Google has fleshed out its strategy for Chrome OS, an operating system which will only run web applications and will offer no local storage directly. The hardware will be tightly controlled to ensure the OS performs well, which means devces will use solid state disks and specific wireless network adapters.

The local storage will only be used to cache data, so that users can work offline. When they are connected, Chrome OS will synchronise local data with cloud storage.

Google will try to provide an operating environment analogous to Windows and other desktop OSs for web applications. This means web applications will be able to access graphics accelerators, mutli-core architectures and multimedia peripherals like cameras, speakers and microphones - just like normal desktop software. In fact, the whole operating system is optimised for cloud computing.

The neat thing about Google's appraoch is that any web application will run, even something like Office Live, created by Microsoft.

Many of Computacenter's customers remain on Windows XP and it was dificult to make a compelling business case for moving to the Vista operating system.  This has presented an opportunity for customers to define their desktop strategy and evaluate alternatives to the Fat Client approach.  These projects are often referred to as Next Generation Desktop or the Desktop of the Future.

Computacenter have hosted scores of workshops with customers from all sectors.  From these workshops, we capture customer requirements and have identified a common set of requirements as to what the Future Desktop Platform needs to achieve.  These can be summarised in four categories;

1)  Reducing TCO.  Customers need an easier to support desktop, where tasks are automated, user settings maintained and avoid at desk support.  Many customers are looking at solutions that avoid future desktop refresh visits or minimise the impact.

2) Power Management.  Green issues are in vogue, especially in local government organisations.  As well as identifying devices that have lower power consumption, customers require the tools to automate and manage the power down of devices.  These solutions often have the most attractive ROI of any desktop related project.

3)  Flexibility.  This is both a business and user requirement.  Businesses want the flexibility to rapidly deploy standard images to new groups of users.  This is particularly common in the financial services sector, with mergers and acquisitions.  Organisations are looking at mechanisms to provide desktops remotely to off shore users, for Business Continuity solutions and to thrird parties, such as contractors and partners.  End Users are becoming increasingly IT literate and need to access business resources from home and in some forward thinking organisations, on non corporate devices.

4)  Security.  Organisations want to break the links between the device and the data and host all data centrally.  This is particularly important for mobile users, where the data should not be held on a device that is easily lost or stolen.  In blue light organisations, end users need to access multiple desktops with different security levels from a single physical device.

The common technologies to meet these business drivers are Windows 7, Desktop Virtualisation, Application Virtualisation and Thin Client Hardware. 

Organisations are unlikely to meet all their customer requirements from a single infrastructure.  In a subsequent blog, we will discuss User Segmentation and tools that can be used to aid this process.

 

Ian Mapp

Technology Leader

Computacenter. 

This is the third part of my by three part blog and it looks like I might have to add another piece - meaning that this is really the third part of a four-part series...oops.

 

As mentioned in the previous two postings, we need to get applications working on Windows 7 and App-V: together. This means getting an application successfully deployed and running on an App-V client running on top of Windows 7.

 

This blog posting relates to the challenges facing administrators who have existing App-V packages (client versions 4.1 and 4.2) that were probably sequenced on Windows XP and who will need to migrate these packages to the App-V client 4.5. In fact, though the most recent client version of App-V is 4.5 CU1, we really should be planning for clients to deploy to version 4.6, which is expected to be released by Microsoft to production soon. Thus, I have tailored our results of the SFT package analysis to take client 4.6 issues into account as well.

