Admins can also choose to include a Writable Volume, which allows employees to carry over user-installed applications, local profile settings, files and other data. The App Volumes agent places a group of applications in a secure container, which lives on top of the host OS. App Volumes uses a combination of virtual disk images (VMDK files) and a guest disk/registry filter driver to make applications appear to be installed inside the virtual machine (VM). VMware App Volumes is currently only available in the company's top desktop virtualization bundle, Horizon Enterprise, whereas ThinApp is included in all Horizon bundles. Admins need to make sure not to overload the network, though, or else app performance will suffer. This means users access the application over the corporate network. For VDI, admins place the apps on a file share - ideally, using high-performance storage - which all desktops can access.

There are a number of ways to deliver ThinApp applications to a desktop. For example, an organization that wants to move off Windows XP without redeveloping Web applications can use ThinApp to run Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7. ThinApp can also enable applications that would not otherwise install. Sometimes, companies want to integrate two applications or install apps that are plug-ins to other applications, and, therefore, require access to one another that this isolation would not allow. The application inside the bubble is also hidden from other applications running on the desktop, which allows incompatible applications to run side by side on one desktop. Administrators can include different files and registry settings inside the ThinApp application than the other apps on the operating system (OS). The bubble is an overlay on the file system and desktop registry. It's been part of the VMware Horizon suite since 2008, so it's been around quite a bit longer than App Volumes, which VMware acquired and renamed from CloudVolumes in 2014.Īpplications captured with ThinApp run inside an isolated 'bubble,' which is part of each ThinApp package. ThinApp is an application virtualization product, with some software distribution functions.

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