application virtualization

[Tirant]

Hi All!

 

I wanted to build a new computer in the next couple of months, and I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to try to incorporate into the build and see how feasible they are. Essentially, I wanted to try and decouple my PC from any form of mass storage in favor of a simple 256-512GB PCIE (or m.2) interface SSD to be used as a cache for programs I am using at the time (similar to how HDDs cache running applications to RAM, except this won't be volatile). The mass storage for my PC would be attached to a server (that I would have to build and likely use FreeNAS), which would also be used as a NAS. So in theory, all encapsulated programs would be accessible along with the media files across my network. I would also use the server for regular PC backups. The rest of my network would remain on a 1Gb connection, however I was considering upgrading the link between the PC and server to 10Gb or aggregate a few 1Gb connections via a NIC. Understandably the SATA 3.0 interface has only 6Gb of bandwidth, but I wanted to make the rare transitions as easy as possible.

 

So in essence, if I wanted to play a large 40GB game, which I do not want to store on my PC because of the size, I could download it fast over my PC-server link and then unload it when I'm done playing it or need the space back. Another example would be with large applications like Photoshop, which I don't use often, but need to use occasionally and are a pain to download off the Internet.

 

Now, I've looked into some solutions, such as VMware ThinApp which scans the registry before and after an installation to track file system and registry changes and package the application, but I was wondering if anyone has had any experience using application virtualization/portable application software. How easy is it to use? How well to settings transfer? Ideally I would like settings and save files to remain bound to the PC user. I'm not looking for application streaming, because I want to run the programs/applications/games on my physical PC hardware.

 

Right now this is all theory, I know it would be easier to just throw in a bunch of mass storage drives into my PC, but I wanted to build a server (or at least repurpose this machine) for backups and NAS anyways, so I thought I'd look into this. The huge benefit would be that this would afford me complete redundancy: If my SSD ever burns out, I could swap it in with a new one (or upgrade it in time) and restore my backup and still have access to my games with minimal effort. If a couple of HDDs fail in my NAS, they can always be replaced and rebuilt off of the parity drives (I am considering using raidz2).

 

Another thing that I was looking into, however I haven't done much research on it, was integrating my PC login into the server, so I could access my account from my LAN. I was looking at LDAP, but that's the extent of it. I am most concerned with the whole portable application idea right now.