 

With the updated release of Microsoft App-V 4.5 (and also relating to the update CU1 and 4.6 BETA), there have been a number of significant architectural changes that impacted how applications are sequenced. As a result, the sequencing practices are now different for versions for App-V 4.2 and later versions. As included in the release notes of App-V 4.5, there are now several core components which may generate application compatibility issues with App-V applications including:

 

·               .NET Installation Components

·               Microsoft Internet Explorer Components

·               Microsoft MSI Installer Redistributables

·               Core Operating System (OS) components

·               Installation artefacts (settings left-over from MSI Installation processes)

 

In addition to these issues, it appears that empty directories (or folders) that are captured as part of the sequencing process are causing the App-V VFS to crash on certain clients. We have not fully analysed this issue yet, however I've included the results for our AOK "Empty Directory Check" Plugin for illustrative purposes: 

 

 

 

I am really surprised by the results. And, by means of qualifying the results, this is really a preliminary analysis of these App-V SFT file types. The AOK Plugins may need to be refined or seriously modified based on some real empirical evidence of client issues. That said, all of the manual testing of each of these "classes" of issues did match the AOK Plugin results.

 

I am going to spend some time analysing these results but it looks like the big issues are .NET and IE integration issues with a surprisingly high number of SFT packages with empty directories - something that is known to crash the Microsoft App-V client sub-system. Maybe some more thought is required here.

 

To help out with explaining what we are actually looking for in each App-V SFT file, I have included some brief "snippets" of the AOK Plugin descriptions included in this particular report. These descriptions should give you an idea of the things that we are looking for in each application package, and the reason why we are looking there.

 

Darwin Descriptors Registry Check

This AOK Plugin will analyse each selected and loaded application for the following Registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\extfile\shell\Open\command within each application package. If a Darwin descriptor registry key has been raised, and AMBER issues will be flagged by the AOK application.

 

Empty Directory Check

This AOK Plugin will analyse each loaded and selected application package and ensure that the loaded MSI or SFT file does not contain any non-system empty directory table entries. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these types of directories are detected in an application package.

 

Internet Explorer Integration Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are included as part of the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) redistribution package. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these files are detected in an application package.

 

Known DLL File Check Analysis

This AOK Plugin will analyse loaded and selected application packages for file level entries that match the list of Microsoft Known DLL's. The DLL's contained within this list will not support SxS isolation or any other Microsoft redirection technology. This AOK Plugin will generate AMBER results.

 

Microsoft .NET Sequenced Component Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are included as part of the Microsoft Windows .NET redistribution package. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these files are detected in an application package.  Due to the Operating System and .NET installation requirements, if older versions (.NET 1.X and 2.X) are included in a sequenced package then application runtime issues may arise.

 

Windows Installer Redistributable Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are included as part of the Microsoft Windows Installer redistribution package. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these files are detected in an application package.

 

Sequencer Registry Exclusion Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are not fully captured as part of the Microsoft App-V sequencing process. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these registry settings are detected in an application package.

 

The final blog posting in this series will analyse some of the results and attempt to match these results to real world scenarios and possible application compatibility issues.

 

Greg Lambert, Technology Director, ChangeBASE AOK

My iPod is fully loaded with the best of my collection to keep me spurred on, and the Pretenders' tune made me stop and think for a moment.

It's a productionline here at deployment central.

Engineer 1 connects bare-metal hardware and deploys the image from a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit server over the network.
The newly-installed Windows 7 image then calls to to the existing Altiris infrastructure to receive the core applications that have been packaged by the packaging team to silently install.

Engineer 2 and Engineer 3 (hey! that's me!) then take one of Engineer 1's new laptops and configure the installation for the user.  This aspect could have been better automated, but this is a pilot and the experiences and issues are being collated by the team and will be reviewed for the larger rollout in 2010.

As you can see, there's 4 roles that I've mentioned so far, but besides this, there's a deployment scheduler and a couple of build developers, a whole tranch of project people, a Sharepoint consultant and 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support that also need to be considered and communicated with. 

And all THIS for a couple of hundred PCs?  Yup... if you want approval for a full-scale rollout then you need a positive user experience in the pilot and that means investment.  Investing upfront and you get a slick rollout.  Try and do-it half-hearted and you get a rollout that stutters and dies and three years later you'll still have some "legacy" PCs out there.... somewhere....

