Q:
Kevin asked, "I understand that Windows Vista is capable of virtualization. What's the difference between Vista Virtualization and SVS?"

A:
Timely question, Kevin. See if this helps.

The SVS virtualization technology is based on file system and registry redirection. This snippet from my blog explains:

Redirection can occur at the file-by-file level (like with SVS), at the directory level (e.g., UnionFS) or at the volume level (like the old DOS SUBST command). So it's nothing new and it certainly is not specific to Altiris. In fact, Microsoft is doing file system redirection in Vista to better support legacy applications that want to write to protected system areas; see...

ITPro's Ian Murphy just finished running the new 2.1 release of SVS through the paces and he likes what he sees. According to Murphy, "Operations teams who spend a lot of time deploying and fixing applications can now concentrate on application maintenance rather than application conflict."

Here's an excerpt:

So just how easy was it to capture an application? Frighteningly easy! There are just 10 steps to capturing an application although the time taken to install the application still has to be factored in. You can keep the capture file running so that any configuration that needs to be done to the application, even if that means running the application, can be captured. This makes these settings inviolate as they are stored read-only. If you want to give the users control over how they configure...

Q:
Mike comments: Microsoft SoftGrid does not seem to have the ability for virtualized applications to talk to one another. The company I work for does a lot of in-house .NET development, and these apps are very highly integrated with one another.

After reading up on the concept of SVS's application layers, it seems that SVS may support virtualized apps using resources of other virtualized apps (calling DLLs, reading registry values) but I couldn't find any documentation that explicitly says that this is supported.

A:
Thanks for bringing this up, Mike. You've hit on the key difference between Altiris SVS and all of the user-space application virtualization products from other vendors (including SoftGrid). Yes, applications virtualized with SVS do...

Q:
Software virtualization -- I understand it helps with capacity, systems stability, and security -- but won't it add to a system's complexity?

A:
How does SVS stack up to effectively model the simplicity criterion? Let me count the ways.

1. The purpose of virtualization is to simplify the view into your systems by regrouping IT assets into more logical units, thereby simplifying management of those assets. So, no, it won't add to a system's complexity—simplification is the goal.
2. Previously, all software deployed to a box got thrown into one big, chaotic bucket. Businesses expend massive dollars and man hours every day reactively dealing with the result of that chaos – failed installations and uninstallations, apps breaking each other, users and malware breaking apps too easily because the legacy model is too complex and fragile. SVS is proactive simplification – it...