Age of Virtualization | Hyper-V, App-V, Virtual PC…

 These days it is hard to find useful information, especially if you want to find a lot materials in one place. That’s why I spent some time searching through the web to find interesting and useful information regarding virtualization. So I hope you will find useful my list of free virtualization related books.

To summarize, in my list there are 8 free books (with download links included):

1. Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, Second Edition
2. Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2
3. Virtualization for Dummies – HP special edition
4. The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management  
5. The Essentials Series: Virtualization and Disaster Recovery
6. The Shortcut Guide to Virtualization and Service Automation
7. The Shortcut Guide to Selecting the Right Virtualization Solution
8. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Insider’s Guide to Microsoft’s Hypervisor (this book was free for few weeks and now you can read it on Google)

Ok, so let’s see brief introduction to all books:

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, Second Edition

This is the book for IT professionals who want to learn more about the latest Microsoft virtualization technologies, including Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and Microsoft’s private and public cloud computing platforms including Windows Azure.

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2

This book is targeted primarily at Windows server administrators who are responsible for hands-on deployment and day-to-day management of Windows-based servers for large organizations. Windows server administrators manage file and print servers, network infrastructure servers, Web servers, and IT application servers. Book contains Chapter about Hyper-V, RDS and VDI.

Virtualization for Dummies – HP special edition

The purpose of this book is to provide you with an introduction to the subject so that you can understand its promise and perils — and create an action plan to decide whether virtualization is right for you, as well as how to move forward with implementing it should you decide it is right for you. This book will help you sort out the hope from the hype and give you tools to feel confident in making your virtualization decisions.

Note** – following 4 books are available to download from same site nexus.realtimepublishers.com on which you can find a lot of free books. You just need to register with them and that’s it (Everything is free)

The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management  

The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management is designed to help IT staff better manage the complexity of virtualization. This guide begins with a discussion of the business value of virtualization and how organizations can benefit from this technology. Next, details related to virtualization approaches and challenges related to managing heterogeneous environments will be discussed. Based on these issues, the focus will turn to ways in which IT organizations can address all of these issues. Details include monitoring and optimizing virtualization performance, developing policies and processes, and automating data center operations. Finally, a list of important features is developed that IT organizations should look for in a virtualization management solution.

The Essentials Series: Virtualization and Disaster Recovery

The Essentials Series: Virtualization and Disaster Recovery discusses the benefit of virtualization in providing for business continuity though data replication and protection, allowing a more cost-effective solution for high availability and disaster recovery.

The Shortcut Guide to Virtualization and Service Automation

The intent of this guide is to assist the smart enterprise with understanding virtualization’s fit into the rest of the IT environment. A major part of that fit is in aligning the promise of virtualization technology with the automation benefits associated with virtualization management. What you’ll find in reading this guide is that notwithstanding what technologies and technological improvements virtualization brings to the table, there are a set of management enhancements that also arrive. Those enhancements are a function of the levels of automation that naturally bundles with the move to virtualization.

The Shortcut Guide to Selecting the Right Virtualization Solution

The intent of this guide is to assist the smart enterprise with understanding virtualization’s fit into the rest of the IT environment. A major part of that fit is in aligning the promise of virtualization technology with the automation benefits associated with virtualization management. What you’ll find in reading this guide is that notwithstanding what technologies and technological improvements virtualization brings to the table, there are a set of management enhancements that also arrive. Those enhancements are a function of the levels of automation that naturally bundles with the move to virtualization.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Insider’s Guide to Microsoft’s Hypervisor

Hyper-V is one of the top virtualization products, and this practical guide focuses on the essentials of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Written by the Microsoft team behind the Hyper-V product, this book shows you how to perform key virtualization scenarios, such as server consolidation, software and development, and a dynamic data center and demonstrates how Hyper-V can be used to reduce cost and eliminate the complexity of a server infrastructure by consolidating workloads to a small number of machines. In addition, the material addresses using DPM, and SCOM with VMM in order to maintain and manage Hyper-V environments.

I hope you’ll find some interesting stuff in those books, and of course, feel free to comment if you know maybe more free virtualization books.

Announced on MDOP blog  – Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6, including App-V for RDS, is now publicly available as part of MDOP 2010. You can download MDOP 2010 via Microsoft Volume Licensing Site. As I wrote before App-V brings following new features:

• App-V 4.6 is now compatible with 64-bit Windows client and server platforms
• App-V 4.6 saves on SAN storage space by using a cache of virtualized applications that is shared across all your VDI desktops
• App-V 4.6 and SCCM 2007 R2 SP2 now deliver virtual applications faster
• More.

If you are developer and would like to try out library that provides a set of functions for emulating a file system and a system registry for an application, ckeck out BoxedApp SDK. It is a great way for creating virtual files, fake registry entries, keys and values.

