ThinstallVirtualization Suite 3.2
Every time I review a version of Thinstall I can’t help but remember a joke I heard about something being “a riddle wrapped in an enigma and surrounded by mystery.” Thinstall is the riddle. Or is it the enigma? One thing’s for sure: The platform’s underlying architecture continues to be a mystery to even savvy IT experts. Does it really work without a client agent and without loading anything into kernel mode? What about streaming? What does the company mean by “it delivers the benefits of streaming without the server?”

Click for larger view.

The answers to the first two questions are yes and yes, while the third is a solid “maybe.” It’s true that Thinstall requires no client agent or server-side components; everything a Windows PC needs to create the virtual runtime and enable the application loads dynamically from the packaged executable image. (See my February 2007 review, "Thinstall removes barriers to application virtualization.") Furthermore, the company claims that, since Thinstall controls the application’s loading sequence, by supplanting the usual program header logic with its own virtual environment bootstrap code, it can directly modulate which bits are passed over the wire to service a particular startup request.

For example, in the case of our Office 2003 test bed, Thinstall’s setup capture utility transformed our default installation into a single, large (more than 300MB), compressed file, with multiple shortcut-type redirector files taking the place of the normal Office executables. In practice, launching one of these pseudo-executable shortcuts prompted Thinstall to access the larger code image file and extract only those bits necessary to assemble the virtualized runtime image, a fact evidenced by our test results: When launching Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, Thinstall generated peak network utilization on par with SoftGrid (92Mbps to 106Mbps). It also blew the doors off both SoftGrid and SVS Pro when it came to initial application load times. Whereas the two “streaming” solutions took at least 9 seconds (SoftGrid) and 105 seconds (SVS Pro) to load an application for the first time, Thinstall did it in 2 to 5 seconds, depending on which application was being requested.

Of course, no matter how efficient the download, you don’t want your users hammering on the server every time they decide to load a Word document. The lack of client-side caching of code images has been one of the persistent knocks against Thinstall. And though you can work around the issue externally -- for example, under Windows by enabling caching on the share point -- it’s still something Thinstall’s designers need to address directly.

Another issue they need to address is Thinstall’s reliance on SMB-based (Server Message Block) sharing as its only network distribution mechanism. Both SoftGrid and SVS Pro, though not yet fully optimized for Web-based delivery, are at least closer to that goal in that they provide a non-SMB delivery vehicle (streaming), one that should be more palatable to security-conscious administrators.