Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization 6.1

The usual first step in getting ready to capture an application for packaging and distribution. Keep in mind that Novell is going to add some secret sauce to make this app (Microsoft Office 2003 Professional) run in a virtualized state, isolated from the underlying OS and other applications.

You can see that I’m installing Microsoft Word and Outlook on my clean system. Novell ZAV is running in the background and will take over the process after I’ve installed my Office components.

Novell ZAV–entirely based on Xenocode’s Virtual Application Studio, which is why the dialog box is referring to what might seem to be a different product–captures the deltas after Microsoft Office components are installed on my clean system.

This part of the packing process tells Novell ZAV if the app is destined to run on a host PC or from a USB key, a network share or some other location. I liked this flexibility, and it’s a big part of the secret sauce that makes all app virtualization products work.

The packaging process only took a couple of minutes, but the process wasn’t fully complete.

I made my Office deployment package from scratch, but I could have used Novell’s preset templates. This slide show is one reason to use the presets. It’s easy enough to choose the wrong app component to virtualize–in this case you can see I’ve inadvertently chosen the MS Office Document Update Utility. The presets load the correct Office executables from the get-go.