With BoxedApp SDK you have following features:

If you are wondering when to use this SDK see some examples below:

 -  When an application must run properly even if it doesn’t have the right to write to the system registry and to the file system

 -  When an application uses DLL and files, which are to be kept secure, and because of that you can’t save them to disk

 -  When an application needs ActiveX but doesn’t have an installer because it must run instantly, without the installation (for example, when it’s a portable application that runs from a flash card)

Of course a lot more use cases are available, and if you would like to try it for yourself download the demo here (19 MB)

One day I ran into one very useful and nice web site where you can find a lot of virtualized applications for download. Check it out here, and grab your virtual appliacations. On that site you can find applications for all kind of different purposes:

• Audio/Video
• Financial
• Games
• Internet
• Messaging
• Productivity
• Programming and a lot more…

So maybe you are asking yourslef, what do I do with those applications, or what are benefit of using virtualized applications. Well first using virtual appliactions can be very useful for you and your precious computer:

• Virtual applications are never installed on your OS, so they do not slow down your system (e.g big registry etc…).
• Virtual applications are in their own virtual bubble so they do not have incompatibility issues with other appliacations.
• Your registry is a lot smaller when using virtualized applications.
• Managebility of virtual applications is just great and easy.
• Virtual applications are in one way portable applications, because you can grab them on your usb key and carry them around without need for installing them.
• And a lot more benefits.

Ok, after we mentioned few benefits of virtual applications, how can you launch them on your computer, after downloading from this site? Well there is one thing you need to have and that is Microsoft Applications Virtualization Client – one tiny software which you can download as part of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. Of course if you  wanna use your applications with APP-V management server you will need to change one parameter in OSD file of application package, and that parameter is servername. If you don’t have management server then you can use App-V standalone mode described nicely here and here.

Today many companies implemented some version of Sharepoint as their internal document management system and overall document repository system. Sharepoint is great and easy to use, and companies can really benefit of Sharepoint’s use, so in some point they decided to use sharepoint site for various kind of documents. That’s really great, and everything work fine for those kind of documents if users have Office installed locally. They simply open Internet explorer, type sharepoint url and click on document they need. Of course, because everything is installed localy, when user click on, for example, xml document it is automaticly opened with Microsoft Office Infopath. Same rule applies to Word documents. But what when users are using virtualized version of Office applications? Well then the thing get little more complicated. When Office is virtualized with Microsoft Application Virtualization and then streamed to a client, every file association is discovered properly, so with virtualized Word, users normaly open .doc or .docx documents if these documents are placed somewhere on users disk. But if those documents are placed on Sharepoint site, then when user click on xml or .docx document,  SharePoint is looking for ProgID’s “Sharepoint.OpenDocuments.*” which are not part of file association, but are part of SharePoint COM objects. So when you try to open those documents with virtualized Infopath or Word you will get error that you don’t have appropriate application for opening documents, or something similar. But luckily things can be fixed.

How can this be fixed?

So if you have Sharepoint site and virtualized Office(Infopath or Word), you should do the following:

1. Sequence Infopath (Word) by best practices, but then in shortcut phase of sequencing include shortcut to Internet Explorer (It is easy, on application phase just click Add new application and then browse to executable of local Internet Explorer.)
2. Install Sharepoint services support from the Office CD. You can find this by normally installing Office and then in Office Tools subtree only check on Sharepoint services support.

If you do all that, opening document from sharepoint site should normally work.

It is really great when someone makes free tool which is useful for everybody. One of those tools is new Application Virtualization tool released by Login Consultants. Everybody can download tool for free here.  Simple said, with this tool installed you can carry all your virtual applications, and then import them easily. Read more about the tool here.

Great news for everyone working with App-V has been announced few days ago – App-V 4.6 beta is available for download. It is great news for many reasons but maybe most noticable because of:

• Support for 64 bit clients
• Ability to virtualize 64 bit applications.

So if you can’t wait to try it out, hurry up to Microsoft Connect and download your App-V 4.6 beta.

Duke Nukem 3D goes virtual or ‘How to virtualize Duke Nukem with Microsoft Application Virtualization’

Have you ever wondered is it possible to virtualize 3D games with Microsoft Application Virtualization? Well, the answer is simple yes. And what about the process of virtualizing? Well whole process is rather simple, as I will show post on this post. Of course, I know that virtualization of Duke Nukem 3D is not great bussiness example but it shows possibilities of application virtualization. Also, it is good example to show in your Microsoft Application Virtualization demos, because process of virtualizing is fast and easy. Ok, so let’s see how to virtualize legendary Duke Nukem. As Duke would say “Let’s rock” :

• First thing you need to do is download Duke Nukem setup. Download is available here (size=1.4MB).
• After that, place setup file on dekstop or anywhere else.
• Run Microsoft Application Sequencer and enter package information as shown on following picture.

