Hands-On with VMware Project North Star Beta 2 (Thinstall aka ThinApp)

VMware is rounding third with their application virtualization solution, Project North Star, which comes through their acquisition of Thinstall earlier this year. I signed up for the beta program, received my beta serial number (08490-J0K4K-07J09-02114-02X2H) and proceeded with the straightforward install.

To anyone who’s ever used WinInstall or a similar .msi package creation tool, it’s almost identical. Basically what happens is that a, “before” picture is taken of the guest machine, the application is installed and configured and then an, “after” picture is taken. The differences are bundles into a single executable (.exe).

At VMware Partner Exchange 2008, the, “before” snap took ~5 seconds. On my bloated laptop it took closer to 20 seconds, but still not bad.

• Step one involves selecting which volumes to scan for the, “before” snapshot.

• Once the scan is complete, it’s time to install the desired application. For this test I installed VMware’s own, VMware Converter (Starter Edition).

• Once the installation is complete an, “after” scan is taken. This generates a list of “entry points.” We’ll only use one, “entry point” here and it will be the primary, “VMware Converter”(.exe).

• The next step gives a good deal of leverage to the administrator. Here an Active Directory group can be given explicit permissions to run the ThinApp. In addition, the location for all temp files (the, “sandbox”) is set. If an admin was putting the ThinApp package on a network share it might make sense to put the temp directory in the user’s mapped home directory, for example. It’s also possible to put the temp files on a thumb drive or similar media.

• The next step allows an .MSI package to be built as well as configure compression settings. VMWare Converter is 64.7MB in size. My compressed ThinApp package was 58.9MB in size, just to put things in perspective.

• Application sync – a very powerful feature touted at the 2008 VMWare Partner Exchange. This feature will allow the application to check for updated versions through an HTTP URL, with options for frequency, warnings, et al.

• Build the project.

• The end result is a simple executable (or .msi package) that contains all .dll’s, .exe’s and other files needed to run the application.

Where might this be useful? For clients with a custom app that requires different versions of a JRE, for clients about to jump into the Vista upgrade or for application publishing in general.

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1. I’ve been testing since first beta. Product is good!

   Tim | May 12, 10:47 AM | #

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