By Michael K. Campbell
Application Virtualization is something everyone in IT should be excited about. It’s really going to change the way that IT manages and deploys applications. And if you haven’t heard much about, or if you’ve heard lots about it and haven’t really seen any good ‘hands-on’ demonstrations of what it can really do, then you need to go check out Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization: Sequencing Lab. I’ve played around with SoftGrid a bit in the past and written a bunch of different white-papers and other content extolling its virtues, but I haven’t really bumped into anything that does as great of a job of offering hands-on experience as this lab. In fact, I really wish I had had this lab around when I first started learning about SoftGrid.
The lab is primarily intended for people with virtually no background or experience on SoftGrid, and therefore starts out pretty basic with a review of some of the problems that we encounter in IT that would really necessitate a solution like SoftGrid – including a review of some of the pros and cons of various approaches to dealing with application complexity.
Following a review of why SoftGrid is needed, the labcast introduction to the lab then continues on with a quick overview of what SoftGrid is and how Application Virtualization typically works. One thing I liked about the introductory labcast was the way the presenter used some great analogies to help viewers get a feel for what’s going on at various stages of application sequencing – which is the primary focus of this labcast and its associated lab.
In fact, the little ‘down to earth’ touches like the use of great analogies really helped to improve the approachability of this lab for anyone who’s curious about SoftGrid, or just wants to see how it works.
TIP: This introductory labcast to this lab lays out some great tips and guidance on what kind of system you want to configure for application sequencing - which is something that's left out of most other tutorials and approaches out there.
I also liked the way the introductory labcast did such a great job of providing a comprehensive overview of not only what you’ll be doing in the lab itself, but in describing a lot of what’s going on and why. In other words, not only did the introduction to this lab spend a decent amount of time in PowerPoint outlining key concepts and explaining some of the background and technology behind what’s going on during the sequencing process, but it also provided some great guidance in terms of the best way to think about different types of applications being sequenced, and how to best account for any special circumstances associated with different types of applications.
Best of all though, the introductory labcast also provides a very high-level walkthrough of the exact steps that you’ll be performing in the lab yourself. And, as these steps are presented, there’s more background information and guidance provided by the speaker. Being able to see what you’ll be doing, before you start doing it yourself, makes the lab very easy to execute on.
As for the lab itself, I found it to be very straight-forward – something that just about anyone could complete in 20-30 minutes in most cases. I also really appreciated how the lab walks you through sequencing on an XP box and then shows you how to deploy, or run, the sequenced application (Visio) on a Vista box. That was a cool touch that helps showcase just how powerful application virtualization can be.
So, if you’re curious to learn a bit more about SoftGrid, or haven’t heard much about it and want to know what all the ‘buzz’ is about with SoftGrid and Application Virtualization, then I guarantee that there’s no better way to jump-start the learning process than with this Lab: Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization: Sequencing Lab.