• Click Begin Monitoring button, and then create folder or browse to previously created folder. Make sure you create that folder on Q drive and also make sure that folder is empty, and name of the folder is in 8.3 naming convenction. So that means that name of folder can me 8 letters long and after that dot and then three letters. For example Duke.001. After that you are ready, and Sequencing Wizard minimizes automaticly.
• Now install Duke Nukem as you normaly would, but when asked for installation folder, browse to previously created folder on Q drive. So installation wizard appears, you click next and then browse to folder as shown in following pictures.

• After installation is done, launch Duke Nukem by clicking on shortcut placed on dekstop. Everything should work fine. After that quit game, and bring Sequencer wizard forward, and click Stop Monitoring.
•  On “Add aditional files to Virtual File System” click Next.
• On “Configure applications shortcuts”  remove Duke Nukem internet explorer shortcut because you do not need that.
• On ” Launch Applications”, Launch Duke Nukem 3D. If everything is fine, you will see start screen of Duke Nukem 3D like in the following picture. After you tried that everything work, close the game.

• Now in Deployment tab of Application Virtualization Sequencer enter name of your management server, choose protocol and enter name of folder in which you will place saved package. Note that the name of that folder is not folder on Q drive but some folder you create on desktop or anywhere else. That will be the folder you copy on management server in Content folder.

• Copy folder in which you saved your package to Content folder on management server. On management server go to Application Virtualization Management console  and import application as following picture shows.

• To import application package browse to content folder and find Duke Nukem package. Choose .sprj file. New General dialog appear on which just click Next. In Published Shortcut phase check “ Publish to User’s dekstop” and click Next. On File Associations click Next. On Select Groups, select one group in which are users that you want give rights to use and launch Duke Nukem virtual application.
• After that virtual Duke Nukem should appear in management console along with other virtualized applications.
• The final step is done on Application Virtualization client computer, on which you just need to log on or refresh App-V tray icon. Of course you must me logged with appropriate user(user belonging to previously choosed AD group).

• After refresh or log on, application shortcut appears on dekstop and you  can lounch Duke Nukem 3D as you normaly would. Just play and enjoy. J

Finaly just to note what kind of OS i used and some other technical informations. Well in this scenario i used one notebook on which is installed Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V enabled. I created four virtual machines. Two Windows Xp (Sequencer and App-V client), two Windows Server 2008 (App-V Management server on one and on the other one Domain Controller). Also i joined later one physical Windows Vista computer on which I installed App-V client.  I joined user to AD domain and then just refreshed with App-V tray icon. On Vista computer also everything worked just fine.

So that’s the process of virtualizing Duke Nukem 3D. It is rather simple, and it is good for some demoing of Microsoft Application Virtualization solution.

One day I was doing demo of all six MDOP products, and 5 minutes after demo my Hyper-V virtual machine suddenly paused and my screen froze. What’s the deal with that, I was asking myself? So if something similar happened to you, and you were asking yourself the same question, the answer lies within low disk space. Anyway free space on hard disk for your virtual machine must not be lower than 200 mb, and if it does your virtual machine goes into PAUSED CRITICAL state. So if you have important presentation and demo, check your free space, and check it after you start virtual machine.

Especially if you plan to demo application virtualization, and one of demo scenarios is installing and virtualizing big applications. Then your vhd file could become bigger and you could run out of free space. And you don’t want that happen to you during demo.

Application Virtualization is getting more popular every day. Popularity means that a lot of people are using it, so they are trying to be more and more productive, and for that use, they develop some cool and useful tools. Here I  will mention few great tools developed by Login Consultants. All tools are completely free, you just need to register or login. After you login, there are five App-V tools available for download:

• App-V (Softgrid) Client Setup Kit

By using this tool you can easily create vb scripts for deploying App-V client to end user dekstop.

•  App-V Migration Tool 1.1.1

With this tool you can convert your automated applications setups to App-V Virtualized Applications, with little amount of user intervention.

•  App-V OSD Editor- As the name of this tool says, you can edit OSD files more easily. This can be extremely useful because in editing OSD files you can easily make mistake and then forget where the mistake is.
• App-V Add-on ADM v1.0  - The tool for configuring client settings for App-V for Windows Desktop Client.
• App-V Client Diagnostic and Configuration Tool

Really great and useful tool for getting the right diagnose out of your virtual applications.

With all of these tools in your ‘hands’ you can really solve your App-V problems more faster and easier. In my future blogs I will explain all of these tools with more details.

Cheers!