Microsoft India – Virtualization for Windows Whitepaper

Virtualization for Windows:
A Technology Overview

David Chappell, Chappell & Associates
July 2007

© Copyright Microsoft Corporation 2007. All rights reserved.

Contents
UNDERSTANDING VIRTUALIZATION .................................................................................................................................... 3
VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Hardware Virtualization.............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Presentation Virtualization.......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Application Virtualization............................................................................................................................................................ 7
Other Virtualization Technologies .............................................................................................................................................. 8
MANAGING A VIRTUALIZED WORLD ................................................................................................................................................. 9
MICROSOFT VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES .......................................................................................................... 10
HARDWARE VIRTUALIZATION ......................................................................................................................................................... 10
Virtual Server 2005 R2 .............................................................................................................................................................. 10
Virtual PC 2007 ......................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Looking Ahead: Windows Server Virtualization ...................................................................................................................... 12
PRESENTATION VIRTUALIZATION .................................................................................................................................................... 13
Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services ................................................................................................................................. 13
Looking Ahead: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services...................................................................................................... 15
APPLICATION VIRTUALIZATION: SOFTGRID APPLICATION VIRTUALIZATION ................................................................................. 16
MANAGING A VIRTUALIZED WINDOWS ENVIRONMENT .......................................................................................... 18
SYSTEM CENTER OPERATIONS MANAGER 2007 ............................................................................................................................. 18
SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER 2007 ....................................................................................................................... 20
SYSTEM CENTER VIRTUAL MACHINE MANAGER 2007................................................................................................................... 21
COMBINING VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES .......................................................................................................... 23
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................................................................. 25
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.................................................................................................................................................................. 25

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Understanding Virtualization

Virtualization is unquestionably one of the hottest trends in information technology today. This is no
accident. While a variety of technologies fall under the virtualization umbrella, all of them are
changing the IT world in significant ways.

This overview introduces Microsoft’s virtualization technologies, focusing on three areas: hardware
virtualization, presentation virtualization, and application virtualization. Since every technology,
virtual or otherwise, must be effectively managed, this discussion also looks at Microsoft’s
management products for a virtual world. The goal is to make clear what these offerings do,
describe a bit about how they do it, and show how they work together.

Virtualization Technologies

To understand modern virtualization technologies, think first about a system without them. Imagine,
for example, an application such as Microsoft Word running on a standalone desktop computer.
Figure 1 shows how this looks.

Figure 1: A system without virtualization

The application is installed and runs directly on the operating system, which in turn runs directly on
the computer’s hardware. The application’s user interface is presented via a display that’s directly
attached to this machine. This simple scenario is familiar to anybody who’s ever used Windows.

But it’s not the only choice. In fact, it’s often not the best choice. Rather than locking these various
parts together—the operating system to the hardware, the application to the operating system, and
the user interface to the local machine—it’s possible to loosen the direct reliance these parts have
on each other.

Doing this means virtualizing aspects of this environment, something that can be done in various
ways. The operating system can be decoupled from the physical hardware it runs on using
hardware virtualization, for example, while application virtualization allows an analogous
decoupling between the operating system and the applications that use it. Similarly, presentation
virtualization allows separating an application’s user interface from the physical machine the

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application runs on. All of these approaches to virtualization help make the links between
components less rigid. This lets hardware and software be used in more diverse ways, and it also
makes both easier to change. Given that most IT professionals spend most of their time working
with what’s already installed rather than rolling out new deployments, making their world more
malleable is a good thing.

Each type of virtualization also brings other benefits specific to the problem it addresses.
Understanding what these are requires knowing more about the technologies themselves.
Accordingly, the next sections take a closer look at each one.

Hardware Virtualization
For most IT people today, the word “virtualization” conjures up thoughts of running multiple
operating systems on a single physical machine. This is hardware virtualization, and while it’s not
the only important kind of virtualization, it is unquestionably the most visible today.

The core idea of hardware virtualization is simple: Use software to create a virtual machine (VM)
that emulates a physical computer. By providing multiple VMs at once, this approach allows
running several operating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine. Figure 2 shows
how this looks.

Figure 2: Illustrating hardware virtualization

When used on client machines, this approach is often called desktop virtualization, while using it on
server systems is known as server virtualization. Desktop virtualization can be useful in a variety of
situations. One of the most common is to deal with incompatibility between applications and
desktop operating systems. For example, suppose a user running Windows Vista needs to use an
application that runs only on Windows XP with Service Pack 2. By creating a VM that runs this
older operating system, then installing the application in that VM, this problem can be solved.

Still, while desktop virtualization is useful, the real excitement around hardware virtualization is
focused on servers. The primary reason for this is economic: Rather than paying for many under-
utilized server machines, each dedicated to a specific workload, server virtualization allows
consolidating those workloads onto a smaller number of more fully used machines. This implies
fewer people to manage those computers, less space to house them, and fewer kilowatt hours of
power to run them, all of which saves money.

