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Category Archives: ThinApp

Hullabaloo About Application Layering in VMware Horizon Mirage

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By Tina de Benedictis, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, End-User Computing, VMware

What is the hullabaloo about application layering in VMware Horizon Mirage? Application layering allows you to

  • Create different application layers for different sets of users, such as a specific department or job role
  • Easily update an application layer and then distribute the update to all users assigned to that application layer
  • Include in an application layer both natively installed applications and virtual application packages created with VMware ThinApp
  • Isolate application layers from the base layer, which contains the operating system

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Horizon Mirage 4.0 is now available

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By Aaron Black, EUC Product Manager for Mirage & ThinApp

We are happy to announce that as of today, March 4th 2013, Horizon Mirage 4.0 is generally available through MyVMware.  This is the first time that we’ve launched a Mirage release straight from VMware’s product portal and now we can also provide 60 day eval’s as well. The licensing for the Horizon Suite is fully supported now along with legacy Mirage license files.  This is an exciting release that introduces a number of new features and capabilities, most notable of which is application layering.  There will soon be a blog post that explains this functionality in detail, but for right now just know that Mirage can now combine the efficiency and standardization of a single OS layer with the flexibility of multiple application layers to literally put together a fully modularized desktop for enterprise desktop users.  This is a huge win for IT to be able to mandate a supported OS configuration along with the IT managed applications necessary for a single user, a group of users, or an entire organization.  This can be done while still allowing and supporting the realities of user created data, settings, and applications.  The fully managed desktop has arrived in a form factor that works for the user and for IT !

Since Mirage is one of the newcomers to the Horizon Suite and EUC we will be regularly publishing blog material that covers features, how-to info, interesting tidbits of technical content, and guidance for common use cases and successful implementations.  But don’t wait for the blog – get hands on experience now as there is no substitute for spending time with the technology.  I highly recommend the Reviewer’s Guide as the place to start to guide your first experience for installing and evaluating Horizon Mirage.

Start here . . Reviewer’s Guide

I’ve included some links to our documentation and evaluation below for your convenience as well.  We have an ambitious roadmap for Horizon MIrage so I welcome your feedback and interaction to help ensure that our product plans line up with the capabilities that drive value and efficiency in your organization.  Please participate in our Mirage forum to communicate your organization’s needs and wants :)

ThinApp EOA – Where is it going? Nowhere!

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by Diana Tsao, Product Marketing, End-User Computing

Last week, VMware announced the Horizon Suite, a comprehensive platform for workforce mobility to connect users to their data, applications, and desktops. Along with delivering new features and functionality, we have streamlined the packages for the Horizon family of products.

Packaging changes include the End of Availability of VMware ThinApp and VMware View Enterprise.  Don’t worry – End of Availability does not mean End of Life!  EOA means the current packaging will be discontinued, but the functionality is still available. End of Life (EOL) means the product will no longer be offered nor be supported by VMware.

ThinApp is absolutely not going away as application virtualization is a core enabling technology for the Horizon Suite.  To that end, we have included it in ALL of the Horizon family products.

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Licensing for the Mobile Workforce: VMware Horizon Suite 1.0 Licensing

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By Tina de Benedictis, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, End-User Computing, VMware

vmware-horizon-suite-logo

Are you wondering about licensing for the new VMware Horizon Suite and each of its component bundles? Following is a quick guide to Horizon Suite licensing.

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VMware Dominates Reader’s Choice Award

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By: Ben Goodman, Product Line Marketing Manager, EUC Cloud Marketing

At VMware we take tremendous pride in our products and like any software company, we covet positive reviews from press and analysts. However, the real proof that we are building quality products that solve real customer problems is through happy customers. That is why we are extremely proud of the recent spade of reader’s choice award wins customers have selected VMware end-user computing products for in the December 2012/January 2013 issue of Virtualization Review.

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Virtualizing the VMware View Client using ThinApp

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By Joshua Spencer, End User Computing Specialist, VMware

Introduction

Over the years there has been much debate about which display protocol provides the best performance while being the most efficient. I think the debate is finally over, and the blog post you can find  here goes a long way toward ending it. Leveraging the PCoIP protocol and the PCoIP Secure Gateway Server, VMware is helping end users stay connected from anywhere, at any time, using any device they choose.

Challenge

We can think of connecting to a  VMware View desktop using PCoIP as a client/server application. The virtual machine, which resides in the datacenter, gets the VMware View Agent installed. Because PCoIP is completely host-side rendered, this agent acts as the PCoIP server. On the end point device, we install the VMware View Client, which serves as the PCoIP client. The PCoIP server (View Agent) encrypts and compresses display information and sends it down to the View Client where the display is rendered on the screen.

What this means is that the View Client has to be installed on every end point that will connect to a VMware View desktop. Installing the client is a simple process of connecting to a website and running the executable.

The client includes two drivers: one for  Virtual Printing and another for Advanced USB Redirection. Because of this, the View Client requires local administrative privileges for installation. While local admin privileges are not usually an issue on personal or IT-managed devices, I have seen a number of customers encounter situations where they cannot install the VMware View Client. VMware View is a highly adopted technology in the healthcare industry. Healthcare professionals often roam to multiple clinical sites throughout their network, and View provides a means of accessing a standard desktop workspace from any location. But what happens if he or she cannot install the View Client due to lack of permissions on a given PC? Likewise, I have seen this come up on public kiosk-like computers. For example, you are at a public library and you want to connect to your View desktop to get some work done. Library and other public-facing machines are often locked down, preventing the installation of any software, including the View Client.

Resolution

One solution to this problem is to leverage a simple, yet powerful, tool called VMware ThinApp. With ThinApp we can virtualize the VMware View Client software, allowing it to run on any Windows device regardless of privilege level. ThinApp will take all of the files and registry keys that make up the View Client and produce a single executable file.

