I started looking at application streaming options back in 5 options for application streaming. So far I have shown you Citrix Application Streaming and VMWare ThinApp. In this blog I am looking at Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) Professional. Altiris SVS Professional is the Symantec application streaming product, formally known as AppStream.

Altiris SVS features include:

  • On-demand application streaming
  • User based provisioning
  • Easy packaging
  • Direct MSI conversion
  • Dynamic license management

There are many more features as well. This is the first time I had used the Symantec offering and was not really sure what to expect from the product. If you are only using Altiris SVS Professional and not integrating it with other Altiris products the installation is very simple. I have not used it in an integrated manner at all.

The three basic components required are Streaming Composer, Streaming server and Streaming client. To start creating packages you will need a clean machine, I recommend that you use a virtual machine that is as close to the end devices as possible. With the virtual machine as the streaming composer you can snapshot it and roll back after every build. This will save you a lot of time.

Creating your Packages.

  • Once you are ready to start install the Altiris Streaming Composer.
  • When you start the composer you will notice several options to create a new package. If you are not using Altiris to manage and deploy workstation images you will not need to worry about the .VSA option. The options you will most likely use are Snapshot and MSI package.

composer1

In this demonstration I will be packaging Microsoft Office 2007 using the same source code as in the Citrix Streaming and VMWare ThinApp blogs.

  • Select Snapshot package
  • Now you need to take your baseline snapshot. Don’t do anything else in the background while you are packaging. The process is very straight forward so I won’t go into to much detail here
  • Now select the application to install and run

install1

  • This will take a while, one done go back to Application setup and browse to and select SaveAsPdf.exe. This step is being done to show how to install more than one application in a package. Run this now
  • Time for the Post-Setup baseline now. This will capture all things that have changed. By the way you can also run application in the command line as well as using the composer interface
  • process the differences. The compose will now isolate the changes made since the initial snap shot and script the changes. Depending on the size of the applications it may take 10 minutes or more
  • Now you are almost done. Go to Applications and remove any you do not want to be included in the package. This is optional

applications1

  • Create the streamlets.
  • Altiris SVS needs now capture what it calls the startup block. I just used Microsoft Word 2007 as the application it do this. Launch it then quit
  • Create the package and fix an orphaned paths that are discovered

The overall process is really quite easy.

When I first looked at the composer interface it looked rather busy, but after you use it you realise that it is pretty straight forward. There are a lot of steps that you do not really need to modify. Something I did notice that I though was pretty good was how Altiris includes Mail Configuration Library automatically. Why is this good? In Citrix you need to add the MLCFG32.cpl file as an application and call it from control.exe to allow you to configure mail profiles.

Altiris has automatically included this feature and I like that they have.

In part 2 of this blog I will finish off showing you how to setup and use the applications. What are your thoughts on the Symantec product? Do you use any other application streaming software?