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Server virtualization also makes restoring failed systems easier. VMs are stored as files, and so
restoring a failed system can be as simple as copying its file onto a new machine. Since VMs can
have different hardware configurations from the physical machine on which they’re running, this
approach also allows restoring a failed system onto any available machine. There’s no requirement
to use a physically identical system.

Hardware virtualization can be accomplished in various ways, and so Microsoft offers three
different technologies that address this area:

 Virtual Server 2005 R2: This technology provides hardware virtualization on top of Windows
via add-on software. As its name suggests, Virtual Server provides server virtualization,
targeting scalable multi-user scenarios.

 Virtual PC 2007: Like Virtual Server, this technology also provides hardware virtualization on
top of Windows via add-on software. Virtual PC provides desktop virtualization, however, and
so it’s designed to support multiple operating systems on a single-user computer.

 Windows Server virtualization: Like Virtual Server, Windows Server virtualization provides
server virtualization. Rather than relying on an add-on, however, support for hardware
virtualization is built directly into Windows itself. Windows Server virtualization is part of
Windows Server 2008, and it’s scheduled to ship shortly after the release of this new operating
system.

All of these technologies are useful in different situations, and all are described in more detail later
in this overview.

Presentation Virtualization
Many of the applications people use most are designed to both run and present their user interface
on the same machine. Microsoft Office is one common example, but there are plenty of others.
While accepting this default is fine much of the time, it’s not without some downside. For example,
organizations that manage many desktop machines must make sure that any sensitive data on
those desktops is kept secure. They’re also obliged to spend significant amounts of time and
money managing the applications resident on those machines. Letting an application execute on a
remote server, yet display its user interface locally—presentation virtualization—can help. Figure 3
shows how this looks.

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Figure 3: Illustrating presentation virtualization

As the figure shows, this approach allows creating virtual sessions, each interacting with a remote
desktop system. The applications executing in those sessions rely on presentation virtualization to
project their user interfaces remotely. Each session might run only a single application, or it might
present its user with a complete desktop offering multiple applications. In either case, several
virtual sessions can use the same installed copy of an application.

Running applications on a shared server like this offers several benefits, including the following:

 Data can be centralized, storing it safely on a central server rather than on multiple desktop
machines. This improves security, since information isn’t spread across many different
systems.

 The cost of managing applications can be significantly reduced. Instead of updating each
application on each individual desktop, for example, only the single shared copy on the server
needs to be changed. Presentation virtualization also allows using simpler desktop operating
system images or specialized desktop devices, commonly called thin clients, both of which can
lower management costs.

 Organizations need no longer worry about incompatibilities between an application and a
desktop operating system. While desktop virtualization can also solve this problem, as
described earlier, it’s sometimes simpler to run the application on a central server, then use
presentation virtualization to make the application accessible to clients running any operating
system.

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 In some cases, presentation virtualization can improve performance. For example, think about
a client/server application that pulls large amounts of data from a central database down to the
client. If the network link between the client and the server is slow or congested, this
application will also be slow. One way to improve its performance is to run the entire
application—both client and server—on a machine with a high-bandwidth connection to the
database, then use presentation virtualization to make the application available to its users.

Microsoft’s presentation virtualization technology is Windows Terminal Services. First released for
Windows NT 4, it’s now a standard part of Windows Server 2003. Terminal Services lets an
ordinary Windows desktop application run on a shared server machine yet present its user
interface on a remote system, such as a desktop computer or thin client. While remote interfaces
haven’t always been viewed through the lens of virtualization, this perspective can provide a useful
way to think about this widely used technology.

Application Virtualization
Virtualization provides an abstracted view of some computing resource. Rather than run directly on
a physical computer, for example, hardware virtualization lets an operating system run on a
software abstraction of a machine. Similarly, presentation virtualization lets an application’s user
interface be abstracted to a remote device. In both cases, virtualization loosens an otherwise tight
bond between components.

Another bond that can benefit from more abstraction is the connection between an application and
the operating system it runs on. Every application depends on its operating system for a range of
services, including memory allocation, device drivers, and much more. Incompatibilities between
an application and its operating system can be addressed by either hardware virtualization or
presentation virtualization, as described earlier. But what about incompatibilities between two
applications installed on the same instance of an operating system? Applications commonly share
various things with other applications on their system, yet this sharing can be problematic. For
example, one application might require a specific version of a dynamic link library (DLL) to function,
while another application on that system might require a different version of the same DLL.
Installing both applications leads to what’s commonly known as DLL hell, where one of them
overwrites the version required by the other. To avoid this, organizations often perform extensive
testing before installing a new application, an approach that’s workable but time-consuming and
expensive.

Application virtualization solves this problem by creating application-specific copies of all shared
resources, as Figure 4 illustrates. The problematic things an application might share with other
applications on its system—registry entries, specific DLLs, and more—are instead packaged with
it, creating a virtual application. When a virtual application is deployed, it uses its own copy of these
shared resources.

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Figure 4: Illustrating application virtualization

Application virtualization makes deployment significantly easier. Since applications no longer
compete for DLL versions or other shared aspects of their environment, there’s no need to test
new applications for conflicts with existing applications before they’re rolled out. And as Figure 4
suggests, these virtual applications can run alongside ordinary applications—not everything needs
to be virtualized.