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VMworld 2012: Introducing VMware Horizon Suite – The Integrated Platform for Workforce Mobility

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By Vittorio Viarengo, Vice President, Product Marketing, End-User Computing, VMware

As I said before, code rules!!!! Today I am super excited to introduce the alfa release of the VMware Horizon suite, the Platform for Workforce Mobility.

Last year at VMworld, we unveiled our vision for End User Computing and in May we showed progress across all axis of that vision, that is Desktop, Apps and Data, by shipping a new version of View, Horizon Application Manager and the beta release of Octopus for secure file syncing and sharing.

Since then, our engineering team has been very busy bringing these components together into a one, integrated and cohesive suite. It’s hard work, don’t try to do this at home (nor should you have to do it), but we believe it is the right thing to do in the long run.

The VMware Horizon Suite provides end user with a single place to get access to their apps, data and desktops and gives IT a single management console to manage entitlements policies and security.

Here is a rough demo I took from my laptop and iPad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqO97j3chGU

This alpha integrates both Horizon Application manager, the project formerly known as Octopus. It will also feature the HTML remoting technologies that we demoed last year as part of the AppBlast project. In this first release we will use the HTML remoting protocol to give user access to their View desktops from any browser but stay tuned for more exciting ways we are going to leverage this technology.

I am not sure if people caught this during the demo on stage, but we are also going to support the ability to entitle and access XenApp published apps using the Horizon Suite and client.

We expect the beta to be available later this year and I cannot wait to get this in the hands of our customers!

To see this and other blog posts by Vittorio Viarengo, visit Journey to The Cloud.

 

 

VMware ThinApp 4.7.2: Minor release, major new features for Horizon!

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By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, Enterprise Desktop, End User Computing, VMware

Do not let the three digits in the 4.7.2 release number fool you—the newly released ThinApp 4.7.2 has some exciting features that people have been asking for.

This new release of VMware ThinApp includes:

  • A mechanism for updating ThinApp packages in Horizon Application Manager
  • A new relink –h command to enable prior ThinApp packages for Horizon
  • RemoveSandboxOnStart, a new Package.ini parameter

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ThinApp streaming in Horizon? Yes!

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By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, Enterprise Desktop, End User Computing, VMware

Download mode used to be the only choice for ThinApp packages offered through VMware Horizon Application Manager. Now, with Horizon 1.5, ThinApp streaming mode is also an option.

ThinApp streaming mode is especially important for users accessing Horizon applications through VMware View stateless desktops.

How do you enable ThinApp packages for streaming mode in Horizon?

The Horizon Agent, not ThinApp, handles the enablement of ThinApp packages for streaming deployment mode in Horizon. When you install the Horizon Agent on an endpoint, the VMware Horizon Agent Configuration window allows you to select download or streaming deployment mode.

Horizon-Application-Manager-ThinApp-Streaming-Agent-Install

Streaming deployment mode is the default.

When you select download or streaming mode during Horizon Agent installation, it applies to all ThinApp packages for that endpoint.

Questions?

If you have more questions about ThinApp streaming mode in Horizon, see VMware ThinApp virtual application streaming in Horizon Application Manager. This Knowledge Base article answers the following questions and more:

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VMware ThinApp Factory is now Freely Available

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By Aaron Black, ThinApp Product Management, End-User Computing

I’d like to announce that VMware’s ThinApp Factory is now freely available on our VMware Lab’s website 

The ThinApp Factory is a virtual appliance that brings centralized administration and automation to the process of creating virtualized Windows applications with VMware ThinApp technology.  ThinApp Factory utilizes vSphere API's to spawn workloads that automatically convert fileshares of application installers into ThinApp application containers.  These workloads can be run in parallel to maximize throughput and increase ROI for virtualization projects.  Packagers and administrators can now utilize 'Recipes' during this packaging process. Recipes are simply small JSON files, which contain a redistributable blueprint of the customizations and optimizations necessary for packaging complex applications.  These recipes can be created and now exchanged freely with other customers via the ThinApp Packaging Community site.  We also introduce the concept of ‘Feeds’ with the Factory that allow administrators to subscribe RSS-style to a legitimized source for application installers from a Corp IT location or via a cloud-based service.

We have received very enthusiastic feedback from the group of partners and customers that field-tested this technology.  There is something magical about turning a directory full of MSI’s into ThinApp packages with just a few clicks in the ThinApp Factory web UI.  The integration with Horizon Application Manager also provides an expedient path to Horizon enable your applications and populate the Horizon Application Catalog. 

The release of this technology through our VMware Lab’s site allows us to expedite the process of distribution and focus more on gathering feedback and listening to how our customers define the technical and business value.  So I invite you to consume the technology and provide your feedback directly or through the ThinApp Factory discussion forum.  As this is a community supported technology we will be providing regular updates and video tutorials of the features below over the coming weeks.

Key Features:

  • Automates packaging  of application installers into virtualized Windows applications
  • Leverages vSphere,vCenter for automation of workloads to efficiently package 1000’s of applications
  • Provides and utilizes ‘Recipes’ as redistributable blueprints for application packaging
  • Provides a lightweight web UI with a dashboard for administrators to use for the entire workflow of packaging to distribution.
  • Enables administrators to import and edit existing ThinApp projects and modify package.ini, registry, and file settings through the web UI.
  • Integration with Horizon Application Manager application catalog for automated population of application metadata and deployment with the Horizon Windows Agent.

To get started . . .

  1. Visit the VMware Flings site to download the appliance.
  2. Visit the ThinApp Blog and Community for more technical details of the features.
  3. Visit the ThinApp Packaging Community and Discussion Forum to exchange application recipes and provide feedback in the forum.