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WaterGems and MS App-V(irtualization) - Compatibility?

I'm starting to get to the bottom of how our new ICT team ha've been trying to deploy WaterGems onto our PCs.

What I think possibly is a root cause of our issues and malfunctioning/crashing instances is they opted to deploy WaterGems into the production environment using Application Virtualization technology, using Microsoft App-V.   This is fairly new tech for me, but it seems to be an advanced form of imaging, you maintain one "Master" installation on an ICT PC as the "template", and then use this to automate deployments and updates using this one template.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_virtualization

So our Win 7 PCs actually don't HAVE WaterGems installed at all on the Operating System.  Instead App-V is used on each PC to virtualise the application when the user runs it using a local MS App-V cache directory (it seems awfully a lot like Valve's Steam system).   The trouble is I don't think that Bentley WaterGems/WaterCAD would be compatible with Microsoft App-V?  Can WaterGems/WaterCAD be virtualized on PCs this way or is our ICT team just asking for a whole lot of trouble?

1.  Firstly, it has interoperabilities with other applications.   This would probably explain why the WaterGems Integration scripts are not detecting ESRI ArcGIS on our PCs

2.  Secondly, the software is meant to be tailored individually to the PC and to the user's preferences.  There is not really a "one size fits all" installation/configuration.

3.  Thirdly, I'm not sure this would necessarily play happily with localised settings in the Windows Registry or local application setting or temp data files?

4.  Lastly, this doesn't really suit the Bentley TSG and rapid hotfix deployment model.   The user and TSG are directly talking to each other in most cases, and you need a "real" application rather than a virtual one to do diagnostics on, and test ST hotfixes/patches to test directly in the production environment resolution of the issue.

Thoughts?

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  • Hi Ben,

    I agree with your points about the challenges with using Bentley's Water products (including WaterGEMS) in a virtualized environment. It's possible that the errors you reported are due to issues with how your ICT team configured the virtualized environment.

    It may be a matter of explaining to the IT services team what you've noted on why it's best to install our products on the client computer instead of attempting virtualization.


    Regards,

    Jesse Dringoli
    Technical Support Manager, OpenFlows
    Bentley Communities Site Administrator
    Bentley Systems, Inc.

Reply
  • Hi Ben,

    I agree with your points about the challenges with using Bentley's Water products (including WaterGEMS) in a virtualized environment. It's possible that the errors you reported are due to issues with how your ICT team configured the virtualized environment.

    It may be a matter of explaining to the IT services team what you've noted on why it's best to install our products on the client computer instead of attempting virtualization.


    Regards,

    Jesse Dringoli
    Technical Support Manager, OpenFlows
    Bentley Communities Site Administrator
    Bentley Systems, Inc.

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