Application Virtualization for Remote Desktop Services 4.6 Now Available

At the start of this week, Microsoft made available for download Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6, as a part of the Desktop Optimization Pack 2010 (MDOP 2010). Accompanying the release of App-V 4.6, available through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Site (MVLS), in MDOP 2010, and from MSDN and TechNet, is Microsoft Application Virtualization for Remote Desktop Services 4.6. In this regard, companies with Remote Desktop Services deployments (previously Terminal Services), can already start leveraging App-V 4.6 for RDS, which, of course, was formerly referred to as App-V for Terminal Services.

“With many RDS deployments going towards 64bit for vertical scalability, App-V has not been able to be supported. With this release, 64bit is now totally supported,” revealed Microsoft’s Michael Kleef. “What should you care? Every RDS CAL you buy now has App-V for RDS included! That means you can use App-V to solve application conflict issues that have historically caused problems with RDS and TS. It also improves the speed of application deployment when you provision a new RDS server.”

The promise from Microsoft is that the new Application Virtualization for Remote Desktop Services 4.6 solution accelerator will be a contributing factor to the consolidation of remote desktop session host servers. The company underlined the fact that App-V for RDS 4.6 introduces support for 64-bit operating systems, including Windows Server 2003 R2. The successor of App-V for Terminal Services streamlines profile management, cuts back regression testing because it reduces app-to-app and multi-user application conflicts, and mitigates deployment risk.

“In Remote Desktop Services deployments, application conflicts can lead to silos of remote desktop session host servers. To avoid application conflicts, applications typically must undergo significant testing to determine which applications will collide and, therefore, must be separated and run on different session host silos—a time-consuming and costly process. Separating out multiple remote desktop session hosts to accommodate specific applications routinely results in servers being underutilized because each one is locked into a specific configuration, capable of serving only a limited set of non-conflicting applications. Often, 20 servers are required to support 1,000 users,” Microsoft explained.

Microsoft Application Virtualization for Remote Desktop Services 4.6 (App-V 4.6 for RDS) is available for download here.