So, here we are, on the cusp of deployment of Windows 7 when the first PCs will be deployed with the thin-build installed. 

There have been a couple of false-starts along the way as last minute technical issues have been resolved.  Co-existence was a last minute headache - What happens to users as they roam between Windows7 desktops, WindowsXP desktops and WindowsXP via Citrix?

Application testing and approval is always a major concern in a deployment.  In this case, the customer has decided to package a newer version of Lotus Notes for installation on laptops, and this has required rigourous testing.  The folder virtualisation was a worry for a day or so - what happens to the .ini file?   Where is the .id file going? and so on, but eventually thsi was ironed out too.

So here we are, all engines gunned and new PCs built.

Tune in next week for the update...

Nick Thompson
Senior Technical Consultant

As promised in my last blog, the focus of this post will be to review the results of our analysis on App-V application compatibility issues for Windows 7.

So, just to recap. We are analysing issues for existing App-V application packages that are running fine (i.e. well enough) on Windows XP with the App-V client and now need to be moved over to the Windows 7 desktop platform. The challenge here is trying to determine what sequenced applications under App-V will experience application compatibility issues when run on Windows 7.

 

So, not all of our standard AOK Windows 7 compatibility tests will be an issue. I have removed our installation logic and MSI Installer Custom Action checks from the results as they do not apply to this sample set as the source packages are not MSI files but Sequenced SFT files.

 

And, here are the Top 5 issues that you might encounter when migrating App-V sequenced packages are moved to Windows 7:

 

 

As you already know, Microsoft's App-V platform does not solve OS level compatibility issues, but solves application-level conflict issues. Just because an App-V application works great on Windows XP, unfortunately it does not mean that the sequenced package will work on  Windows 7 or Server 2008 platforms.

 

So upon reviewing these results, it looks like the most common issues will be legacy Help File (HLP files) and Hard-Coded References as potential configuration issues and the un-signed driver issues will definitely cause issues on Windows 7 64-bit platforms.

 

I will do a full review (and some aggregation) of these results in the final post in this series. To give some idea of the ideas behind each report, I have included a brief description of the some of the AOK Plugins that were included in the results:

 

Legacy Help File Scan

This platform compatibility Plugin scans application packages for Microsoft legacy Help file formats (HLP) and makes them compatible and usable from within Vista and Windows 7.

 

Hard Coded References Scan

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for hard coded values of folder paths. Any hard coded paths found that can be represented by an MSI Installer property will be replaced with the property.

 

Un-Signed Driver Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package and will identify each driver (DRV or SYS file) contained within the package that does NOT contain file level Signed or Certificate information. Due to the new requirements for Windows 7, all driver binaries must be digitally signed. If an application is installed on Windows 7 64-bit and it contains unsigned drivers, then the application will fail to load that driver and the application may fail to execute or behave unexpectedly.  

 

Legacy Control Panel Applet Scan

As part of the platform compatibility scan for Windows Vista, all legacy Control Panel Applets (CPL files) are highlighted. These highlighted control panel applets should be removed or upgraded to Vista compatible versions.

 

TCP-IP WFP - IPX-SPX Scan

The Windows Vista networking stack has been completely rewritten. Instead of the dual stack model that exists in Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 (to support IPv4 and IPv6), it implements a new architecture whereby there is a single transport and framing layer that support multiple IP layers. This means that specific legacy protocols are no longer supported. In this case, the now deprecated SPX/IPX protocol.

 

Greg Lambert, Technology Director, ChangeBASE AOK

I've been looking at Windows 7 RC1 for a couple of months and it seems OK.. With the final product available, should we all upgrade? Here are my tips on upgrading.

1. Check your desktop PC spec. Vista-ready machines should be fine, but if you are running Windows XP, you may have compatibility issues. Before you do anything, though, backup your system drive (normally c:) onto a USB hard disk drive. If thiogs go badly wrong, you can restore your old operating system from this backup.