SoftGrid Application Virtualization is Microsoft’s technology for this area. A SoftGrid administrator
can create virtual applications, then deploy those applications as needed. By providing an
abstracted view of key parts of the system, application virtualization reduces the time and expense
required to deploy and update applications.

Other Virtualization Technologies
This overview looks at three kinds of virtualization: hardware, presentation, and application. Similar
kinds of abstraction are also used in other contexts, however. Among the most important are
network virtualization and storage virtualization.

The term network virtualization is used to describe a number of different things. Perhaps the most
common is the idea of a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs abstract the notion of a network
connection, allowing a remote user to access an organization’s internal network just as if she were
physically attached to that network. VPNs are a widely implemented idea, and they can use
various technologies. In the Microsoft world, the primary VPN technologies today are Internet
Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 and Internet Application Gateway 2007.

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The term storage virtualization is also used quite broadly. In a general sense, it means providing a
logical, abstracted view of physical storage devices, and so anything other than a locally attached
disk drive might be viewed in this light. A simple example is folder redirection in Windows, which
lets the information in a folder be stored on any network-accessible drive. Much more powerful
(and more complex) approaches also fit into this category, including storage area networks (SANs)
and others. However it’s done, the benefits of storage virtualization are analogous to those of every
other kind of virtualization: more abstraction and less direct coupling between components.

Managing a Virtualized World

Virtualization technologies provide a range of benefits. Yet as an organization’s computing
environment gets more virtualized, it also gets more abstract. Increasing abstraction can increase
complexity, making it harder for IT staff to control their world. The corollary is clear: If a virtualized
world isn’t managed well, its benefits can be elusive.

For example, think about what happens when the workloads of several existing server machines
are moved into virtual machines running on a single server. That one physical computer is now as
important to the organization as were all of the machines it replaced. If it fails, havoc will ensue. A
virtualized world that isn’t well-managed can be less reliable and perhaps even more expensive
than its non-virtualized counterpart.

To address this, Microsoft provides a family of tools for systems management. To a large degree,
the specifics of managing a virtualized world are the same as those of managing a physical world,
and so the same tools can be used. This is a good thing, since it lets the people who manage the
environment use the same skills and knowledge for both. Still, there are cases where a tool
focused explicitly on virtualization makes sense. With System Center Operations Manager 2007,
System Center Configuration Manager 2007, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007,
Microsoft provides products addressing both situations.

A fundamental concern in systems management is monitoring and managing the hardware and
software in a distributed environment. System Center Operations Manager 2007 is Microsoft’s
flagship product for addressing this concern. By allowing operations staff to monitor both the
software running on physical machines and the physical machines themselves, Operations
Manager lets them know what’s happening in their environment. It also lets these people respond
appropriately, running tasks and taking other actions to fix problems that occur. Given the strong
similarities between physical and virtual environments, Operations Manager can also be used to
monitor and manage virtual machines and other aspects of a virtualized world.

Another unavoidable concern for people who manage a distributed environment is installing
software and managing how that software is configured. While it’s possible to perform these tasks
by hand, automated solutions are a much better approach in all but the smallest environments. To
allow this, Microsoft provides System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Like Operations
Manager, Configuration Manager handles virtual environments in much the same way as physical
environments. Once again, the same tool can be used for both situations.

Both Operations Manager and Configuration Manager are intended for larger organizations with
more specialized IT staffs. What about mid-size companies? While using these two products
together is certainly possible, Microsoft also provides a simpler tool for less complex environments.
This tool, System Center Essentials 2007, implements the most important functions of both
Operations Manager and Configuration Manager. Like its big brothers, it views virtual technologies
much like physical systems, and so it can also be used to manage both.

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Tools that work in both the physical and virtual worlds are attractive. Yet think about an
environment that has dozens or even hundreds of VMs installed. How are these machines
created? How are they destroyed? And how are other VM-specific management functions
performed? Addressing these questions requires a tool that’s focused specifically on managing
hardware virtualization. For VMs running on Virtual Server 2005, that tool is System Center Virtual
Machine Manager 2007. Among other things, this tool helps operations staff choose workloads for
virtualization, create the VMs that will run those workloads, and transfer the applications to their
new homes.

Understanding the big picture of virtualization requires seeing how a virtualized environment can
be managed. It also requires understanding the virtualization technologies themselves, however.
To help with this, the next section takes a closer look at each of Microsoft’s virtualization offerings.

Microsoft Virtualization Technologies

Every virtualization technology abstracts a computing resource in some way to make it more
useful. Whether the thing being abstracted is a computer, an application’s user interface, or the
environment that application runs in, virtualization boils down to this core idea. And while all of
these technologies are important, it’s fair to say that hardware virtualization gets the most attention
today. Accordingly, it’s the place to begin this technology tour.

