThinApp technology decouples the application from the operating system, providing flexibility, portability, and isolation. VMware ThinApp plugs directly into existing IT tools and processes, enabling corporate IT organizations and ISVs to deliver encapsulated application containers across a variety of operating systems without complex configuration and installation requirements.

Benefits:

Conceptual Discussion

A conceptual discussion of deployment considerations is necessary at this point, before proceeding into the specifics of integration. The following topics address whether to stream or deploy virtualized applications and the method of integrating those applications into the desktop operating system. The concept of persistence is important because it has an e!ect on the ability of the Operating System and the applications to maintain customizations made by the users which results in greater end user satisfaction. Packaging considerations for VMware ThinApp are also discussed because some deployment related configuration will be embedded during the packaging process prior to deployment.

Determining the Execution ModeVMware ThinApp allows IT organizations to determine whether to use streaming or deployed execution mode or to adopt a hybrid approach that lets them manage a standard set of applications centrally while distributing others in deployed mode. The same virtualized application packages can be used for either execution mode. The decision to either distribute the packages into the View desktops or stream them from a central network share can be made on an application-by-application basis.

Deployment into the desktop instance provides more predictable performance because all execution is local, but it requires application packages to be updated in the VMware View desktop and will have a storage footprint in the virtual machine. Providing applications via streaming mode makes greater demands on the network and can a!ect performance, but it allows applications to be updated with greater e"ciency due to the one-to-many model of streaming mode, and there is no disk footprint within the View desktop.



A cursory review of the benefits of both execution modes follows:Streaming Execution mode allows the application to be stored centrally and accessed by multiple users. This one-to-many model provides centralized deployment and update of an application package to multiple end users for execution via a Windows desktop shortcut. The user launches the application from the central network location where the application resides and streams data as needed while the application is in use. The streaming method operates without storing the application in the local disk of the operating system, but

VMware ThinApp Streaming Information Guide for more detail.

Deployed Execution mode distributes the virtualized application packages to the VMware View desktop’s local file system. In this distributed model, each client device receives and executes the package locally and therefore can run the application regardless of network connectivity. Application performance is not subject to network performance because execution is local. IT organizations can leverage an existing software distribution system for deployed mode.

Desktop PersistenceDesktop persistence allows users to customize their VMware View desktop and maintain those settings for a personalized desktop. Persistent desktops are assigned to individual users and remain so assigned until an administrator makes a change. Administrators should use persistent desktops for users who want to customize their desktops and maintain a one to one relationship between that instance of the operating system and that

Administrators can specify that users are routed either to the next available non-persistent desktop or that the desktop is destroyed after the user logs o!.

of it after one user, thus maintaining the pristine operating system image and standardization for all users. The combination of non-persistent desktops with application and profile virtualization provides the most e"cient administration model while providing consistent user personalization.

The User PersonaThe user persona is the combination of application settings, the user profile, and user data. The ability to abstract these components of the user experience from the operating system and re-apply them allows IT the benefit of managing a standardized desktop and the ability to deliver a personalized experience for the end user.

both virtualized and natively installed applications.

The Application Data location contains the sandbox, located in the user’s profile by default, to store runtime changes to the virtualized applications registry, folders, and files. This location houses the information that gives users a persistent application experience for toolbar settings and customized options within virtualized applications.

system. Virtualized and natively installed applications default to saving user data in My Documents.

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The collection of registry entries and files that represent the previously-described components are collectively

!"#$%&'(

)$"#(*'+'(

,--./0'+/%&(1"++/&2$(

)$"#(!#%3/."(

Figure 1. User Persona

Methods for Providing PersistenceThere are two primary methods to providing persistence of the user persona: Active Directory–based

o! profile and application settings between di!erent instances of the VMware View desktop.

Organizations with a well-managed group policy implementation may prefer to utilize those processes and tools to provide persistence. The primary advantage of using Active Directory is that it is a dynamic mechanism that can apply different settings based on different VMware View desktop pools or users. The location for storage of this data is typically network based and easy to backup and manage. Administrators can provide accessibility to the user data and user profile registry settings to additional

to Windows roaming profiles can be used in conjunction with group policy based folder redirection.

desktop for storing user profiles and the My Documents user data location. The primary advantage of this mechanism is that the redirection of persistent information is automatic. Administrators have

implemented as a separate virtual disk, which will store information for multiple users of that desktop.



Application RegistrationThe integration of virtualized applications into the desktop operating system occurs through the Application

for which the user has been authorized. Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the state of the desktop and application integration before and after application registration.

Figure 2. Before Application Registration

Figure 3. After Application Registration



Utilizing ThinReg for Application RegistrationThe Thinreg utility automates the registration process and can be run from a login script, a local script, or a command line. Since the registration process can enumerate which users have access to application packages, the Thinreg process can be run against an entire directory of application packages; however, it only registers the applications to which the user is entitled. Two common methods of implementation are described briefly below.

