Application Virtualization in Linux Environment
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Over the past year an a half I've received my first taste of application virtualization with my current company's Citrix XenApp environment. We are a 99.999% Microsoft shop. That .001% are some old appliance VMs that aren't in use anymore. Vast majority of users have a Dell WYSE unit from which they launch their various applications.
I'm curious to know if my company was a Linux shop instead of a Microsoft shop, how could similar application virtualization be done? This is assuming our line of business app have a version that runs on Linux. From what I've gathered, whatever the solution is, it wouldn't be Citrix XenApp, since that infrastructure can only run on Windows servers.
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@EddieJennings The answer is that you don't have to do anything special. You login to another host (SSH, VNC, whatever) and run your applications. The published apps thing is really just automatically running a single app from a remote host. In any other environment it's so easy that I don't even think about it. Licensing is where Microsoft and Citrix make things difficult.
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With Linux, you likely wouldn't want to offer just an application, but instead an entire desktop environment.
Because of these reasons
- Lower TCO
- Simpler to deploy and manage Linux than Windows
- Application Virtualization only makes sense when you would be forced to pay for OS/Application
So really any VDI approach you wanted would suffice, even if you just had dumb clients sitting on the network that people would open an RDP session against and use.
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Licensing is the main issue like stated above. The best thing to do moving forward is to try to limit apps to web apps only as this makes them OS agnostic. Of course, SaaS is always nice, but if it must be on prem make sure it doesnt have any client dependencies and will work with the most common browsers Chrome / FF.
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And the reason Application Virtualization exists is solely as a means to reduce the TCO, whereby not supplying a desktop license, but instead just the software and accompanying license.
If the software your business ran wasn't Windows Only you would have no OS licensing cost to deal with, and likely no or very little software cost as well.
Full Windows VDI, is insanely expensive, as you have to have licensing for not just the guest, but all of the possible users of the guest, core count of the hypervisor and then licensing on top of it.
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@EddieJennings said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
Over the past year an a half I've received my first taste of application virtualization with my current company's Citrix XenApp environment.
I hate this term. There is no virtualization of any sort involved here. XenApp is a terminal server product, nothing else. It does nothing at the app level, and nothing with virtualization or containers. Citrix has grown famous for using real terms like these, and applying them to really basic, old tech that has nothing to do with what they are saying.
Calling this, and thinking about it, as "application virtualization" will make something really simple seem complex.
All this is is remote desktop where a single app, rather than the entire desktop, is selected.
All UNIX has done this for decades, natively, out of the box.
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@travisdh1 said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@EddieJennings The answer is that you don't have to do anything special. You login to another host (SSH, VNC, whatever) and run your applications. The published apps thing is really just automatically running a single app from a remote host. In any other environment it's so easy that I don't even think about it. Licensing is where Microsoft and Citrix make things difficult.
Exactly. It's just "how every OS other than Windows works". The entire RDS/XenApp thing on Windows is an attempt to mimic standard functionality everywhere else.
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@DustinB3403 said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
With Linux, you likely wouldn't want to offer just an application, but instead an entire desktop environment
You could say the same thing with Windows. But there are loads of cases where you want only a single app. In fact, I'd say more often only a single app.
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@DustinB3403 said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
And the reason Application Virtualization exists is solely as a means to reduce the TCO, whereby not supplying a desktop license, but instead just the software and accompanying license.
This is true of REAL app virt. But does not apply to remote access tech like XenApp.
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The entire concept of XenApp is to work around legacy apps, which are by far most common on Windows. It is so much more rare on Linux to want to use a legacy app. Reasons still exist, but there are way fewer than on Windows. nearly all business apps on Linux are modern web apps, no need for these legacy access methods.
Windows is almost entirely a "legacy support" platform, so loads of legacy techniques are used to work around the expected limitations of the ecosystem.
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@EddieJennings said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
I'm curious to know if my company was a Linux shop instead of a Microsoft shop, how could similar application virtualization be done?
The simple answer is... XenApp works the same on Linux as on Windows.
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Got some reading ahead of me once I get off from work
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@scottalanmiller said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@EddieJennings said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
I'm curious to know if my company was a Linux shop instead of a Microsoft shop, how could similar application virtualization be done?
The simple answer is... XenApp works the same on Linux as on Windows.
I don't belive @EddieJennings was asking if XenApp would need to be used, but instead what other Linux based Application Virtualization tools like XenApp exist?
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@DustinB3403 said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@EddieJennings said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
I'm curious to know if my company was a Linux shop instead of a Microsoft shop, how could similar application virtualization be done?
The simple answer is... XenApp works the same on Linux as on Windows.
I don't belive @EddieJennings was asking if XenApp would need to be used, but instead what other Linux based Application Virtualization tools like XenApp exist?
I get that, but XenApp is equally a tool on Linux as on Windows. It's not one or the other. So nothing is as much of an answer as that.
XenApp is the XenApp equivalent on Linux
But there are loads of other options... X does it natively, NX will do it, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@DustinB3403 said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
@EddieJennings said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
I'm curious to know if my company was a Linux shop instead of a Microsoft shop, how could similar application virtualization be done?
The simple answer is... XenApp works the same on Linux as on Windows.
I don't belive @EddieJennings was asking if XenApp would need to be used, but instead what other Linux based Application Virtualization tools like XenApp exist?
I get that, but XenApp is equally a tool on Linux as on Windows. It's not one or the other. So nothing is as much of an answer as that.
XenApp is the XenApp equivalent on Linux
But there are loads of other options... X does it natively, NX will do it, etc.
Are X and NX products?
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@DustinB3403 said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
Are X and NX products?
X is the native Linux desktop display system. NX is a product like XenApp.
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Linux does "application virtualization" like XenApp for literally every app it shows. It just does it automatically, locally and doesn't tell you.
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In the past when I've seen customers use Citrix XenApp, and whatever it was called then, it was always to avoid installing some seldom used application on a bunch of clients. Probably both from a cost perspective as well as from a IT management perspective. So customers where running windows machines and could have installed it locally if they wanted to, but opted not to.
Speaking of that I actually haven't seen that many customers use thin clients. I like the concept but when a desktop with win10 costs the same as a thin client, it becomes hard to justify.
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@Pete-S said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
In the past when I've seen customers use Citrix XenApp,
MetaFrame!
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@Pete-S said in Application Virtualization in Linux Environment:
Speaking of that I actually haven't seen that many customers use thin clients. I like the concept but when a desktop with win10 costs the same as a thin client, it becomes hard to justify.
that's why using a full OS is the standard "thin client" used today. Just not worth doing anything else.