Hardware Virtualization

Most trends in computing depend on an underlying megatrend: the exponential growth in
processing power described by Moore’s Law. One way to think of this growth is to realize that in
the next two years, processor capability will increase by as much as it has since the dawn of
computing. Given this rate of increase, keeping machines busy gets harder and harder. Combine
this with the difficulty of running different workloads provided by different applications on a single
operating system, and the result is lots of under-utilized servers. Each one of these server
machines costs money to buy, house, and operate, and so a technology for increasing server
utilization would be very attractive.

Hardware virtualization is that technology, and it is unquestionably very attractive. While hardware
virtualization is a 40-year-old idea, it’s just now becoming a major part of mainstream computing
environments. In the not-too-distant future, expect to see the majority of applications deployed on
virtualized servers rather than dedicated physical machines. The benefits are too great to ignore.

To let Windows customers reap these benefits, Microsoft today provides two hardware
virtualization technologies: Virtual Server 2005 R2 for servers and Virtual PC 2007 for desktops.
After the release of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft will also provide Windows Server virtualization
for that system. The following sections provide a brief description of each of these technologies.

Virtual Server 2005 R2
One way to support multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine is to run virtualization
software largely on top of the operating system. Writing this software is challenging, especially for
older processors that don’t provide built-in support for hardware virtualization. Yet it’s a viable
solution, one that’s proven quite successful in practice. One example of this success is Virtual
Server 2005 R2, a freely available technology for Windows Server 2003. Figure 5 illustrates how
Virtual Server supports multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine.

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Figure 5: Illustrating Virtual Server 2005 R2

As the figure shows, Virtual Server runs on Windows Server 2003. It provides virtual machines,
each of which supports its own guest operating system. Every VM is completely isolated from its
fellows, allowing the workload on each one to execute as if it were running on its own physical
server. Virtual Server also provides a browser-based tool to manage its VMs.

Virtual Server can host several different x86 operating systems. The list of supported guests
includes Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000, Windows NT 4.0, and other Windows
versions. It also includes SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux, reflecting the realities of customer data
centers.

Whatever guest operating systems are running, all of them require storage. To allow this, Microsoft
has defined a virtual hard disk (VHD) format. A VHD is really just a file, but to a virtual machine, it
appears to be an attached disk drive. Guest operating systems and their applications rely on one or
more VHDs for storage. In fact, all of Microsoft’s hardware virtualization technologies use the same
VHD format, making it easier to move information among them. To encourage industry adoption,
Microsoft has included the VHD specification under its Open Specification Promise (OSP), making
this format freely available for others to implement.

Virtual PC 2007
The most commercially important aspect of hardware virtualization today is the ability to
consolidate workloads from multiple physical servers onto one machine. Yet it can also be useful to
run guest operating systems on a desktop machine. Virtual PC 2007 is designed for this situation.

Virtual PC is architecturally much like Virtual Server. Both are available as free downloads, both
run largely on top of another operating system, and both can host a variety of x86 operating
systems. Both also use the same VHD format for storage. Yet the products have important
differences, as well. Because it’s intended for servers, Virtual Server is significantly more scalable
than Virtual PC, and it supports a wider array of storage options. Virtual Server also includes
administrative tools that target professional IT staff, while Virtual PC is designed to be managed by

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users. While Virtual PC does provide a few things that are lacking in Virtual Server, such as sound
card support, it’s fair to think of it as offering a simpler approach to hardware virtualization for
desktop users.

Looking Ahead: Windows Server Virtualization
Virtual Server 2005 R2 is used successfully today in a range of organizations. Yet as with most
technologies, experience leads to better approaches. Windows Server virtualization, the built-in
technology for hardware virtualization in Windows Server 2008, is a good example of this kind of
progress. As Figure 6 shows, this new approach differs from Virtual Server in some important
ways.

Figure 6: Illustrating Windows Server virtualization

Rather than adding virtualization code largely on top of Windows, as Virtual Server does, Windows
Server virtualization makes supporting virtual machines part of Windows itself. This new approach
provides a hypervisor that runs directly on the hardware. One or more partitions can then be
created on top of the hypervisor, each providing a VM. One of these, the parent partition, must run
Windows Server 2008. Child partitions (which are really just virtual machines) can run any other
supported operating system, including various Windows versions and Linux distributions such as
SUSE Linux. To create and manage new partitions, an administrator can use an MMC snap-in
running in the parent partition.

This approach is fundamentally different from Microsoft’s earlier technologies for hardware
virtualization. One important difference is that the low-level support provided by the Windows
hypervisor lets virtualization be done in a more efficient way, providing better performance.
Windows Server virtualization also improves over Virtual Server in other ways, including the
following:

 Because Windows Server virtualization is a native 64-bit technology, it supports a much larger
physical memory space than the 32-bit Virtual Server. This is a useful thing when many virtual

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machines are running on a single physical server. Windows Server virtualization also allows
the VMs themselves to have more memory, with an upper limit greater than 32 gigabytes per
virtual machine.

 While Virtual Server supports only 32-bit virtual machines, Windows Server virtualization
supports both 32-bit and 64- bit VMs. VMs of both types can run simultaneously on a single
Windows Server 2008 machine.

