beta @ amanzi

Although Altiris’s Software Virtualisation Solution (SVS) isn’t beta software, I thought it deserves a write-up on this site as I’ve realised it’s enormous potential – especially for beta software testers. This software is free for personal use and can be downloaded from one of the links below.

Now before I go on, I should explain that I’m only going to go over a very small capability of this product – I recommend reading the documentation fully to realise the full potential of this.

SVS allows you to create virtual software packages that can be activated or deactivated without affecting the base operating system. These packages run in their own “layer” and any changes that are made to the system as a result of the application vanish as soon as the layer is deactivated. If this still doesn’t make any sense, the easiest way to describe it is to walk you through a series of screenshots showing the process of creating a virtualised application.

I’ll be creating a virtualised package containing the newly-released SketchUp application from Google. The first step is to open up the SVS Admin tool that is installed during the SVS installation – you can also create the packages using the SVSCmd.exe command line tool. Select “File” and then “New layer”. We’ll use the “Install application” option and then click to the next screen where we can give our application a name. The next screen is an important one, we’ll use the first option: “Single program capture”, select the application that needs to be installed, and as we don’t need any extra installation parameters we’ll leave this blank. The “Global capture” is an interesting option, you can enable this and then make a whole bunch of changes to your system, and then when you’re done end the capture and you’ve just created a new layer. You can then enable or disable this layer to delete all your changes or bring them back instantly again – very cool. But we’ll click through to the next screen for now where we’re given a summary of what’s about to happen.

When you click next on the summary screen, the SVS tool minimizes to the task tray and the installer wizard starts as normal for the application. You just need to progress through the application installer and install it as you would normally. At the end of the installation, the wizard closes and the SVS Admin tool reappears with the package you’ve just created.

This is a bit bizzare the first time you do this, because at this point it looks like nothing has happened. The program has installed as it normally would, and you can now close the SVS Admin tool leaving no visible trace that anything has happened. The SketchUp tool appears to be installed and can be started by clicking on the Start menu as normal. The application does seem to take a couple of extra seconds to launch, but once running it performs as you would expect it to.

Now for the magic… Open up the SVS Admin tool again and right-click on the Google SketchUp program listed and choose the “Deactivate layer” option. Nothing appears to happen, but if you look closely at the desktop, the shortcut to Google SketchUp has dissapeared. On further investigation of the Start menu and program files directory shows no evidence of the application ever being installed.

This is the magic of the virtualisation! The SVS tool has captured all changes made to the system and written them to the virtual layer that is created – the underlying system hasn’t been touched at all. Re-enabling the virtual package instantly re-enables the layer and all of the files appear to be there again.

So this seems like a neat party trick but what are the real-world uses for this? The most useful purpose of this tool for me, is that because I’m always installing and uninstalling beta applications, I end up with all sorts of dodgy, untested files scattered around my system, and you can’t always rely on the uninstaller to *completely* remove all the files installed and undo all of the system changes made. With Altiris SVS you can install the application into a virtual layer, and then when you’re done with it, just delete the layer and all changes that were made by the virtual application are instantly deleted – no need to uninstall the application. You can also download prebuilt virtual applications from community sites and test them out, there’s already a whole bunch available from the Juice website (link below.)

The applications that you can download are created by running through the steps described above and then exporting them to a “.vsa” virtual application file. This can be done by right-clicking on the layer in the SVS Admin tool and selecting the “Export” option. Once exported, this package can be distributed to any other computer running the Altiris software and imported as a new layer. There is no additional installation required, the package will just work.

There’s still a lot more to explore with the Altiris Software Virtualisation Solution, but hopefully this has given you a taste as to what it can do. Most importantly – don’t forget that this is completely free for personal use only.

Links:

• Altiris Juice Community Site
• SVS download links