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Chapter 3 Deploying Applications
3From the Start menu, select Programs > Administrative Tools > Services.
Your virtual service application appears in the list of services.
You can manage the service in the same way as any natively installed service.
Using ThinApp Packages Streamed from the Network
Any network storage device can serve as a streaming server for hundreds or thousands of client computers.
See Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1. Data Block Streaming over a Network Share
On the end-user desktop, you can create shortcuts that point to the centrally hosted executable file packages.
When the user clicks the shortcut, the application begins streaming to the client computer. During the initial
streaming startup process, the ThinApp status bar informs the user of the progress.
How ThinApp Application Streaming Works
When you place compressed ThinApp executable files on a network share or USB flash drive, the contents
from the executable file stream to client computers in a block-based fashion. As an application requests specific
parts of data files, ThinApp reads this information in the compressed format over the network using standard
Windows file sharing protocol. For a view of the process, see Figure 3-2.
After a client computer receives data, ThinApp decompresses the data directly to memory. Because ThinApp does
not write data to the disk, the process is fast. A large package does not necessarily take a long time to load over
the network and the package size does not affect the startup time of an application. If you add an extra 20GB
file to a package that is not in use at runtime, the package loads at the same speed. If the application opens and
reads 32KB of data from the 20GB file, ThinApp only requests 32KB of data.
The ThinApp runtime client is a small part of the executable file package. When ThinApp loads the runtime
client, it sets up the environment and starts the target executable file. The target executable file accesses other
parts of the application stored in the virtual operating system. The runtime client intercepts such requests and
serves them by loading DLLs from the virtual operating system.
The load time of the runtime client across a network is a few milliseconds. After ThinApp loads the runtime
client to memory on the client computer, the end-user computer calculates which blocks of data are required
from the server and reads them based on application activity.
When the application makes subsequent read requests for the same data, the Windows disk cache provides
data without requiring a network read operation. If the client computer runs low on memory, Windows
discards some of its disk cache and provides the memory resource to other applications.
Sam’s
Sandbox
Joe’s
Sandbox
Jill’s
Sandbox
shared folder