 Rather than supporting a single CPU per virtual machine, as does Virtual Server, Windows
Server virtualization allows assigning multiple CPUs to a single VM.

Windows Server 2008 has an installation option called Server Core, in which only a limited subset
of the system’s functions is installed. This reduces both the management effort and the possible
security threats for this system, and it’s the recommended choice for servers that deploy Windows
Server virtualization. Systems that use this option have no graphical user interface support,
however, and so they can’t run the Windows Server virtualization management snap-in locally.
Instead, VM management can be done remotely using Virtual Machine Manager. It’s also possible
to deploy Windows Server 2008 in a traditional non-virtualized configuration. If this is done, the
Windows hypervisor isn’t installed, and the operating system runs directly on the hardware.

Windows Server virtualization is scheduled to ship within 180 days after the release of Windows
Server 2008. This technology will be available for all three 64-bit editions of this new operating
system: Standard, Enterprise, and Data Center. And because Windows Server virtualization uses
the same VHD format as Virtual Server 2005 R2, migrating workloads from this earlier technology
is relatively straightforward.

Hardware virtualization is a mainstream technology today. Microsoft’s decision to make it a
fundamental part of Windows only underscores its importance. After perhaps the longest
adolescence in computing history, this useful idea has at last reached maturity.

Presentation Virtualization

Windows Terminal Services has been available for several years, and it’s not always been seen as
a virtualization technology. Yet viewing it in this light is useful, if only because this perspective helps
clarify what’s really happening: A resource is being abstracted, offering only what’s needed to its
user. Just as hardware virtualization offers an operating system only what it needs—the illusion of
real hardware—presentation virtualization offers a user what she really needs: a user interface.
This section provides a brief description of Windows Terminal Services, looking at both the 2003
and 2008 versions of the technology.

Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services
Software today typically interacts with people through a screen, keyboard, and mouse. To
accomplish this, an application can provide a graphical user interface for a local user. Yet there are
plenty of situations where letting the user access a remote application as if it were local is a better
approach. Making the application’s user interface available remotely—presentation virtualization—
is an effective way to do this. As Figure 7 shows, the purpose of Windows Server 2003 Terminal
Services is to make this possible.

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Figure 7: Illustrating Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services

Terminal Services works with standard Windows applications—no changes are required. Instead,
an entire desktop, complete with all application user interfaces, is presented across a network by
the Remote Desktop Connection. Running on a client machine, this software communicates with
Terminal Services using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), sending only key presses, mouse
movements, and screen data. This minimalist approach lets RDP work over low-bandwidth
connections such as dial-up lines. RDP also encrypts traffic, allowing more secure access to
applications.

The Remote Desktop Connection runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista, and earlier versions of
Windows also provide Terminal Services clients. Other client options are possible as well, including
Pocket PCs and the Apple Macintosh. And for browser access, a client supporting RDP is available
as an ActiveX control, allowing Web-based access to applications.

Presentation virtualization moves most of the work an application does from a user’s desktop to a
shared server. Giving users the responsiveness they expect can require significant processing
resources, especially in a large environment. To help make this possible, Terminal Services allows
creating server farms that spread the processing load across multiple machines. Terminal Services
can also keep track of where a user is connected, then let him reconnect to that same system if the
user disconnects or the connection is unexpectedly lost.

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Looking Ahead: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services
Along with Windows Server virtualization and more, Windows Server 2008 includes a new version
of Windows Terminal Services. This next release adds several useful capabilities to this
technology. Figure 8 shows perhaps the most important of these, a facility known as Terminal
Servers (TS) RemoteApp.

Figure 8: Illustrating TS RemoteApp in Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services

As in Windows Server 2003, a user of Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services can create a
virtual session with a complete desktop. While this is the only choice in the 2003 release, the new
TS RemoteApp capability also lets a 2008 user create a virtual session containing just a single
remote application, as the figure shows. If a Windows user creates a virtual session with a
complete desktop, that desktop and all of its applications appear in a window on top of her local
desktop. With TS RemoteApp, however, the application’s user interface appears on her local
desktop just as if the application were running locally. In fact, an application accessed via TS
RemoteApp appears in the Task Bar like a local application, and it can also be launched like one:
from the Start menu, through a shortcut, or in some other way.

The next version of Windows Terminal Services also provides better support for using applications
via the Web. Rather than requiring the full Remote Desktop Connection client, for example, a new

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Terminal Services Web Access capability allows single applications (via TS RemoteApp) and
complete desktops to be accessed from a Web browser. This new release also includes a
Terminal Services Gateway that encapsulates RDP traffic in HTTPS. This gives users outside an
organization’s firewall more secure access to internal applications without using a VPN.

Application Virtualization: SoftGrid Application Virtualization

Both hardware virtualization and presentation virtualization are familiar ideas to many people.
Application virtualization is a more recent notion, but it’s not hard to understand. As described
earlier, the primary goal of this technology is to avoid conflicts between applications running on the
same machine. To do this, application-specific copies of potentially shared resources are included
in each virtual application. Figure 9 illustrates how Microsoft’s SoftGrid Application Virtualization
does this.