2. Windows 7 will support a lot of stuff out of the box, when it is first installed, but after installation, you may find some things stop working.

3. If things are not quite right make sure you have the latest ATI or Nvidia graphcs card drivers  from their respective web sites. Similarily, Creative Labs and most PC card manufacturers will have download sites. You should search for Windows 7 drivers.

4. Now check your PC peripherals. The keyboard, mouse and monitor should work fine, but again it is worth checking if the manufacturer has updated river software for Windows 7. You will also need to ensure that you have the latest device drivers for you printer and scanner and whatever else plugs into your PC..

5. Finally, older applications and PC games may be unable to run on Windows 7. Unlike with Vista, it is possible to run older software. Check out XP Mode, which uses a Virtual PC-to run XP on top of Windows 7.

It has been on the cards for some time, but this week (22^nd October) sees the launch of Windows 7. In the months leading up to the launch, Microsoft has made substantial efforts to ensure that existing applications work with Windows 7. However in the corporate space the company recognises that the biggest barrier to Windows 7 adoption is still application compatibility.

 

So how ready are applications for Windows 7? The Win 7 operating system is built on the same kernel as Vista. As a result, issues that apps have with VISTA will also be issues with Windows 7. ISV's have worked hard to get their software running on VISTA so there are fewer problems than when it was first launched. However, in-house developed applications may well have issues on Win 7 unless they have been upgraded over the last two years or so to address these problems. And of course the extra features of Windows 7 do add some extra compatibility issues

 

So let's look at some hard numbers. ChangeBASE and our partners have conducted over 20 Windows 7 compatibility assessments for organisations, each with thousands of applications.

 

Our findings show that around 20%-40% are ready for Windows 7 and that 60-80% of a typical application portfolio will need some remediation to meet the requirements for being deployable to Windows 7. Around 5% of applications have an issue that needs to be addressed by the software vendor or programmer

 

There is of course a scale of problems with application compatibility - from the extreme of a product just not installing, to the other end of the spectrum where a particular printer driver may not work when the particular printer is not used in the organisation. So the 5% of apps that have an issue could in some cases still be deployed.

 

So there is some good news to take out of this. Technologies from companies like ChangeBASE can automatically fix most of the compatibility issues an application has in minutes. As a result it is now possible to get 95% or more applications running on Windows 7 with very little effort.

 

Comprehensive compatibility assessment reports will enable organisations to ensure that their application portfolios and packages are fully ready for the transition to Windows 7, as well as being compliant with Microsoft and industry standards. This is important given the addition of security features. Automated fixing technologies solve most of these issues.

 

In summary, organisations shouldn't fear the migration process. Whilst migrating to Windows 7 could present a number of application compatibility problems, these issues can be quickly addressed, and problems automatically resolved if the right steps are taken. If organisations prepare correctly, they can start to quickly reap the benefits of Windows 7, without suffering the pain that many previous migrations have caused.

 

Greg Lambert, Technology Director, ChangeBASE AOK

Steve Ballmer is at Microsoft's London HQ in Victoria today to explain to customers, resellers and system integrators, why they need Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.

 

He says BitLocker disk encryption, application and desktop virtualisation and central policy management can all help to reduce IT admin costs.But users were more interested in what the he plans to do to simplify and lower licensing costs.

 

The room erupted in applause after one delegate at today's event quizzed Ballmer on the fine print in MS licensing, which could trip up unwary users. Ballmer says he has no plans to simplify licensing. "Customers want simplification to reduce costs; our shareholders want simplification without price decreases." Someone may choose a processor based licence for SQL Server, while another may decide on a server-based client access licence. Both offer lower costs depending on how they are deployed. So Ballmer intends to continue giving users this choice. He says he will accept feedback from users, if there are specif customer issues related to licensing that users are facing. "Email me at sballmer@microsoft.com,"