Virtual Application Delivery and Launch within ConfigMgr R2 - Part 2
Ok, in the first part of this series, we looked at how these virtual applications are delivered from ConfigMgr R2, next we should look at how to actually deliver them and what is happening in the background while the magic is happening. Now the complete visual in "How To", I plan on doing a blogcast and posting up. Much easier to demonstrate by video and more effective for the visual style learners like myself out there. So let's look at the high level steps.
Streaming:
Before the application is delivered, the virtual application content is staged to the selected distribution points. After these DP's are updated, next comes package registration.
The ConfigMgr R2 client evaluates the advertisement (policy) and discovers that the virtual application is being deployed for streaming. The ConfigMgr client then registers the virtual application package with the Softgrid client (yes, you have 2 individual clients here, ConfigMgr R2 & Softgrid). Once registered, the icons show up on the desktop, start menu Quick launch where ever configure for the user, but the application is not physically there anywhere on the system yet. Only the shortcuts are added to the client computer.
Next, the end-user launches the application through a shortcut. This creates a connection to the streaming DP and then the application is served up, on demand, to the user.
User clicks a shortcut to launch an application.
Shortcut calls the SCCM launcher
Launcher talks to the Advanced client.
Advanced client talks to the MP and performs a location request.
Once the DP location is established, the Advanced client sets the source URL for the package. This part is slick in that it dynamically changes the location no matter what the HREF path specifies.
Adv Client hands off to the Softgrid client for Vapp streaming. From there the normal Softgrid actions to stream take over.
Local Delivery:
When advertised, the virtual application package and its contents are moved across the wire using BITS from the distrubution point to the client computer.
Next the ConfigMgr R2 client evaluates the advertisement and discovers it is a download and execute policy. On policy activation, the content for the package is downloaded to the clients local ConfigMgr cache. Then the ConfigMgr client registers the virtual application package with the Softgrid client referring to the local copy of the package(not a copy on any streaming server). Once registered, the icons show up where they were configure to. At this point the package is local on the system and can be used immediately without any connections required.
Next, the end-user launches the application through the shortcut which creates a connection to the local copy of the package (File://<path>)
Package Upgrade:
The Softgrid package is revised with a new update to the virtual app package
Next update the source content in the ConfigMgr console and then update all DP's that it is currently begin distributed to. Cool part is next.
ConfigMgr now uses Binary Delta Replication(BDR) for both a 'site to site' transfer and a 'site to DP' transfer to update these packages. So just like a WIM file, the smallest binary changes inside the SFT file are all that is copied over.
The advertisement gets re-run.
Now with streaming delivery, the next time the end-user launches the application, the server will deliver the updated virtual application.
For Local delivery, changes are downloaded via BITS and BDR to the local ConfigMgr cache and then applied to the Softgrid FSD cache when they are completely downloaded.
Virtual MSI's (Standalone):
Well, what can I say for this delivery method. This basically requires you to treat the package as a new MSI package to be delivered through normal distribution methods.
Hope this was informative on how the delivery of these two great products melded together to form something no less than incredible. Taking the backbone infrastructure of ConfigMgr and combining it with such dynamic optimization like Softgrid, better together at last!
Next I'll talk a little about the extended scalability that Softgrid 4.5 will bring us outside of that in ConfigMgr R2.