The Thinreg executable can be incorporated into an existing login script with standard methods such as .bat, WSH, KIX, or vbScript. See example below:

%logonserver%\netlogon\thinreg.exe /Q \\company.com\applications\*.exe

IT organizations can choose to implement the application registration process locally on the workstations

Packaging and Updating Considerations

Role based Application AccessAdministrators can use Active Directory groups to control access to virtualized applications. The setup capture process allows administrators to enumerate and assign Active Directory groups. Those assignments are embedded into the package during the build process. This process populates the PermittedGroups parameter in the Package.ini and restricts usage of a package to a specific set of Active Directory users. Administrators can optionally customize the error message to users if they are not allowed to launch the application. For a desktop that is o#ine, the PermittedGroups function utilizes cached credentials to determine whether the user has permission to launch the application.

packages, creating modular packages that link together instead of larger packages that are more di"cult to

application packages containing components or dependencies. Administrator can configure the originating application package to look first in a local directory and then in a remote directory if the required or optional component cannot be found. To provide a logical link to the remote directory you can use a domain-based DFS

application and link the components.



VMware ThinApp provides the option of using compression to reduce the storage footprint of the application packages. Applications launched in streaming mode request only the files and registry necessary to perform the specific application function, which means that the package is never streamed in its entirety. With compression enabled, the quantity of data transferred across the network is greatly reduced by an average

build process. Existing application packages can be rebuilt with compression anytime by utilizing the project directories created during the setup capture process. For this reason, it is recommended to use compression for packages that will be run in streamed execution mode.

The side by side method for updating application packages can be used for either streamed or deployed execution mode. There is no requirement for application downtime. This method works by placing the new application package in the same directory as the original application package and incrementing the filename extension to an integer number. Subsequent updates can be placed in the directories with extensions .2, .3, etc.

The implementation of this update strategy follows a simple process. When a user launches an application from a shortcut that references the original .exe, logic built into the package automatically checks for identical package filenames with a numeric extension in the same directory. If an updated package, such as Mozilla Firefox.2, is found, the application launches using the file with the highest numeric extension. Always keep the original .exe that is referenced by the shortcut in place as it is a necessary pointer for the application to launch with or without updated packages. There is no downtime for the users with this method of update and

package as they launch the applications and the original application packaged .exe directs them to the updated package.

The Application Sync feature is a setting that initiates the pull of a di!erential update package from a central

fileshare is configurable along with other settings in the Package.ini file. Refer to the Additional Resources section for further detail on configurations.

VMware View Composer Integration

to deploy virtual desktop images (see Figure 4). By leveraging linked clones, it introduces a streamlined process for upgrading patches across multiple desktops by simply applying the patch to the parent image and recomposing the linked clones.

updates and patches to be applied to the parent image and inherited by the linked clones. After a linked clone has been updated, the user’s personal settings from the user data disk are also applied to the updated image.


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packages, updates for the operating system and ThinApp packages, and the location for storage of the application sandbox.

also be used as an update vehicle for ThinApp application packages. This operation would allow for a mass update of application packages along with a desktop recompose operation. The only caveat of this approach is that the administrator will be combining operating system recompose events with application updates. Administrators should compare the frequency of application updates with that of operating system updates and determine the

will require a software distribution solution for initial delivery to each individual user data disk. Once the package is distributed, AppSync can be used within the package as a pull mechanism to perform subsequent updates. A compromise can be achieved by using streaming mode for frequently updated applications while deploying less frequently updated applications into the operating system image or user data disk.

Data Disks to logically separate application and user storage from the operating system. By default, VMware ThinApp places the application sandbox in whatever location the %AppData% variable resolves to in the

user-specific settings stored in the sandbox and maintain these through a refresh of the operating system. Administrators can choose to redirect My Documents to a storage location or allow that user data to also

Methods for Providing Persistence,

mechanism of folder redirection or roaming profiles for the location of application settings.

Figure 4. VMware View Composer



Integration Scenarios

This section reviews the components utilized to build two scenarios that illustrate the concepts of integration between VMware View and ThinApp. After a review of the components and requirements, the tasks with

VMware View Evaluator’s Guideof the base VMware View infrastructure and for details on packages and deployment of application with VMware ThinApp.

VMware View and ThinApp integration utilizes the following infrastructure and components:

On the infrastructure side, the following components are utilized:



The remainder of this document will provide the necessary setup and configuration information to configure the following common scenarios which illustrate the combination of operating system, application, and user profile virtualization to deliver a user driven experience that is easily manageable for the IT organization.

INITIAL SETUP REQUIREMENTS

Group for each Scenario and test user accounts.




Directory shares with the appropriate permissions for the following locations.

share that will house virtualized applications that are streamed at run-time to View desktops. This share

users to minimize administrative support. Ie. \\FileServer\ThinApps

2. The Profiles share which will house roaming profiles. Ie. \\FileServer\Profiles

3. The Home share which will

directory. Ie. \\FileServer\Home




View Desktop VM.

desktop OS instance, which is joined to your domain.

to hold deployed ThinApp packages and populate with the virtualized application

that the application registration process can r un locally. *This file is included with the VMware ThinApp installation files.

