System and method for cached streaming application isolation

• US 9,577,893 B1
• Filed: 07/20/2010
• Issued: 02/21/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/10/2009
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Open Invention Network LLC
• Original Assignee: Open Invention Network LLC
• Inventors: Havemose, Allan
• Primary Examiner(s): Mejia, Anthony
• Assistant Examiner(s): Cousins, Joseph M
• Application Number:
  US12/839,610
• Time in Patent Office: 2,408 Days
• Field of Search: 709/225
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/53 by executing in a restricted environment, e.g. sandbox or secure virtual machine
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/62 Uninstallation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5051 Service on demand, e.g. definition and deployment of services in real time

Abstract

A system, method, and computer readable medium for providing optimized streaming of one or more applications from streaming servers onto one or more clients. The one or more applications are contained within one or move isolated environments, and the isolated environments are streamed from the servers onto clients. The streaming is optimized using update-caches which are maintained on the streaming server and compared against the client'"'"'s most recent update-caches. The update-caches are updated when applications are installed, removed or patched inside particular isolated environment and when the operating system is patched or updated. The system may include authentication of the streaming servers and authentication of clients and credentialing of the isolated environments and applications the clients are configured to run. The system may further include encrypted communication between the streaming servers and the clients. The system may further include a management interface where administrators may add, remove and configure isolated environments, configure client policies and credentials, and force upgrades. The streamed isolated environments may be isolated from other applications and the host operating system on the clients and applications within the isolated environments may run without performing an application-installation on the client.

Claims

1. A system for providing application streaming from a host server to one or more clients, the system comprising:

a host server configured to stream one or more isolated environments, one or more clients, and an isolated environment credential database;

wherein said host server is comprised of one or more memory locations configured to store one or more isolated environments, one or more Central Processing Units (CPUs) operatively connected to said one or more memory locations and configured to stream said one or more isolated environments to the one or more clients, and one or more host server update-caches, wherein each isolated environment comprises at least one or more applications and files and executables for said one or more applications, and wherein said one or more host server update-caches are configured to identify files within an isolated environment that have changed since last being streamed for each client and isolated environment;

wherein said one or more clients each are comprised of one of more memory locations configured to store an isolated environment infrastructure, one or more isolated environments, a client update-cache for each isolated environment, and one or more Central Processing Units (CPUs) operatively connected to said one or more memory locations and configured to execute said applications and isolated environments on a client operating system, wherein said one or more isolated environments comprise at least said one or more applications and files and executables for said one or more applications, and

wherein said client update-cache is configured to identify host server isolated environment files as of last streaming;

wherein upon the host server receiving a request to stream an isolated environment from a client, a corresponding update-cache on the host server is compared to the client'"'"'s update-cache, and files with modified message digest, file name, file size, directory and last change-time are transmitted to said client; and

wherein the isolated environment credential database is configured to store client credentials; and

access to streaming an isolated environment for a client is granted or denied based on validating said client'"'"'s credentials against said isolated environment credential database.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the host update-cache storage location maintains one cache per isolated environment for each of the one or more clients.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the host and client update-cache storage locations maintain, for each file within the one or more isolated environments, summary information comprising at least one or more of a message digest, file name, directory name, file size, and last changed time stamp.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the Message Digest (MD) is one of MD5, MD6, Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), SHA-1, SHA-2, and SHA-n.

5. The system according to claim 3, wherein two files within the one or more isolated environments are considered identical if the message digest, file name, directory name, file size and last changed time are identical for the two files.

6. The system according to claim 1, wherein the update-cache storage locations maintain, for each file within the one or more isolated environments, a setting to compress at least one file when transmitting said file to the one or more clients.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein a compression algorithm used to compress said files is one of an operating system provided default compression algorithm, LZ, LZR, LZX, PKZIP, GZIP and ZIP and a no-loss compression algorithm.

8. The system according to claim 1, wherein the update-cache storage locations are created and updated for the one or more isolated environments by, for each file within the one or more isolated environments, calculating message digest, compression, file name, file size, directory and last changed-time, and storing respective data associated with each file within the update-cache storage location.

9. The system according to claim 8, wherein stored data associated with each file is deleted when each file no longer is stored in the isolated environment.

10. The system according to claim 1, wherein information stored in the update-cache storage locations is sent to the one or more clients upon completion of streaming files to the one or more clients, and wherein the one or more clients replace their respective update-caches with the received update-cache information.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein the one or more isolated environments are updated by the one or more clients with files streamed from the host server.

12. The system according to claim 10, wherein one or more clients delete files stored in a local isolated environment that are no longer present in the one or more clients'"'"' update-caches.

13. The system according to claim 1, wherein an update-cache for an isolated environment is created after installing an application inside at least one of the isolated environments.

14. The system according to claim 1, wherein an update-cache for an isolated environment is updated after installing a software patch for an application inside at least one of the isolated environments.

15. The system according to claim 1, wherein an update-cache for an isolated environment is updated after installing an operating system patch for the operating system inside said isolated environment.

16. The system according to claim 1, wherein an administrator may perform re-generation of one or more update-caches.

17. The system according to claim 1, wherein only files that have been detected as having been modified since a previous update are streamed to the one or more clients.

18. The system according to claim 1, wherein the one or more clients'"'"' update-caches are compared with information stored in the update-cache storage location by performing a line-by-line comparison to determine whether each line of the update-cache storage location is present in the one or more clients'"'"' update-cache.

19. The system according to claim 18, wherein if a line of the one or more clients'"'"' update-cache is determined not to be present in the update-cache storage location, then the file corresponding to the cache line is sent to the one or more clients.