About Virtualization - Novell ADMINSTUDIO 9.5 User Manual

Chapter 10: Creating Customized Virtual Applications

About Virtualization

About Virtualization
Note • This section provides a description of virtualization in general for those that are not familiar with it. It does not
represent the architecture of any specific vendor.
Virtualization enables you to isolate an application in its own environment so that it does not conflict with existing
applications or modify the underlying operating system.
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Limitations of a Standard Installation Environment
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Benefits of Application Virtualization
Limitations of a Standard Installation Environment
A typical Windows application has dependencies on components that are shared by multiple applications.
Applications access these shared system resources, such as the registry or Windows system files. When an
installation author recognizes that their application references a shared system component, they include a merge
module to install that component.
When one of these shared components is installed during an application's installation, it is possible that a
previously installed version of the same component could be overwritten, causing the existing application to break.
Because of these possible problems, extensive compatibility testing needs to be performed before an application
can be distributed in the enterprise environment.
The following diagram provides an example of two conflicting installed applications.
Figure 10-1: Example of Conflicts Between Two Installed Applications
758 ADS-0950-UG00 AdminStudio 9.5 User Guide