7. From inside the virtual machine, open a command

release’, then shutdown VM and take a snapshot. Ie. Base

8. Power On the VM and install some Windows updates and optionally place additional ThinApp

ThinApps directory.

then shutdown VM and take an additional snapshot.




to allow for automated application registration of ThinApp packages.

registers packages from the remote and local ThinApp package locations.

packages to place in local and remote directories. See VMware ThinApp documentation for specifics of the Setup

packages to perform a Side-by-Side update. Ie. Mozilla FireFox, Mozilla

using AD groups to illustrate role based access to applications.



Scenario 1: Persistent Desktop with User Data Disk Configuration

This scenario will utilize a persistent desktop pool to illustrate application registration, the hybrid approach of using streamed and deployed ThinApp packages, and redirection of application settings and user data via an Active Directory based configuration. For detailed information about similar configuration options consult the VMware ThinApp Reference Architecture.

Disk based configuration to provide persistence.

Note:

SCENARIO 1 — PERSISTENT DESKTOP

Data Disk.

separate disk.

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Verify that the test user does not have Active Directory

configured.

object

configured.




ThinApp package.

8. Verify a hidden “Application Data” directory D:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data

Verify that the Application

between View Desktop OS refresh operations.

application. (ie. Microsoft Word) and make a change to the application. (ie.

Toolbar.)

Profile setting such as desktop background.

document noting that the location should default to the My Documents location now redirected to




allow you to choose a di!erent virtual machine snapshot.

discard all changes that users have made to the OS disk to restore it to its initial state.

Administrator 4 and select the correct pool.

update the image to the

schedule for task to start.

log o! or wait for users to log o!.

authorized the ThinApp packages for specific AD groups, remove a user from a group to reflect role based access to applications.

the View Desktop to verify updated image and persistence of the users customizations to application settings, user profile, and user data.



Scenario 2: Non-Persistent Desktop with Active Directory Configuration

of using streamed and deployed ThinApp packages, and redirection of application settings and user data via

maintain standardization of the operating system. For detailed information about similar configuration options

based configuration to provide persistence.

SCENARIO 2 — NON-PERSISTENT DESKTOP

using View Manager.

and Home directories utilizing fileshares created in the “Initial

to user profile properties in Active Directory

to user profile properties in Active Directory.




Edit AD GPO for Folder

Folder to the user’s home directory.

Edit AD GPO for Folder

Data to the user’s home directory.




the application registration process has integrated the ThinApp Packages. Ie. Verify FileType

entries

Test Applications.

remote ThinApp.

and 8 running together with no conflicts.




Package. (See Initial

See additional documentation for specifics of Side-by-Side updating.

2. Add the updated “Mozilla

and verify updated package.

Verify that the Application

between View Desktop OS refresh operations.

noting the name of the desktop.

application. (ie. Microsoft Word)and make a change to the application. (ie.

Toolbar.)

Profile setting such as desktop background.

document noting that the location should default to the My Documents location now redirected to




8. (Optional) If you authorized the ThinApp packages for specific AD groups, remove a user from a group to reflect role based access to applications.

9. Edit the image or choose

after first use’.

as the virtual machines are updated or re-created.

your changes from the previous section regarding application settings, userprofile, and user data.

a way to incorporate new technologies like Virtual Desktops into your existing environment with little changes.

being “Stateless” where the OS, applications and user persistence are managed as separate containers. This allows for extremely flexible, agile but very end-user friendly desktop. Administrators will be able to seamlessly make changes to operating systems and applications without disrupting the end user experience.



Conclusion

The previous task based scenario’s are simple to configure but provide guidance on how to deliver a personalized user experience in the desktop while increasing the e"ciency of managing the operating

just the operating system but also the ThinApp packages as this provides further e"ciency into the process of managing desktops. While these scenarios provide a mock-up of an initial environment, the design and testing process should be driven by the specific use cases of your organization and the workflow of your IT department.

About the Authors

Aaron Black is a Senior Technical Marketing Manager at VMware, focusing primarily on developing technical content to aid in the evaluation and implementation of VMware ThinApp technology. Aaron’s background includes roles as a systems engineer and solutions consultant in the Technical Services organization. Before

Paul Weiss is a Senior Systems Engineer at VMware working with Enterprise customers in the South East. He has worked with VMware products for many years. He has worked as a VMware Specialist at a Premier VMware Partner, a Senior Systems Architect with a primary focus on large Sun environments, and as a Sun

War veteran.


VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.comCopyright © 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed athttp://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Item No: VMW_09Q4_IG_ViewThinApp_EN_P26_R1

Resources

VMware ThinApp Deployment Guide http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1098

VMware ThinApp Streaming Information Guide http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10027

www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10053

VMware ThinApp Blog VMware ThinApp employees regularly post and participate on the VMware ThinApp blog site http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/

VMware ThinApp Product Documentation http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/thinapp_pubs.html

VMware View Manager Evaluator’s Guide www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10082

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/resources/vmware-view-reference-architecture.pdf

VMware View 4 and ThinApp Integration Guide · 2012. 7. 20. · VMware ThinApp allows IT...

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