Tag Archives: Application Layering

Any Desktop, Any Broker, Anywhere: Future-proofing Your Windows Desktop Deployment with Liquidware

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The world of Windows desktop deployment has become increasingly complex with so many options available in the market today. From traditional laptops and desktops, to virtual desktops deployed on-premises, or in the cloud using solutions like Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream, Nutanix Frame, Citrix Virtual Apps, Microsoft AVD, or Microsoft CloudPC – there are numerous choices to make.

However, choosing a deployment method also means choosing a broker and deciding whether to deploy on-premises or in the cloud. This can lead to vendor lock-in where your users’ profiles might be tied to a specific deployment method, making it difficult to move to another option. Moreover, you may not be able to move your applications from one deployment method to another, and the user experience might not be consistent across different deployment methods.

To address these issues, Liquidware offers a “Switzerland” approach to Windows desktop deployment with its ProfileUnity™, FlexApp™, and Stratusphere™ UX products. With these solutions, you can abstract your user’s profile and application deployment from the underlying OS and platform, making it easier to switch deployment methods without affecting user experience.

ProfileUnity abstracts the user’s profile from the OS with any deployment method, whether physical, virtual, or cloud based. By using ProfileUnity, you can future-proof your deployment options by putting your users under management with your existing deployment method. ProfileUnity’s portability engine ensures that the user’s profile can be saved to any storage medium, including SMB and cloud storage, and restored to any OS, of any version, on any platform.

FlexApp abstracts application deployment from the OS and platform, allowing you to take advantage of fewer images and pools to manage. By abstracting your applications with FlexApp, you can easily move to any new deployment method while keeping the same application delivery model. This ensures that your users have access to the same applications, regardless of the deployment method.

Stratusphere UX helps you monitor user experience on your existing deployment method and ensures that users get the same, or better, experience when you switch to a new deployment method. It continuously monitors your user’s experience to make sure you don’t unknowingly decrease user satisfaction.

In conclusion, with the current state of acquisitions and the evolving end-user computing market, it is essential to future-proof your Windows desktop deployment options. By using Liquidware’s ProfileUnity, FlexApp, and Stratusphere UX products, you can abstract the user’s profile and application deployment from the OS and platform, making it easy to switch deployment methods without affecting user experience. With Liquidware’s solutions, you can ensure that your users have a consistent and seamless experience regardless of the deployment method you choose.

FlexApp’s Unspoken Features: What are They?

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FlexApp technology is a popular tool used for application layering, virtualization and delivery. While some of its features are well-known, there are some that are overlooked and not talked about enough. In this blog post, we will explore some of the under-the-hood features of FlexApp and explain how they work.

AppData and HKCU Handling

One of the key features of FlexApp is its ability to handle AppData and HCKU. When an application writes into these areas, FlexApp has special handling for layering. This is because these paths are often used as part of the application’s normal install routine, or they may be written to by the packaging administrator during testing or setting default preferences. If these areas of the profile are captured into the layer and do not exist in the user’s profile, FlexApp will physically copy or write them into the user’s profile. This ensures that the user has the necessary read and write access to these areas of the profile going forward.

Corrective Profile Path Tattooing

Another important feature of FlexApp is corrective profile path tattooing. This refers to the practice of capturing the profile path of the packaging administrator and storing it in the layer. This can create issues when an application stores a path to a non-existent location in the HKCU’s registry. FlexApp will flag this kind of event during the packaging process so that on activation of the layer, the registry value that points to the non-existent path can be corrected and pointed to the user’s correct profile path.

Micro Isolation

Micro isolation is a feature of FlexApp that helps to handle conflicts between layers. While FlexApp is not a full-blown isolation technology like Microsoft App-V, it does have some light isolation between layers. This means that when a conflict occurs, each layer will be redirected back to its own version of files or registry. For example, if each layer has a different version of a DLL in a common location that would normally be a last virtual write wins scenario and could crash the application, FlexApp’s micro isolation feature will ensure that each layer has access to its own version of the DLL. Here is a quick demo of Micro Isolation visually that should help your understanding of the technology.

Session Isolation

Session isolation is a feature of FlexApp that allows for handling different applications for different users when working on multiuser systems like Citrix Virtual Apps or Microsoft AVD. This makes layering on multiuser systems extremely flexible. This feature has also been extended to on-boot applications, which I recently wrote about here.

In conclusion, FlexApp’s unspoken features are an important part of its overall functionality. These features ensure that the user has access to the necessary parts of the profile, prevent conflicts between layers, and make layering on multiuser systems more flexible. Understanding these features can help users get the most out of their FlexApp technology and improve the overall user experience.

Instant Application delivery with FlexApp 6.8.5 Cloaking

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Instantly delivering applications to users can be a challenge, as even FlexApps can take some time to activate. For instance, it may take 14 seconds for 15 FlexApps to become available. This can cause users to log in to their desktops before the application shortcuts for all 15 apps are ready to use.