Figure 9: Illustrating SoftGrid Application Virtualization and Streaming

Virtual applications are stored on a SoftGrid server running on a central machine. The first time a
user starts a virtual application, this server sends the application’s code to the user’s system via a
process called streaming. The virtual application then begins executing, perhaps running alongside
other non-virtual applications on the same machine. After this initial download, applications are
stored in a local SoftGrid cache on the machine, Future uses of the application rely on this cached
code, and so streaming is required only for the first access to an application.

From the user’s perspective, a virtual application looks just like any other application. It may have
been started from the Windows Start menu, from an icon on the desktop, or in some other way.
The application appears in Task Manager, and it can use printers, network connections, and other

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resources on the machine. This makes sense, since the application really is running locally on the
machine. Yet all of the resources it uses that might conflict with other applications on this system
have been made part of the virtual application itself. If the application writes a registry entry, for
example, that change is actually made to a registry entry stored within the virtual application; the
machine’s registry isn’t affected.

For this to work, applications must be packaged using a process called sequencing before they are
downloaded by the SoftGrid Server. Using SoftGrid’s wizard-based Sequencer tool, an
administrator creates a virtual application from its ordinary counterpart. The Sequencer doesn’t
modify an application’s source code, but instead looks at how the application functions to see what
shared configuration information it uses. It then packages the application into the SoftGrid format,
including application-specific copies of this information.

Storing virtual applications centrally, then downloading them to a user’s system on demand makes
management easier. Yet if a user were required to wait for the entire virtual application to be
downloaded before it started, her first access to this application might be very slow. To avoid this,
SoftGrid’s streaming process brings down only the code required to get the application up and
running. (Determining exactly which parts those are is part of the sequencing process.) The rest of
the application can then be downloaded in the background as needed.

Because downloaded virtual applications are stored in a SoftGrid-provided cache, they can be
executed multiple times without being downloaded again. When a user starts a cached virtual
application, SoftGrid automatically checks this application with the version currently stored on the
central SoftGrid server. If a new version is available on the server, any changed parts of that
application are streamed to the user’s machine. This lets patches and other updates be applied to
the copy of the virtual application stored on the central server, then be automatically distributed to
all cached copies of the application.

SoftGrid also allows disconnected use of virtual applications. Suppose, for example, that the client
is a laptop machine. The user can access the applications he’ll need, causing them to be
downloaded into the SoftGrid cache. Once this is done, the laptop can be disconnected from the
network and used as usual. Virtual applications will be run from the machine’s cache.

Whether the system they’re copied to is a desktop machine or a laptop, virtual applications have a
license attached to them. The SoftGrid Server keeps track of which applications are used by which
machines, providing a central point for license management. Each application will eventually time
out, so a user with applications downloaded onto his laptop will eventually need to contact the
central SoftGrid server to reacquire the licenses for those applications.

Another challenge faced by SoftGrid’s creators was determining which virtual applications should
be visible to each user. To address this, virtual applications are assigned to users based on the
Active Directory groups those users belong to. If a new user is added to a group, for example, he
can access his SoftGrid applications from any machine in this domain.

The benefits of using virtual applications with desktop and laptop computers are obvious. There’s
also another important use of this technology, however, that might be less obvious. Just as
applications conflict with one another on a single-user machine, applications used with Windows
Terminal Services can also conflict. Suppose, for example, that an organization installs two
applications on the same Terminal Services server machine (commonly called just a terminal
server) that require different versions of the same DLL. This conflict will be even more problematic
then it would be on a user’s desktop, since it now affects all of the Terminal Services clients that
rely on this server. If both applications must be made available, the typical solution has been to

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deploy them on separate terminal servers. While this works, it also tends to leave those servers
under-utilized.

Application virtualization can help. If the applications are virtualized before they’re loaded onto a
terminal server, they can avoid the typical conflicts that require using different servers. Rather than
creating separate server silos, then seeing those servers underutilized, virtual applications can be
run on any terminal server. This lets organizations use fewer server machines, reducing both
hardware and administrative costs.

In effect, a SoftGrid virtual application is managed less like ordinary installed software and more
like a Web page. A virtual application can be brought down from a server on demand, like a Web
page, and just as there’s no need to test Web pages for potential conflicts before they’re accessed,
there’s no need to test virtual applications before they’re deployed. Once again, the underlying idea
is abstraction: providing a virtual view of an application’s configuration information. As with other
kinds of virtualization, the benefits stem from increasing the separation between different elements
of the computing environment.

Managing a Virtualized Windows Environment

The biggest cost in most IT organizations is salaries. If virtualization reduced other costs but led to
increased management effort, it would likely be a net loss—people cost more than machines.
Given this fact, managing virtualization technologies effectively is essential. This section describes
how Microsoft’s System Center tools—Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, and Virtual
Machine Manager—can be used to manage a virtualized Windows environment.

