Toggle and Tangible Mechanism: Real Time Delivery

Challenges Around  

Desktop and application virtualization, many organization have also found this transformation to be a costly and complicated one. The challenges businesses continue to face include: Slow and Painful Application Install and Maintenance, means that applications need to be packaged, delivered, updated, and retired on a regular basis, which can be slow, unreliable, and painful.

Disk version control and image management sprawl creates nightmares for IT. Complex Methods and Outmoded Architecture, without much innovation in application packaging, upkeep, and user management, IT tends to be sure of on habits that require thorny processes and archaic architecture to manage modern heterogeneous infrastructures.

Supporting hundreds, or even dozens of apps can be resource and time demanding, and incur high infrastructure expenses. Without insight into how users and apps are acting, helpdesk request can spiral out of control.

Multiple Solutions from Multiple Vendors, using many solutions from many vendors, with many consoles, to manage and monitor apps and users becomes an enormous burden on IT.

Solution for Challenges

App Volumes resolve the complication by taking to next level and providing drastically faster application delivery, unified application and user management, while reducing IT costs,

VMware Application Containers -AppStacks, can be used to manage IT as per business logic, offering the business units with the specific applications they need from centralized baseline. Applications in AppStacks are offered from central location.

Following a principle one-to-many delivery scheme, multiple different AppStacks can be attached to a given virtualized platform either server or desktop, provisioning on demand with the applications required by a specific group of users on their profile. As users access the virtualized server or desktop, they seamlessly access the applications within the attached AppStacks.  

App Volumes fundamentally shifts how applications are installed, how user environments are managed, and gives IT a single vendor management solution that is unparalleled. Now, IT has an end-to-end approach to agile services delivery that boosts user productivity to help drive your business.

Highlights of the solutions

• Deliver Agile Services –Decoupling OS images and apps with App Volumes helps reduce the number of images
• Modern Architecture Enables Reliability –Provision applications faster, deliver context-aware user policy, and isolate apps as needed, enabling “follow-me” applications and user settings for a personalized and consistent user experience.
• Realize Savings in Infrastructure, Support, and Operational Costs - Support a truly “stateless desktop” with no trade-off between user experience and costs.
• Building block for JMP - The next-generation desktop and application delivery platform included in VMware Horizon Enterprise. JMP leverages Instant Clones, App Volumes, and User Environment Management technologies to untangle the operating system, applications, and user personalization.

Lowlights of the solutions

• App Volumes Manager – A Windows Server system used as the App Volumes Manager console for administration and configuration of App Volumes and assignment of AppStacks. App Volumes Manager is also used as a broker for the App Volumes Agents, for automated assignment of applications.
• App Volumes Agent – App Volumes software installed on all XenApp servers that receive AppStack volumes assignment. The App Volumes Agent runs as a service and utilizes a filter driver to handle application calls and file system redirects to AppStack VMDKs.
• AppStack Volume – A read-only volume containing any number of Windows applications. Multiple AppStacks can be mapped to an individual XenApp server. An individual AppStack can also be mapped to more than one XenApp server.
• XenApp – The XenApp server can be a physical server or a virtual server managed by VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V. In a XenApp environment, AppStacks are attached to the XenApp server for application execution. Because applications are located in the attached AppStacks, the XenApp server becomes a flexible, reusable building block

Integration with Citrix Xenapp

App Volumes provides clear gain in a Citrix XenApp environment. With the Integrated solution, App Volumes delivers the applications to the XenApp servers, and XenApp presents applications to users in the standard way, without end-user awareness of App Volumes.

Generic Operating System Images: App Volumes enables the creation of XenApp servers from a generic core operating system image, an image that does not have any applications specific to any business group on it. App Volumes handles the applications separately from the XenApp servers in AppStacks. Applications are provisioned to XenApp servers by attaching AppStacks to those servers, as the enterprise requires. By taking the generic operating system image and utilizing App Volumes to inject the necessary applications into it with AppStacks, that single generic XenApp server image quickly becomes a Finance server, a Development server, or a Human Resources server.

Minimized Application Updates: With App Volumes, IT staff members no longer need to perform redundant application installations and updates on multiple XenApp servers. They install and update the applications only on the single App Volumes AppStack. XenApp servers publish that one shared repository of applications to users. Multiple XenApp servers can share one AppStack. IT can quickly build out an implementation horizontally without risk of error because application updates are made a single time, in a single location, on one AppStack.

Reduced XenApp Server Maintenance with Applications Offloaded : By using App Volumes AppStacks for applications, the XenApp server image is focused on XenApp and the operating system. The nearly constant application maintenance on multiple XenApp server images is eliminated. With App Volumes as part of the solution, only one XenApp server image requires updating—for the operating system or XenApp itself.

Storage Reduction from Fewer XenApp Server Images : In a traditional Citrix model, Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) is utilized to manage OS images, with VMware vSphere? managing storage. Each XenApp server is built from a template customized for the use case it supports and requires its own operating system with the necessary applications installed on it. By adding App Volumes to the XenApp environment, the operating system and the applications can be decoupled. App Volumes allows IT to store separate application files and deliver them across many XenApp servers.

Updating XenApp Versions Is Easier: App Volumes improve a XenApp environment when updating XenApp itself? In a traditional XenApp implementation, to migrate to a new version of XenApp, IT must reinstall each application on every server. With App Volumes in a XenApp environment, migration to a new XenApp version can occur more quickly because applications are offloaded to AppStacks

Application Conflicts Handled More Efficiently: App Volumes and VMware ThinApp work well together to solve the problem of application conflicts. ThinApp packages isolate potentially conflicting applications from each other, which allows IT to place these packaged applications next to one another within a single AppStack.

.