To address this issue, we’ve introduced FlexApps on boot. However, the current implementation of FlexApps on boot has a small drawback: all FlexApps on boot are visible to all users logging in to the RDS host or desktop pool. This necessitates creating multiple pools to segment applications that are layered on boot. While this reduces image management, it increases the number of pools to manage, even if they come from the same image.

But with ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5, we have new technology that solves both image sprawl and pool sprawl. When you assign FlexApps on boot, you now have the option to cloak the FlexApps that a user is not entitled to at login. For instance, if you have two apps on boot, one for accounting and the other for marketing, both apps are layered into the OS on boot, so users don’t have to wait for layering to occur. During login, however, the marketing user won’t be able to see the accounting app, and vice versa.

In addition, we offer predictive block caching. FlexApps are typically streamed over the network, but it’s sometimes better to run the app from our block cache to speed up the user experience. However, downloading all the needed blocks can take time. With predictive block caching, we know what blocks are needed to achieve near-native speeds, eliminating the need to download all blocks while the user waits.

To summarize, we remove activation times (FlexApps on boot), launch times (block caching), download times (predictive block caching), reduce image management (using FlexApps), and reduce pools (FlexApps on boot with cloaking).

To accomplish this, first set up ProfileUnity as a Service. then enable the “Enable Cloaking for on-boot FlexApps” checkbox in ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5 when assigning FlexApps on boot. Then, in the normal login configuration, assign the relevant on-boot FlexApps to the appropriate users. This will ensure that users only have access to the applications they need, while reducing image sprawl and pool sprawl.

Overall, this approach simplifies application delivery and management while improving the user experience. Users can log in quickly and seamlessly access the applications they need, without being burdened by unnecessary apps or activation times.

ProfileUnity with FlexApp 6.8.5, Best Practices out of the box!

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Capturing applications with FlexApp can sometimes be challenging, and there are a few best practices that are critical to success. However, these steps can be time-consuming, and it’s easy to overlook important details. In some cases, this can lead to an unsuccessful deployment.

To simplify the process and ensure best practices are followed, ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5 now includes out-of-the-box tools and features to help streamline the application capture best practices.

First, FlexApp now includes a built-in runtime installer, which allows you to easily install all the necessary .NET and C++ runtimes on the packaging OS. This eliminates the need to track down individual runtimes from Microsoft, saving time and reducing complexity.

Second, FlexApp also includes a custom optimizer tool specifically designed for capture. This tool ensures that the capture OS is optimized for the capture process, with minimal extraneous activity or noise. This is especially important since you may not have access to VMware’s or Citrix’s optimizer tools, and different optimizer settings are required for capture OS versus end user images.

Finally, FlexApp automatically performs rollbacks in between captures to prevent cross-contamination between applications. This ensures that each application is captured in a separate layer, without interfering with other applications layers.

By incorporating these best practices out-of-the-box, ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5 simplifies the application capture process, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring a successful deployment. With these tools and features, you can capture applications quickly and easily, and deliver them to users with confidence.

ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8.3 r2 is Now Available for Download!

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We’re excited to deliver the latest version of our User Environment Management and Application Layering solutions in ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8.3 r2.

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ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8.3 r2 Management Console

The new r2 version builds on v6.8.3 that was first available earlier this year. Version r2 has updates to our existing features and a few new features as well such as VHDX support for ProfileDisk and FlexApp and hourly billing for the AWS Marketplace. This solution also remains available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace as BYOL.

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Amazon WorkSpaces and FlexApp Working Together

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Amazon Workspaces Overview “Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed, secure desktop computing service which runs on the AWS cloud. Amazon WorkSpaces allows you to easily provision cloud-based virtual desktops and provide your users access to the documents, applications, and resources … Continue reading →

Microsoft Application Strategy Discussion 2019

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I have spent most of my career discussing applications and how to manipulate them. It is safe to say that 2019 has seen some techtonic shifting in the application space.

Microsoft, has surfaced (no pun intended) to mix it up in the application space again. MSIX is a new application installation format with a goal to become the new defacto standard for application packaging baselines.

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FlexApp version 6.7 release – Features overview

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The release of FlexApp version 6.7 this week marks a tremendous set of milestone achievements for Liquidware. In a competitive industry, it is important for software platforms to constantly evolve or run the risk of being replaced. This release builds upon the leadership position that FlexApp has held for a while now.

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Application Layering VS Operating System layering

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Managing desktops is always one of the main struggles facing enterprises. Add in complex application management and the issues increase drastically. Software solutions are often geared towards relieving this pain. Over the last few years, the concept of converting the … Continue reading →

FlexApp Layering = Enterprise Optimization Revolution

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I was presenting to our sales teams at the Liquidware Sales kick off recently and was fascinated by the following response I received.

“Why wouldn’t you leverage FlexApp in your environment? At this point enterprises have virtualized infrastructure, desktops, networks, and storage but still continue to install applications natively.”

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