System Center Operations Manager 2007

For all but the smallest organizations, tools for monitoring and managing the systems in a
distributed world are an inescapable requirement. Microsoft provides Operations Manager to
address this challenge for Windows-oriented environments. Focused on managing hardware and
software on desktops, servers, and other devices, the product supports a broad approach to
systems management.

Computing environments contain many different components: client and server machines,
operating systems, databases, mail servers, and much more. To deal with this diversity,
Operations Manager relies on management packs (MPs). Each MP encapsulates knowledge and
more about how to manage a particular component, and each one is created by people with
extensive experience in that area. For example, Microsoft provides MPs for managing Windows,
SQL Server, Exchange Server, and nearly all of its other enterprise products. HP and Dell each
provide MPs for managing their server machines, while several other vendors also provide MPs for
their products. By installing the appropriate MPs, an organization can exploit the knowledge of their
creators to manage its environment more effectively. This includes managing an environment
using virtualization, as Figure 10 shows.

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Figure 10: Operations Manager in a virtualized environment

As the system on the left shows, Operations Manager can manage virtual machines as well as
physical machines. In fact, the product works in the same way in both cases. Operations Manager
relies on an agent that runs on each machine it manages, and so every machine—physical or
virtual—has one. In the diagram above, for example, the system on the left would have two agents:
one for the physical machine and one for the VM provided by Virtual Server. From the perspective
of an operator at the Operations Manager console, both look like ordinary Windows machines, and
both are managed in the same way. Rather than deploying different tools for managing physical
and virtual environments, Operations Manager applies the same user interface and the same MPs,
to both worlds.

While managing physical and virtual machines is done with the same MPs, there are also specific
MPs for managing virtualization technologies. The MP for Virtual Server, for example, allows an
operator to enumerate the VMs that are running on a particular physical machine, monitor the state
of those VMs, and more. Similarly the MP for Windows Terminal Services lets an operator track the
performance and availability of this presentation virtualization technology. A forthcoming MP for
SoftGrid will support similar types of management operations. By applying the same technology to
physical and virtual environments, Operations Manager provides a consistent approach to
managing these two worlds.

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System Center Configuration Manager 2007

Deploying the right software onto the right machines, then keeping that software up to date can be
a herculean task. Add the challenge of maintaining a current record of software assets, and the
value of an automated tool becomes clear. To address these challenges, Microsoft provides
Configuration Manager, another member of the System Center family.

Challenging as it is in the physical world, managing software configurations can become even
more challenging once virtualization is on the scene. Creating more virtual machines, for example,
means more machines whose software must be updated. Effective configuration management
becomes even more important in this environment.

Like Operations Manager, Configuration Manager approaches the physical and virtual worlds in
the same way. Rather than requiring separate tools for managing software configuration in these
separate environments, Configuration Manager applies the same technology to both. Figure 11
shows how this looks.

Figure 11: Configuration Manager in a virtualized environment

As the leftmost system in this figure illustrates, Configuration Manager treats a VM provided by
Virtual Server as if it were a physical machine. Software can be installed on this machine, updated

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as needed, and appear as part of the asset inventory maintained by Configuration Manager.
Similarly, this tool works with applications running on a terminal server just like any others.

Configuration Manager also works with SoftGrid, as the system on the right above illustrates.
SoftGrid provides its own distribution mechanism for virtual applications, however, so the
relationship between these two technologies requires a bit more explanation. One option is to use
Configuration Manager to deploy SoftGrid virtual applications. This approach places applications
into the SoftGrid cache, as usual, and it relies on SoftGrid’s SMS Connector. (Configuration
Manager is the successor to Systems Management Server 2003, commonly referred to as SMS.).
The Connector allows Configuration Manager to access virtual applications stored on a SoftGrid
server, then deploy them like ordinary applications. While this approach doesn’t let virtual
applications be streamed on demand to the system on which they’ll run, it does allow using
Configuration Manager to deploy both virtual applications and their non-virtual counterparts.

Another option is to use SoftGrid’s SMS Connector to make virtual applications visible to
Configuration Manager while still allowing them to be streamed from the SoftGrid server. This
approach lets Configuration Manager provide a single console for working with all applications,
while still preserving the benefits of streaming. The Connector also makes virtual applications
visible to Configuration Manager’s asset tracking functions, something that’s not otherwise
possible.

Managing software configurations is important in every organization. As the virtualization wave
continues to roll across the IT world, managing virtualized software matters more and more. The
goal of Configuration Manager is to provide a common solution to this problem for both physical
and virtual environments.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007

Many of the requirements for managing a virtualized environment are identical to those of a purely
physical world. Operations Manager and Configuration Manager both exploit this fact, viewing both
environments in much the same way. But virtualization also brings its own unique management
challenges. The most important example of this stems from hardware virtualization and the
plethora of virtual machines it allows. As more virtual machines are created and used, the need for
a tool focused solely on managing them also grows.

