Don’t lose your investment in your AppV pacakges!
As you probably know, Microsoft has moved away from App-V technology in favor of a new packaging file format called MSIX. While MSIX offers some new cool functionality like Delta updates it also removes several features customers relied on including Application Streaming and Windows 7 support. Perhaps the most cost prohibited functionality lost is the ability to continue to use existing App-V packages without having to recapture. Not only does OpDesk offer most of the same features of MSIX, we will soon be the only platform that can install Native App-V packages without needing Microsoft’s (now end of life) App-V agent.
| Feature | Microsoft MSIX | OpDesk RASM |
| Re Packager |  MSIX Packaging Tool |
RasmPackager |
| Active Directory User Associations | |
|
| Native App-V package support |  |
|
| Copy on Read* | |
|
| Application Isolation** | All Process forced to run in isolation |
java/jre only |
| Active Directory Computer Associations | |
|
| Local user and user group associations | |
|
| Local computer and computer group associations | |
|
| Application streaming | Only first 64k block or AppAttach VHD mounting |
File based |
| Package Delta Versioning | |
|
| Virtualization*** | |
Used to isolate applications (JRE) |
| Filter Driver Architecture | Mini Filter for AppAttach | Mini Filter |
| Web administration console | Buy extra ITune or App Store licenses |
4.5 .Net |
| Package types | MSIX, MSIXBUNDLE, APPX, APPXBUNDLE | OPK, APPV, MSI, EXE, (XPF via conversion tool**) |
| Pre advertised shortcuts | Via ITunes/AppStore |
|
| Pre/Post Install scripts | |
|
| Application Licensing | |
|
| User Self Provisioning | |
|
| Workstation Agent | Win 10 Only |
Win 7 – Win 10 |
| File Type Associations | |
|
| Basic Computer Inventory | |
|
| Basic Tasks | |
Scripts, Deploy Agent etc |
| Canned Reports | |
|
| Quality Assurance Management | |
|
| Backend Load balancing components | Via Azure or DFS |
Microsoft DFS |
| Professional Packaging Services | |
First 2 free |
* Copy on Read (COR) – This is a new technology developed by OpDesk that relies on watching the launched process to tell our driver to install the files and registry settings as they are first needed. Once installed, all subsequent file/registry read requests are handled normally. This results in much quicker install times (over MSI) without the performance degradation experienced with some virtualization approaches that require the driver to process every file/registry open request.
** Application Isolation – Both App-V and MSIX force all process and child process to run in their own container. On Backend servers this provides the ability to move the running application to other servers. And on workstations it provides a level of “security by obscurity” between processes running on the same computer. This is because no external applications can interact with whats running inside the container. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of having to constantly add special exclusions when the multiple applications need to interact with each other. With the exception of applications that need to run isloated like Java, OpDesk allow all applications to interact with each other as they were designed to run.
*** Virtualization – We use virtualization only when an application needs to be isolated from other applications. Sometimes customers need to be able to install multiple versions of the same application at the same time. For example being able to install multiple versions of the JRE so end users can use older Java applications or browse to web pages that require a specific version of Java. See our Isolation page for more detail.