What is the Zapp Migration Tool?
AppZero has taken its application virtualization technology and developed a tool to easily encapsulate nearly any Windows application. AppZero calls encapsulated applications “Virtual Application Appliances” or VAAs. Once an application has been transformed into a VAA, it can be copied to any other Windows system and be run there without doing a traditional application installation.
Why is this important?
Organizations are finding that their applications need to be much more mobile than in times past. They want the ability to easily migrate applications from place to place to meet service level objectives or respond to outages.
Different approaches to application mobility that organizations have tried
Organizations have explored several different ways to address application mobility including:
Encapsulating an entire system, including the operating system, application frameworks, database engine and the application itself into a virtual machine. Suppliers such as Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware would love it if you used their products for this purpose. Although this approach uses a large amount of system memory, storage and some additional processing power, applications can be easily migrated from system to system or from system to a cloud computing environment.
Using a P2V tool, such as products offered by AutoVirt, Leostream, Microsoft, Novell, Quest, Symantec, VMware, and a few other suppliers, to convert workloads on the fly and move them into virtual server environments. This approach simplifies the process of system encapsulation, but still requires large amount of system memory, storage and some additional processing power.
Encapsulating only the application and using an application virtualization product, such as those offered by AppZero, Citrix, Microsoft or VMware to allow the application to be migrated from place to place as needed. Since only the application has been encapsulated, the host needs to provide the proper operating system environment. This approach uses only the memory and storage necessary for the application.
