Faster delivery, lower costs
VMware™ application volumesis an application packaging solution that provides real-time application delivery and lifecycle management for digital workspaces. App Volumes delivers faster application delivery and simplified, unified management of applications and users while reducing IT costs. App Volumes does this by abstracting Windows applications from the underlying operating system and delivering those applications via virtual drives. This is a different approach that lets you clean up your golden desktop image and manage it separately from your installed apps.
Digital workspaces include VMware Horizon®, Horizon Cloud Service™em Microsoft Azure, CitrixVirtual desktops and applications and Remote Desktop Service (RDSH) hosts. The App Volumes architecture is different for each integration. This document focuses on one of the possible integrations: vSphere-based VMware Horizon environments.
This introductory demo shows what VMware App Volumes can do for you and your business:
Now that you have an idea of what App Volumes is all about, read on to find out how it does what it does and some of its key features.
A different way of doing things
With VMware App Volumes, we are changing the application delivery process. App Volumes deliver applications to desktops via virtual drives. So instead of installing an application on hundreds and hundreds of desktops, install it once, capture it in an image, and apply the image to hundreds and hundreds of desktops. App Volumes attaches containers called "packages" of applications to your virtual machine, and these applications are presented live to the end user.
Applications are deployed by attaching a standard VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) file or virtual hard disk (VHD) file to a virtual machine. You can manage apps centrally and don't need to change desktops or individual apps.
All application programs are packaged as fully installed and delivered to the user's session in real time. To end users, apps provided by App Volumes look like natively installed apps.
main features
Traditionally, desktop components such as applications, user data, and custom settings have been tightly coupled to the operating system. App Volumes break this arrangement apart, uncovering the operating system, applications, and user customization. DepartmentVolumes separate applications into packages that you can define. App Volumes uses a completely different package to persist user changes between sessions.
Figure 1: Basic architecture of App Volumes on a vSphere-based platform
As an IT administrator, this makes it easy to apply updates and quickly make small changes to individual applications. This means you can update or change these items without creating a completely new desktop image and make those updates or changes available to your end users much faster. App Volumes restores each item on demand, when end users need it. You can deliver just-in-time desktops and applications to any device and infrastructure topology.
Provides powerful and simplified application and user management
Whether your virtual desktop environments and RDSH/published applications work with Horizon or Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, App Volumes simplifies application and user management.
- App Volumes supports enterprise-wide features such as streamlined updates and allocations, fast and easy rollbacks, and application lifecycle management.
- App Volumes makes it easy to deploy apps, update apps, assign apps, and manage the lifecycle of apps (and users) across published apps and virtual desktop environments (VDI).
- You can apply contextual user policies and profile management through App Volumes, which provide secure, personalized access to desktops and applications.
Reduce costs without compromising user experience
App Volumes can reduce costs while providing a customizable and persistent user experience across all desktop sessions.
- App Volumes reduce management costs by efficiently delivering applications from one virtual disk to many desktops or published application servers.
- App Volumes provide zero-downtime updates and one-to-many deployment, reducing operational and storage costs.
- App Volumes supports a stateless desktop that doesn't sacrifice user experience to reduce costs.
- You can manage applications in volumes, reducing storage capacity requirements without impacting compute and network resources.
- You can decouple images and applications from the operating system, which helps reduce the number of images to manage.
Provides a trusted platform for cloud-based environments
App Volumes offers reliability, consistency and extensibility.
- App Volumes delivers apps faster, provides contextual user policies, and isolates apps as needed for a consistent, reliable, and personalized user experience.
- Application delivery and user management services are built on an extensible platform for cloud-based technologies.
- App Volumes include out-of-the-box integrated services such as application delivery, user management and monitoring of cloud-based environments.
- App Volumes also includes built-in integrations with Horizon and Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, allowing you to use both within the same UI.
Supports Horizon, Citrix and RDSH environments
Supported environments for App Volumes include VMware Horizon, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, and RDS hosted environments.
- horizonte- App Volumes are included with VMware Horizon Enterprise. If you have Horizon, you have App Volumes and the real-time application delivery, application isolation, and user management capabilities provided by App Volumes.
- CitrixGenericName– You can optimize your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop, XenApp or XenDesktop environment with App Volumes. App Volumes enable real-time application delivery, application isolation, and user management, which can enhance your investment in XenApp and XenDesktop.
- RDSH- You can extend your RDS-hosted environment with App Volumes for real-time application delivery, application isolation, and user management.
Provides secure, personalized access via desktop, cloud or physical
Your end users can access it from any device, anywhere. Even if you dynamically create non-persistent desktops, your end users will have a personalized and persistent experience every time they log on.
