Microsoft Application Virtualization Dashboard

Published: March 15, 2010

About the Application Virtualization Dashboard

The Microsoft® Application Virtualization Dashboard helps you monitor virtualized software applications across your organization. The dashboard’s built-in charts, gauges, and tables let you track any APP-V dataset in near-real time, so you can easily stay on top of the usage, health, and compliance of all your virtualized applications.

The App-V Dashboard is designed and built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as the application platform by using Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5/4.6.  

Key Benefits

Benefits of the dashboard include:

• Actionable information out of the box. The dashboard comes with a wide range of valuable, built-in reports like top 5 applications used, top 5 users, applications never used, application usage for a specific user, system utilization, and many more.
• Near-real-time access to key information. The graphical dashboard lets customers view any App-V dataset in near-real time.
• Easy to build and configure. The dashboard’s wizard-based tools let customers easily create new dashboards in minutes. 
• Easy to customize. The dashboard can easily be customized to meet the needs of different departments and other groups. Any data set in the Microsoft Application Virtualization database can be presented on the dashboard, in chart, gauge, and table formats.  
• Flexible & interactive. Users can easily filter data and create ad hoc, custom views. Filters allow users to quickly drill down from high-level to more specific data.

Microsoft Application Virtualization Dashboard

Today, I am happy to announce immediate availability of Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 Beta. At TechEd EMEA we announced our commitment to ship the next version of App-V in H1 2010.  In March of this year, as part of the MDOP 2009 launch, we indicated that the development of App-V 4.6 was underway.  Today, we have reached a major milestone and are a step closer to our goal.

This will be the first version of App-V to support both x64 and x86 Windows platforms.  The primary focus of this release is to enable App-V to take advantage of 64-bit Windows platforms including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  We’ve also made some improvements in the App-V Sequencer such as simplifying the workflow for creating virtual applications and adding the ability to sequence true 64-bit applications, a first to market!  For customers running Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can also use App-V 4.6 Beta and take advantage of the support for Office 2010, 64-bit platform support and additional features in the release.

The Official MDOP Blog : App-V 4.6 Public Beta now available for download!

User Profiles on Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services

New White Paper on Hyper-V and SQL Server Consolidation at Microsoft

A new white paper on how Microsoft IT is combining Hyper-V and SQL Server has just been published. This comes from a team that provides thousands of SQL Server instances for internal applications. It includes a lot of interesting new information, including results of specific tests they performed to evaluate their options. This is something that I first saw on an internal-only presentation a few weeks back and I’m glad they posted it publicly. 

Here’s are the topics covered in this 26-page white paper:

• Executive Overview
• Introduction
• Considerations for Consolidation and Virtualization
  • Identification of Underutilized Servers
  • Server temperature
  • Consolidation Approaches
  • Virtualization Platform: WSRM vs. Hyper-V
• Implementation of the SQL Utility
  • Service Offerings
  • Identification of Candidates for Migration
• Attributes of System Quality
  • Availability and Business Continuity
  • Environmental Sustainability
  • Manageability
  • Performance
  • Predictability and Repeatability
  • Reliability
  • Scalability
  • Security
  • Monitoring
  • Supportability
• Conclusion

It also includes lots of interesting diagrams, including details on their specific hardward configuration. While not evident on the outline above, the white paper compares the options to use multiple instances of SQL without Hyper-V with having multiple virtual machines with single instances of SQL Server. Not only it looks at the different pros and cons, but also provides interesting performance information.

Download the white paper from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd557540.aspx

Filed under: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, Storage, Hyper-V

Jose Barreto’s Blog : New White Paper on Hyper-V and SQL Server Consolidation at Microsoft

This topic provides the Microsoft support policies for running currently supported versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in production in a hardware virtualization environment. This topic also provides recommendations for running Exchange Server in production in a hardware virtualization environment.

Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments

An old article from last year about an initiative to help with graphically intensive
applications. I have seen some forum posts that suggest this may be part of the longhorn-version
release of Citrix.

Excerpt:

As you may have heard, we have a project code-named Pictor. This project is derived
from work done with Boeing to improve the responsiveness of OpenGL three dimensional
drawing programs (CATIA). The Boeing/Citrix project (codenamed K2) was a large success
and proved not only that it was possible to greatly improve the performance, it actually
made sense to progress this software to a much wider audience.

I have my own history with what I would call graphics intensive applications. When
I was first working as a systems engineer reseller in Brisbane in 1997, our little
company was approached by a local engineering company. I believe they make custom
car parts and it was very interesting how they went about it. They were a fairly big
operation and very professional. Our salesman (as expected) over-promised what WinFrame
could do. The thoughts were that it should be possible to remote CAD images over ICA.
Somehow, I was supposed to get this working. It became pretty obvious that with no
amount of tweaking would it be possible to run decent CAD across ICA.

So, that was the common conclusion of most people between 1995 and now that it just
was not possible to do intensive graphics remoting. The exception being programs being
designed this way from ground up (like 3D games).

Now, a group a Citrix has proven it possible to remote existing applications without
change. It is not just a demo, it is a working system being used at Boeing. In this
case, the hype actually understates the possible reality.

The reason I’m writing this is to drum up some interest in Pictor. First, I want you
to know it exists. Second, I want you to tell everyone that you want it (if you want
it). If you stay silent, there is a good chance that Citrix will focus on other items
on the agenda.

If you prefer, leave me a comment and I’ll forward it to the relevant people.

If the project goes ahead in the near term, it will most likely be based out of Sydney,
Australia. I know one of the core developers and I’m sure he’d love to hear what you
have to say.

Project
Pictor at Jeff Muir

REDMOND,
Wash. — July 17, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced it has completed the acquisition
of Softricity Inc., a leading provider of application virtualization and dynamic streaming
technologies. Virtualization is a key technology for reducing the cost and complexity
of IT management, and the addition of Softricity is another step in Microsoft’s ongoing
strategy to make virtualization more broadly accessible and affordable for customers.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Microsoft
Completes Acquisition of Softricity: Application virtualization and streaming functionality
added to Microsoft’s virtualization and management offerings..