AppVirt: The List of Applications That Can Be Virtualized
Last September the esteemed Michelle Foley posted about the List of Applications That Can Be Virtualized but we keep getting a lot of questions on this so I thought it might be time for another go-round. The information in that post is still valid today and if you're not familiar with it stop and read it now:
OK, now that everyone's up to speed I'll reiterate that there are thousands of applications that have been successfully virtualized with SoftGrid. There have been so many that it would essentially be impossible to list them all here. Sure, if we were just starting out and were limited in what we could virtualize I could probably give you a big long list of what did work but the reality is that it's far better just to tell you what won't. To take that a step further, even the stuff that we officially say won't work may in fact work well enough for you in your environment. Say what? Let me give you an example:
We state that applications that use COM+ cannot be virtualized with SoftGrid. While technically true, if your app only uses COM+ for a specific feature there's a chance that the rest of the sequenced application will work just fine. So in a case like this you may be able to virtualize and use your application even though parts of it use COM+, assuming you don't rely on the feature that does utilize COM+. That's why testing the app in your environment is so important. Of course that begs the question of how you identify whether an app uses COM+ or not and what I do as a quick test is to capture a Process Monitor log while reproducing the issue and identifying if the main executable references "COM3." For example, if it does then you may see entries like this in a Process Monitor log:
<ProcessName> RegOpenKey Software\Microsoft\COM3
So if you're wondering about an application feel free to ask and if we've had any experience with it we'd be happy to fill you in. If not then the answer to whether or not your application can be sequenced will likely be 'Probably, but let's try it and see."
I hope this helps,
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer