Five steps to deploy Windows 7 Applications

Your careful consideration of the application compatibility in the migration project determines whether the OS is launched smoothly or not, or decide whether you will put your IT team in the siege of help telephony, post-human finger points, and countless late-night overtime troubles.

A few years ago, when companies began evaluating Windows Vista, application compatibility had become a fatal obstacle on the way forward. Most of these situations occur because the applications that the company's key business functions depend on are unavailable in Windows Vista. In other cases, the company has no budget and is not willing to purchase a license for a new version specifically designed for Windows Vista. In other cases, the key applications are customized or developed by internal staff of the company. The original developers are either no longer in the company or (even in) basic Code cannot be modified.

Now, when considering migration to Windows 7, you will find that the situation is far from as challenging as it was a few years ago-most applications designed for Windows Vista can also work well on Windows 7, in addition, most ISVs have updated their applications so that they can work well with the next-generation Windows operating system. Therefore, whether you migrate from Windows XP or Windows Vista, the situation is not as difficult as it was in the past.

Even so, the successful deployment of application combinations for OS migration is still a huge project, but if you can take the correct sequence of steps and make some difficult choices that will help narrow the test scope, still, this tedious work is not so embarrassing.

Why does the application expire in Windows Vista and Windows 7?

So what changes have been made in Windows 7 (and Windows Vista) that the application designed for Windows XP is "invalid "? It is certain that the engineering team responsible for Windows Vista and Windows 7 never rashly deals with this issue.

Windows is modified to improve security, reliability, performance, and availability. In some cases, you can delete old components that have reached their validity period. We do not intend to spend time listing all these changes in this article, but will give some significant changes to application compatibility, including:

User Account Control (UAC)/standard user account. In the development of Windows Vista, the engineering team enables most organizations to deploy their users as standard users, while retaining administrator permissions only to users who need such permissions-IT professionals. The customer's PC adopts this policy, which we call the "user account with the lowest Permissions, it can help prevent malware intrusion, reduce end-user configuration errors, and prevent unauthorized application loading. In the past, applications were able to write registry settings, modify the kernel, and perform other similar attacks. Unfortunately, such freedom has to be paid at the expense of security. Windows now limits the OS parameters that can be modified by applications and the impact of malware. However, you need to modify or fill the applications written with such behaviors, then they can work normally in Windows 7.

Five steps for smooth deployment of Windows 7 Applications

Like most massive projects, if you can take some time to break down a problem into several logical and manageable tasks, the difficulties are not insurmountable.

The smooth deployment of applications can be divided into three main parts: Collection, analysis and mitigation. But there are several other steps we want to emphasize: Before starting the testing system, consider using virtualization technology to help reduce the testing process and potentially help improve the desktop infrastructure, better management of future migration; sort the testing phase according to the expanded strategy.

After preparing for the in-depth research, you can start the operation immediately.

Step 1: Collect the Application List

The first step is to understand your situation through the Application List-Please trust us; at this point, you may just realize that the problem is more complicated than you think. However, it is important that you have just transformed an "unknown" into "known", have better examined the scope of the test and the ready programs, and understand the challenges ahead.

Fortunately, there are already some tools available to help automate this process. Your customer management software may already have this feature built in, or you can use the Application Compatibility Toolkit that can be downloaded for free. if you already have other Configuration mechanisms, such as System Center Configuration Manager and Asset Inventory Service, you can use them as the starting point.

To make a list the most useful downstream product, capture more information than the Application List-for example, you can learn more about the current users of the application, their roles, and the importance of the application to users. With this information, you can prioritize critical applications and eliminate unused or redundant applications (further details will be provided in the next step ).

This also provides additional benefits-identifying applications that are currently not managed but widely used. You may also need to incorporate these applications into the specifications so that they are properly managed on approved versions and the required software is updated.

Step 2: analyze the application

The number of applications that you currently support has been replaced or lost to your business users. If you are different from most organizations, a considerable number of Supported Applications (in many cases most applications) are in this state. Therefore, once the evaluation is completed and a lot of information is used as the basis, before you start the time-consuming (and expensive) regression testing process, the next step is to clear the list of supported applications and filter these applications.

Set appropriate targets for your application portfolio. How many applications need to be supported in total? Under which circumstances does an application need to be upgraded to the "managed" status?

After setting the target, you can start to find the easiest target and narrow down the scope of the application to be tested.

Eliminate unnecessary and unused applications. Without a doubt, you will find that several applications execute the same functions. It is now necessary to establish an application to fulfill a functional standard and eliminate obsolete applications. Here is a prompt, we recommend that you try and map the application dependency, because you may need to support an old version of the application so that another application can be supported by this ISV. Applications that are rarely or never used should naturally be discarded. This not only simplifies testing, but also saves money on Purchasing software licenses.

Delete multiple versions of the same application and keep the latest version. In almost all cases, the latest version has the best performance and is also the most secure and reliable. Pay attention to the dependency between applications.