- On the backend, App Volumes separates the operating system image from the application images, allowing you to quickly apply updates or even minor changes to individual applications and make them available to your end users. For the end user, this means access to the latest applications without the wait.
- Due to the separation of the operating system image and the application image, you can use App Volumes to install an application and view it for a single person, even if that person is the only person who needs that application. For the end user, this means you get the applications you need to get the job done, even if your needs are unique.
- On the backend, you can enforce context-aware user policies and profile management through App Volumes. For the end user, this means secure, personalized access to desktops and applications.
For more details seeapplication volumeproduct page.
Basic architecture based on vSphere
A typical App Volumes environment consists of a few core components that interact with each other and with an external infrastructure. This external infrastructure can be one of several supported platforms, such as VMware solutions.Horizonte de VMware,VMware Horizon Cloud no Microsoft Azure,VMware-ThinApp, YVMware User Environment Administrator, or third-party solutions such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, and Microsoft Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) environments. Support for additional frameworks is continually being added.
Note that App Volumes are created differently on each infrastructure. We will not go into detail here about all possible infrastructures. Instead, we describe the basic architecture for vSphere-based Horizon environments. For some of the other integrations supported by App Volumes, the reference architecture is a great resource:
- Reference Architecture for App Volumes
- Reference Architecture for Horizon
- Reference Architecture for VMware Horizon on Microsoft Azure
Application volume components
For a vSphere-based environment, App Volumes uses management servers that connect to provisioned virtual desktops running an App Volumes agent. As an IT administrator, you would work with the following components:
Figure 2: Basic architecture of App Volumes on a vSphere-based platform
to use– Note that the diagram above represents a vSphere-based environment, which would look very different on a different platform. For example, if your environment is SaaS, the architecture is much simpler as most of these components reside in the cloud.
- App Volumes-Agente– Agents are installed on VDI or farm images where application packages and recording volumes are deployed.
- Application– Applications can include the collection of versions of a program that can be assigned to and used by users, groups, computers, or organizational units (OUs).
- PACKAGES– As an IT administrator, you assign groups of applications (packages) located on shared storage to individual users, user groups, and virtual machines (VMs). For example, you can assign core applications to all user groups, departmental applications to specific user groups, and individual applications to single business application user assignments. Each package stores one or more programs needed to run an application. A single package can be delivered to multiple computers and one or more users.
- writing volume– In addition to application packages, you can also providewriting volumes, which are empty VMDK or VHD files that contain customized data such as user profile, licenses, settings, user-installed apps, and other settings. You can assign a recording volume to a specific user, which will be available to that user when he logs in from any device.
- storage pool– You can configure storage pools to automatically replicate application packages or distribute write volumes across multiple datastores. You can also use them to define a group of data stores that must contain the same application packages, for example B. when using departmental applications.
- Application Volume Manager– This is the integrated web-based interface to Active Directory (AD) and vSphere, consisting of services that orchestrate application delivery and interface with the vSphere environment. You can use App Volumes Manager to manage volume assignments for target users, groups, and computers, collect usage information about application packages and write volumes, maintain a history of management actions, and assign applications and write volumes to agents. during desktop startup and to automate user login.
- servidor SQL– The App Volumes database is a Microsoft SQL or SQL Server Express database that contains configuration information for application packages, write volumes, and end users.
- Active Directory- App Volumes uses the Active Directory (AD) database, which contains important data about your environment and resources, as well as your end users and the permissions granted to them.
- vCenter-Server- App Volumes uses vCenter Server to connect to resources in the vSphere environment.
- Hosts de vSphere– These are the data storage devices on which the ESX or ESXi hypervisor has been installed, each of which can create multiple virtual machines.
For more details seeIntroduction to VMware Application Volumes.
hungry for more?
Now that you have an idea of what App Volumes is all about, here's your chance to dig deeper:
- Let's introduce you toVMware App Volumes Product Page
- See where we are and where we're goingPackage Delivered: App Volumes 4
- dive in and get startedCore application volumesactivity path
- Also:Reference Architecture for App Volumes
- Reference architecture for VMware Horizon
- Reference Architecture for VMware Horizon on Microsoft Azure
- Get the latest information atApp Volumes blog post
- Managing multiple instances of App Volumes
- VMware App Volumes 4 Quick Start Tutorial Simplified Application Management
Other VMware Solutions
If you are interested in other VMware projects, please read the following introductions:
- What is the Digital Employee Experience (DEX)?
- What is VMware Horizon?
- ¿Era Workspace ONE?
- ¿Era VMware Workspace ONE UEM?
- ¿Fue Workspace ONE Intelligence?
- Fue Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub?
- ¿Era VMware Dynamic Environment Manager?
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