Streaming Optimized Virtual Application Images

• US 20100333085A1
• Filed: 06/25/2009
• Published: 12/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/25/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Criddle, Jefferson B., Krueger, Anthony D., Brar, Gurashish Singh
• Granted Patent: US 8,341,620 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/178
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines

Abstract

Embodiments provide an optimized virtual application or suite of virtual applications, but are not so limited. In an embodiment, components of a system are configured to generate an optimized virtual package that can be used in a virtual application streaming environment. Components of the system can provide bits of the optimized virtual package based in part on scenario mappings associated with a user action and/or an application or application feature. In one embodiment, a client virtualization handler can operate to download byte ranges of an optimized virtual package including re-prioritizing byte range download operations as part of streaming virtual application functionality over a computing network.

Claims

1. A system to provide virtual information comprising:

at least one processor and memory;

a virtual application encoder to use a base virtual application image and optimization data as inputs to generate a feature block file and an optimized virtual application image including a number of feature blocks and faux feature blocks which correspond to a suite of virtual applications of an optimized virtual package; and

,

a forge component to use the feature block file and a faux feature block authoring file as inputs to generate a faux feature block file describing scenario mappings to byte ranges of the optimized virtual application image, wherein the faux feature block file and the optimized virtual application image are stored in the memory.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a feature block manager to generate the optimization data.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the feature block manager uses a scenario authoring file and automation data to generate the optimization data.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising using automation operations to generate a number of out-of-sequence (OOS) logs describing pertinent image portions required for each executed application scenario.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a server to host the faux feature block file and the optimized virtual application image.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising a client virtualization handler to selectively download byte ranges of the optimized virtual application image based in part on user actions and the scenario mappings.

7. The system of claim 6, further comprising a bootstrapping component to pre-fetch and store byte ranges of the optimized virtual application image in a pseudo-cache during installation of the client virtualization handler.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the client virtualization handler moves pre-fetched byte ranges from the pseudo-cache to a virtual application cache after installation and continues downloading byte ranges of the optimized virtual package.

9. The system of claim 6, the client virtualization handler further comprising a download manager to dynamically determine bits of a virtual application launch to delay based in part on a user action while downloading scenario-based byte ranges as part of a background stream.

10. The system of claim 9, the download manager further operable to dynamically reorder the background stream based in part on the user actions and a priority queue.

11. The system of claim 9, the download manager further operable to use the faux feature block file to determine scenarios and feature blocks including block offsets and range mappings of the optimized virtual package.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtual application encoder comprises a XML encoder and is operable to use OPTXML and the base virtual application image to reorder bits of the base virtual application image to generate feature block XML and the optimized virtual application.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the forge component is further operable to generate FFB XML to define all scenarios, map feature blocks to byte ranges, and list data block offsets.

14. A computing system comprising:

a processor and memory;

a virtual application handler to download byte ranges of a virtual package comprising a virtual application image associated with a suite of virtual applications and a faux feature block data structure describing mappings to portions of the virtual application image, the virtual application handler operable to;

download default byte ranges of the virtual application image to a virtual application cache by prioritizing the default byte ranges in a prioritized queue;

use detection data corresponding to a user action associated with a desired virtual application feature of the suite of virtual applications;

determine a number of scenarios associated with the detected user action;

determine relevant byte ranges corresponding with the desired application feature and the number of scenarios;

pause a current byte range download operation if the relevant byte ranges are different than the default byte ranges in the prioritized queue;

re-prioritize bit download operations by prioritizing the relevant byte ranges in the prioritized queue; and

,

download the relevant byte ranges to the virtual application cache.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising a bootstrapping component configure to pre-fetch and store byte ranges to a bootstrap cache during installation of the virtual application handler.

16. The system of claim 14, further operable to reduce OOS requests by predicting user behavior based in part on prior actions and loading bits corresponding to the predicted behavior.

17. A method of providing a virtual package comprising:

generating the virtual package including generating a virtual application image and a faux feature block file to describe mappings to portions of the virtual application image, the faux feature block file including one or more of product boot faux feature blocks, application faux feature blocks, and feature-level faux feature blocks;

hosting the virtual package on a serving system;

receiving user input; and

,

communicating byte ranges of the virtual package based in part on the user input including re-prioritizing byte range downloads.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising storing pre-fetched bits of the virtual package in a pseudo-cache of a client computing device.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising re-prioritizing a priority queue based in part on a user action.

20. The method of claim 17, further comprising generating the virtual package based in part on optimization data and a block order that includes a feature block order, a version number, primary faux feature blocks in increasing order, and secondary faux feature blocks in decreasing order.