Collect information from business users to help prioritize critical applications and determine which departments are using which applications. This is useful when sorting the test process; you need to adjust the test time based on the new desktop image launched in stages.

Step 3: Evaluate incompatibility and reduce options

There is no doubt that some applications need to do more to ensure smooth deployment of Windows 7. Currently, the following options are available for reference:

You can replace an incompatible version with a new version of the application. This method is the most reliable, but unfortunately it is also the most expensive. This method is recommended if the application is critical or has strategic significance for business operations.

Create a fill code for an existing application. Fill codes are small code blocks inserted between applications and Windows to modify calls to the underlying OS-for example, to make applications believe that users are running as administrators, at the same time, the standard user mode is maintained. This may bring you some management burden, because you need to maintain a fill code database, but this method can solve many application problems. This method is the most cost-effective and may be the only option if the application provider is no longer around. But there is one thing to warn about-many providers do not support applications that have completed Code filling.

You can use group policies to change the application's offense. Like the fill code, this method usually solves compatibility issues, but it also has some disadvantages. In essence, this method can be used to disable a feature or feature that may cause application slowdown. Unfortunately, in many cases, these features involve the security of the underlying system, so the cost is obvious. Similarly, applications must have group policy settings to enable such management.

You can modify the code for custom or internal applications. But this does not always work. If it works, there are a lot of resources to help-Application Compatibility Cookbook provides the changes from Windows XP to Windows Vista, application Quality Cookbook provides changes from Windows Vista to Windows 7. Both resources are free guides that help developers recode their applications for local compatibility.

Step 4: Prepare for OS Deployment and new application delivery options

It is also a great time for you to rethink how to package and deliver your applications to end users. Virtualization technology has already provided us with many options and possibilities, which were unavailable during the last major OS migration. Before starting the testing process, consider providing different models for desktop images and application delivery. You will find that the savings caused by application testing and preparation can not only make up for the virtual environment implementation cost, but also provide a more flexible and easy-to-manage environment for future development.

There are two main forms of virtualization that can solve application compatibility problems-application virtualization and OS virtualization. Application virtualization separates the application layer from the OS, contains only application files and registry settings, and packages the applications to simplify them. OS Virtualization has several different forms, but it basically creates an OS image independent of the local image on the machine.

Virtualization of application combinations brings a number of benefits in manageability and flexibility, but the most critical advantage is to minimize conflicts between applications. This type of conflict occurs when you need to run two versions of the same application at the same time-this is common in software training scenarios, for example, a comparison of the completion process of a specific task in the new and old applications, and for example, the financial department is migrating to a new version of the financial software, but the old version of the software needs to close the accounting for this fiscal year.

A more common use of virtualization to address application compatibility issues is to create a virtual image that contains key applications and operating systems designed to run the application. There are some tools to enable OS Virtualization: from Windows 7 Professional Virtual PC and Windows XP mode and more advanced SKU (an unhosted virtual image, to Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization alization (MED-V) in MicrosoftDesktop Optimization Pack (MDOP ), it uses policies to determine the interaction between physical and virtual environments, making it easy to supply, configure, and manage virtual machines.

Of course, using an alternative computing model for your customer's PC is a huge project, however, it is worth some time to assess the benefits that this brings to the Organization-greater flexibility and manageability-whether it is far beyond the extra cost of adopting this PC supply model.

Step 5: Sort tests, labs, and deployments

Sort your test process by the priority mentioned in step 2 so that you can start testing in stages and perform subsequent tests in parallel.

Two methods can be used to start the test process: Static Analysis and Dynamic Analysis. Because static analysis is relatively new, a more thorough test method is to combine the two.

Static analysis focuses on the application structure and determines the problems that will occur during installation or running. Currently, many tools and services are available to help automate this process, and obvious problems can be highlighted quickly.

Dynamic analysis focuses on the behavior of applications at runtime, usually completed in regression testing. Here, we will perform a "smoke test" on the application in a specific environment-copying the experience of various users on their hardware and other key applications and drivers.

Finally, you need to have some real users run these applications and check whether any exception lines will occur during the structured test. At this time, as long as you participate in the new PC to obtain the promise is a good incentive.

When you are ready to start production, you must first identify the people who make the migration meaningful to them-based on the specific features they need or to minimize the damage to the business. It is much easier to migrate a group of professional users than to handle calls from job workers who are overwhelmed by unfamiliar screens. Next, determine the applications required for these user groups to execute their jobs. Start with a group that is least or unaffected by application compatibility (based on the applications it uses), which allows you to verify the deployment process and operating system. As you process the application suite, you can remove more groups from incompatible application categories and then target these groups.

Last warning-avoid making this process too much. If you extend the scope of operations from application compatibility to the entire application quality project, you may never be able to complete this task. Accept the fact that fixing bugs makes work impossible, and avoid trying to eliminate every existing bug-your time is undoubtedly more useful.