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January 11th, 2011 01:00

To App V or Not to App V that is the question :)

Spinning up another VDI deployment here - My previous experience on App V was prettty fortunate on the fact that I was able to successfully sequence some home grown apps that required constant patching so the benefit was obvious for our Tier 3/4 Clients.

My new deployment will be a strict MS Shop, and Office 2007 is a breeze to sequence however my question to all of you is - for my VDI's should my images have my instances already installed or shall I App V the executables to the VDI themselves?

Constructive criticism is always appreciated. 

17 Posts

January 11th, 2011 05:00

Hi Adam,

I would definately not virtualise office 2007. Even though it is a breeze to virtualise, a lot of the functionality does not work and could become very annoying to users. For example:

  • The search functionality does not work
  • Clicking on e-mail links does not work
  • Send to mail recipient does not work etc.
  • A lot of programs install\act differently when office is installed on a PC

Office 2010 has been improved and all of the above functionality works, so I guess I am saying that don't do it until you upgrade to Office 2010

180 Posts

January 11th, 2011 06:00

I agree - don't virtualize office 2007 - it should be classed as true core and be in the base image installed "normally".

Regarding the other apps... It depends how many? if it's a lot then I would App-V what I could but use the new shared cache feature in 4.6 to keep the VM's footprint small. If it's only a handful of smallish apps then normal App-V or stick them in the base image.

Shared cache can save IOPs on the VM's but can/does have network implications.

Are the desktops persistent or non-persistent? Using difference disks or linked clones or FAT cloning?

If there persistent desktops then I would endeavor to App-V every time - less management overhead in the long run.

If there non-persistent then it's not such an issue (with a small number of locally install apps) to maintain as you can just update the master/parent image. - thin provision helps here

Cheers,

Dan.

4 Posts

January 11th, 2011 13:00

We will have both non persistent and persistent desktops. As for the disk - thats another topic, large ISCSI SAN - 10 Physical hosts, Network highly available - I have several options that I need to weigh out still (after doing more discovery on image size)

Does that help you specify?

17 Posts

January 12th, 2011 04:00

Hi Adam,

I would AppV your standard applications like Adobe etc that requires a lot of patching etc to all desktops, whether persistent or non persistend. This helps with rapid delpoyment and keeps you gold image's footprint small. This also gives you added benefit of patching only your adobe master image and that will update all the other instances.

So to answer your orignial question - No do not AppV office, but go ahead and AppV your run of the mill apps!

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