Hi all,

 

Microsoft has published SCW (Security Configuration Roles) for Application Virtualization 4.5 that can be used to protect and  your Application Virtualization environment on Windows Server 2003 and 2008 by closing or disabling unnecessary ports and services reducing the overall attack surface.

The Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 SCW Roles contain hardening definitions for:

 

q  Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Management Server

 

q  Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Streaming Server

 

q  Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Management Service

 

 

Supported Operating Systems

 

Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008

 

Read and download from source…

 

Hi all,

 

Finally Microsoft has released Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5 to manufacturing. Formerly known as SoftGrid, App-V 4.5.

 

You can find more information on Microsoft web page or Microsoft blog…

 

APP-V (Softgrid) Official web page

 

Or official Microsoft Blog at

 

Or APP-V Blog

 

Cheers

 

Alex

 

Hi all this is a very exciting news for virtualization community!!  

Following some detail:

 

 

·         HTTP streaming. 

·          New Sequencer UI. 

·         Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) for MSI packages. 

·         Improved integration with SCCM 2007 R2. 

·         Reporting. 

·         New Manageability tools. 

·         Client cache improvements. 

·         New MSI package capability. 

·         Accessibility. 

·         Documentation.  

 

As part of the RC, Microsoft  has updated the online help that is included with the product. In addition, we are releasing a Planning and Deployment Guide and a FAQ for Upgrading to Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5.  

 

Please read all detailed information on Microsoft Softgrid Blog  

 

How to download the RC  

 

Anyone may download the RC via the Microsoft Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com).

 

 

Respect the precedent version, Microsoft has made a great improvement that permit to use this flexible and beautiful product with and without infrastructure environment servers.

 

These trial guides provide step by step directions for experiencing application virtualization. Two different types of trial guides are available based upon the aspects of Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 you would like to review:

• The standalone trial guide will walk you through the creation of a virtualized application and execution of the application on the client without the need to setup any infrastructure. This is the simplest trial of Microsoft Application Virtualization, such as other virtualization product as Altiris Software Virtualization Solution where you can find information here or Thinstall (I’ve discussed in a post previous in my blog)

• The full trial guide walks the user through the same application virtualization capabilities as the standalone guide; however it also includes the steps to setup the publishing and streaming infrastructure options as well.

Once you have completed the setup steps from either guide, you will be able to test the benefits of Microsoft Application Virtualization in your own environment.

 

Full - MS App Virt 45 Trial Guide.pdf

 

 

Standalone – MS App Virt 45 Trial Guide.pdf

 

What happened to the SGbrowser account? 

 

 

In previous releases of Application Virtualization, we required admins to specify an SGBrowser account during install of the server.  This account was used to READ Active Directory (AD) and resolve security groups on behalf of the user installing the Application Virtualization server.  In 4.5, we remove this limitation and no longer require this account since we’re now using Windows Integrated Authentication.

Read all article here

 

 

Earlier than expected, Microsoft has introduced Dynamic Suiting (interaction between separate bubbles) in the public beta release of version 4.5. It is fairly easy to allow two applications to interact with each other. The only thing you’ll need to do is to edit the OSD-file of the application that you want to allow to interact with another bubble. For example, you want to allow the application front-end to interact with middleware. Open the OSD-file of the Front-end application with a text-editor and add these lines: <VIRTUALENV TERMINATECHILDREN="FALSE">

 

 

<POLICIES>

 

 

</POLICIES>

 

 

<DEPENDENCIES>

 

 

<CODEBASE HREF="RTSP://%SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER%:554/midware/midware.sft" GUID="06DCD3EF-1D70-4282-A117-2241BE970C27" SYSGUARDFILE="midwareosguard.cp" MANDATORY="TRUE"/>

 

 

</DEPENDENCIES>

 

 

<ENVLIST/>

 

 

</VIRTUALENV> The CODEBASE element can be copied from the middleware-OSD you want to use. All you need is the REF, GUID and SYSGUARDFILE from the middleware OSD and the additional MANDATORY=”TRUE” setting. Note: don’t confuse the <DEPENDENCIES> tag with the older <DEPENDENCY> tag. Now import the edited OSD in your VAS-server and refresh your 4.5-client (note: dynamic suiting will only work as of client version 4.5). When you launch the front-end application, the middleware bubble as defined in the OSD-file, will also be launched and interaction between the two will work like a charm. It is only possible to allow interaction between bubbles on one level. If you’d edit the OSD-file of a third application to allow access to the front-end bubble, this third application will not have access to the middleware bubble. It will be able to interact with the front-end bubble though. It is also possible to allow more than one application to interact with the same middleware bubble. This provides for several front-end applications to use the same middleware package. The Dynamic Suiting feature is great news for all of you that have been struggling with middleware. Softgrid retains its position ahead of all competitors in the market, being the only true virtualization solution that offers virtualization of services and interaction between separate virtual environments. As usual, there are some downsides as well. Administration of bubble interaction is most likely going to be your biggest nightmare. Nowhere, except in the OSD-files of application using middleware, you’ll be able to find which applications are allowed to interact with other applications. This isn’t a big problem if you have a limited number of applications, but you can imagine that it can cause severe headaches if you have several hundreds of applications, using all kinds of middleware. Microsoft has not planned for any administration tool to address this. Another possible problem is conflicts. The default behavior of interacting bubbles is that the launched front-end application precedes over the used middleware. If you have two versions of the same DLL, the version in the front-end application will ‘win’. This avoids technical conflicts, but it can introduce other issues if certain functionality needed in the (possibly newer) DLL in the middleware application is required. This scenario re-introduces regression testing, something we were happy to get rid of with Softgrid in the first place. The really good news is that you don’t need to re-sequence your existing applications: all you need to do is to edit the OSD-files to allow interaction. This of course saves you and your customers a lot of time!

 thank you Rodney Medina from Softgridblog.com (MVP Microsoft Softgrid)