Additional components are available that
integrate with Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) solution to let
you use SCCM for distribution. In addition,
a separate client is designed for terminal
server–type environments (including Citrix). Although I don't have space to discuss these
components, you should be aware of them in
case you use SCCM or terminal servers in your
environment.
Installation and
Configuration
The first step in using SoftGrid is to install
the System Center Virtual Application Server
component, which has reasonable software
and hardware requirements. A data store
is required for storing information such as
application usage, licensing, and server configuration. The data store can be hosted on
SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2000, as well
as on Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine
(MSDE) in test environments. The data store
doesn't need to be on the same server as the
application, although it should be on the same
local network.
A directory service such as Active Directory (AD) is also required for the SoftGrid
suite to function. A Windows NT 4.0 domain
is sufficient, but I'd be surprised if someone
were forward thinking enough to use application virtualization but were still running
NT 4.0. During installation, you must specify
an account with read access to the directory
service. You also need two global groups to
identify SoftGrid administrators and users who
can use SoftGrid's services. If all users in the
domain need access to SoftGrid, you can add
the Domain Users group to this global group.
You can install SoftGrid on Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server. The SoftGrid
Management Console runs on Windows 2003
or Windows XP and requires .NET Framework 1.1 and Microsoft Management Console
(MMC) 3.0, which is included in Windows
2003 R2 and can be downloaded from Microsoft for other OS platforms.
The SoftGrid System Center Virtual Application Server component requires a Pentium
III 1GHz processor, at least 512MB of memory,
and 200MB of disk space. The more applications you virtualize, the more disk space you'll
need. You can use the Windows load-balancing functionality or hardware load balancers
to install and balance multiple SoftGrid Virtual
Application Server machines.
To protect the data store, don't use MSDE in
a production environment. MSDE has limited
recoverability and replication capabilities, as
well as limited management options. If you're
running multiple SoftGrid
servers in an environment
that requires high availability, use SQL Server
and Windows clustering
services to remove any
single points of failure.
SoftGrid's documentation includes detailed
installation instructions.
Be sure that you've read
and met the prerequisites
of creating an AD account
and groups for SoftGrid
to use, as Figure 3 shows.
To reduce administrative
overhead, you can set the
AD account password
to never expire. However, doing so might cause security problems.
Establish a routine for regularly changing the
password. Then, you can use the SoftGrid
Management Console's Account Authority
property settings to easily update the password, as Figure 4 shows.
During installation, you're prompted for
various pieces of information, including the
following:
- Components to install (you can have a distributed environment with various server
components spread over multiple servers)
- Whether to use SQL Server or MSDE (you
need to specify the database server if you
use SQL Server; MSDE is installed by
default)
- AD account to use, including the permission groups you created
- The path to use for storing application content (which by default is C:\Program Files Softricity\SoftGrid Server\content)
After installation is complete, the SoftGrid Management Console is available in the
Administrative Tools program group. On first
execution, the Management Console asks for
the SoftGrid system to connect to. SoftGrid
operates over port 80 and requires the name
of the SoftGrid Management Web Service. As
I already explained, the Management Console never communicates with the data store
directly; all communication occurs through the
Management Web Service.
More to Come
Application virtualization is a hot trend. Microsoft's SoftGrid lets you easily virtualize applications without requiring a lot of overhead.
In addition, the SystemGuard environment
lets applications run simultaneously without
encountering any compatibility issues. To test
the product, I experimented with virtualizing
Microsoft Office XP and Office 2003; I found
the process to be very smooth and intuitive.
In a subsequent article, I'll explain how to use
SoftGrid to virtualize applications.