Virtual Machine Manager is Microsoft’s response to this need. As its name suggests, the tool is
designed entirely for managing VMs. In its first release, Virtual Machine Manager works only with
VMs supported by Virtual Server. Once Windows Server virtualization is available, the tool will be
expanded to work with VMs created with this new technology. Figure 12 gives a simple illustration
of how Virtual Machine Manager can be used.

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Figure 12: Illustrating Virtual Machine Manager

While both Virtual Server and Windows Server virtualization provide tools for managing their VMs,
these tools work on only a single physical machine. Once an organization has more than a handful
of VMs spread across different physical machines, a centralized console for managing them is
likely to be attractive. As the figure shows, Virtual Machine Manager provides this central console,
allowing many VMs to be managed from a single point. An administrator can use this console to
check the status of a VM, see exactly what’s running in that virtual machine, move VMs from one
physical machine to another, and perform other management tasks. And although the console
provides a graphical interface, this interface is built entirely on Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting tool.
Anything that can be done graphically can also be done from the command line using this
language

To help administrators create VMs, Virtual Machine Manager provides the New Virtual Machine
Wizard. This tool provides a number of options for defining a new VM, including the following:

 Creating a new VM from scratch, specifying its CPU type, memory size, and more.

 Converting a physical machine’s environment into a new VM, a process known as P2V.

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 Creating a new VM from an existing VM.

 Converting an existing VM created using VMware into Microsoft’s VHD format.

 Using a template. Each template is a virtual machine containing a deployment-ready version of
Windows that can be customized by the administrator.

Whatever choice is made, the wizard can examine performance data to help determine which
physical machine should host this new VM, a process known as intelligent placement. Based on
their available capacity and other criteria, the wizard ranks candidate servers from one to five stars.
Once the administrator chooses a server, the tool then helps her install the new virtual machine on
that system.

To make life easier for administrators, Virtual Machine Manager maintains a library of templates,
VHDs, and other information. Along with creating new VMs using the contents of this library, an
administrator can take an existing VM offline, store it in the library, then restore it later. Users can
also create VMs themselves from the templates in this library through Virtual Machine Manager’s
self-service portal. To help administrators remain in control, Virtual Machine Manager allows
defining per-user policies, specifying things such as a quota limiting the number of VMs a user can
create.

Hardware virtualization, especially on servers, is fast becoming the norm. While single-machine
tools for managing VMs are fine in simple scenarios, they’re not sufficient for the kind of
widespread virtualization that’s appearing today. By providing a centralized console, a library to
draw from, and other tools, Virtual Machine Manager aims at providing a single point for managing
Windows VMs across an organization.

Combining Virtualization Technologies

Looking at each virtualization technology in isolation is useful, since it’s the simplest way to
understand each one. Yet using these technologies together is useful, too. Figure 13 shows an
example scenario that combines hardware virtualization, presentation virtualization, and application
virtualization.

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Figure 13: Using different virtualization technologies together

In this example, the system on the left uses hardware virtualization provided by Virtual Server. One
VM is running a workload on Linux, while the other is running the SoftGrid Server on Windows.
This server provides virtual applications to other systems in this organization. The machine at the
top of the figure, for example, might be a desktop, laptop, or server machine, and some of its
applications are SoftGrid virtual applications streamed on demand. The system at the bottom is
providing presentation virtualization using Terminal Services, and all of the applications it runs are
packaged as virtual applications.

As all kinds of virtualization continue to spread, multi-technology scenarios like this will become
increasingly common. Plenty of other approaches are possible, too. For example, Windows Vista
has built in support for the RDP protocol. This lets Vista provide presentation virtualization without
deploying Terminal Services—all that’s needed is a machine to run Vista and clients to display the
user interface. Using hardware virtualization, it’s possible to run many copies of Vista on a single
server, each in its own VM and each used remotely by one user. When those users go home at the
end of their work day, an administrator could use Virtual Machine Manager to store these VMs,
then load other VMs running some other workload, such as overnight batch processing. When the
next workday starts, each user’s desktop can then be restored. This hosted desktop approach can
allow using hardware more efficiently, and it can also help simplify management of a distributed
environment.

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One important issue that isn’t described in this paper is the impact of virtualization technologies on
licensing. Traditional licenses are often wedded to hardware, a marriage of convenience that
breaks down in a virtualized world. A different approach is needed, and so understanding the
licensing requirements for these technologies is unavoidable. The hosted desktop scenario just
described requires the Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop product license, for example, and
other situations also have their own unique licensing requirements.

Conclusion

The pull of virtualization is strong—the economics are too attractive to resist. And for most
organizations, there’s no reason to fight against this pull. Well-managed virtualization technologies
can make their world better.

Microsoft takes a broad view of this area, providing hardware virtualization, presentation
virtualization, application virtualization, and more. The company also takes a broad view of
management, with virtualized technologies given equal weight to their physical counterparts. As the
popularity of virtualization continues to grow, expect to see these technologies become a bedrock
part of modern computing.

About the Author

David Chappell is Principal of Chappell & Associates (www.davidchappell.com) in San Francisco,
California. Through his speaking, writing, and consulting, he helps technology professionals around
the world understand, use, and make better decisions about enterprise software.

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