Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Kristofer Hellick Reierson

John Michael Sheehan

Angela Mele Anderson

Charles Kossi Kekeh

Eric Jewart

Peter A Morgan

Feroz Gora

Joseph W Rovine

Lidiya Vikhlyayeva

Aseem Kohli

Neil Adam Jacobson

Cread Wellington Mefford

Scott Elliot Stearns

Matthew Christopher Babey

Matthew David Young

Douglas Christopher Burger

Galen Clyde Hunt

Gurashish Brar

Alvin Chardon

Dilip Krishna Pai

Naveed Ahmad

Lidiane Pereira De Souza

Andrew Montgomery

Angela Mae Anderson

Technologies are described herein for differentiating normal operation of an application program from error conditions to predict, diagnose, and recover from application failures. Access to resources by the application program is monitored, and resource access events are logged. Resource access patterns are established from the logged resource access events utilizing computer pattern recognition techniques. If subsequent access to resources by the application program deviates from the established patterns, then a user and/or administrator of the application program is notified of a potential error condition based on the detected deviation. In addition, sequences of resource access events that deviate from the established resources access patterns are correlated with an error condition based on a temporal proximity to the time of occurrence of the error to provide diagnostic information regarding the error.

Predicting, diagnosing, and recovering from application failures based on resource access patterns

Application virtualization at the thread level, rather than at the process level. the operation of a thread across virtualization contexts. For instance, one virtualization context might be a native environment, whereas another virtualization context might be a virtualization environment in which code running inside a virtualization package has access to virtualized computing resources. A thread operating in a first virtualization context then enters an entry point to code associated with a second virtualization context. For instance, a native thread might enter a plug-in operating as part of a virtualized package in a virtualization environment. While the thread is operating on the code, the thread might request access to the second computing resources associated with the second virtualization environment. In response, the thread is associated with the second virtualization context such that the thread has access to the second computing resources associated with the second virtualization context.

Thread operation across virtualization contexts

The dependencies of an application are identified by intercepting application programming interface calls made by an application. A determination is then made at the runtime of the application as to whether the dependencies of the application are present. If the dependencies are not present, a client device upon which the application is executing is configured such that the dependencies are present and are made available only to the authorized application. If the dependencies are present and the application is authorized to interact with the dependencies, the application is permitted to execute.

Satisfying application dependencies

A virtual application packaged for a specific executing environment may be executed on a processing device having an executing environment different from the specific executing environment. A reference, included in extracted installer metadata, to one or more key paths of a hierarchically-structured data store may be modified according to a set of rules related to the executing environment detected in the processing device. The modified extracted installer metadata may be provided to an installer for installing the virtual application. During execution of the virtual application, a request to read, write, or modify the hierarchically-structured data store may be intercepted and changed, such that a first key path included in the request may be mapped to a second key path, based on the detected executing environment. Similarly, a response to the request, which may include the second key path, may be intercepted and modified, to the first key path.

Application virtualization

Technologies are described herein for providing a persona-based application experience. In some configurations, an application can be adapted with a persona package selected from multiple persona packages. The persona packages may include persona-specific user settings, persona-specific application storage settings, or persona-specific application state settings. A persona package may be selected based on a current persona of a user, a time of day, and/or a location of the user. The selected persona package comprises a setting to adapt the execution of the application. In some configurations, a computer determines, a current persona of the user. The computer also receives a selected persona package comprising a user setting of the software application. The selection of the persona package is based on the current persona of the user and established credentials associated with the user. The computer adapts the execution of the software application according to the selected persona package.

Providing a persona-based application experience

Execution of an application is suspended and the runtime state of the application is collected and persisted. Execution of the application may be resumed based on the runtime state. A proxy layer might also be utilized to translate requests received from the application for resources that are modified after the runtime state of the application is persisted. For instance, the runtime state that is persisted may include first data identifying a resource in use by the application at the time the execution of the application is suspended. After resuming the execution of the application, the proxy layer may translate the first data included in a request for the resource to second data identifying the resource, or a different resource, at a time the execution of the application is resumed, and the second data can be used to provide the application access to the resource.

Storing and resuming application runtime state

A virtual application may be configured with several extension points within a host operating system. The virtual application may be configured with a private namespace in which various components, such as registry settings, dynamic linked libraries, and other components may reside. During configuration, links may be placed in the host operating system that may point to objects in the virtual application's private namespace so that the operating system and other applications may launch, control, or otherwise interact with the virtual application. The links may be located in a file system, registry, or other locations and may be available to other applications, including other virtual applications. A configuration routine may place the links into the host operating system at the time the application may be configured.

Virtual application extension points

A disassembler receives instructions and disassembles them into a plurality of separate opcodes. The disassembler creates a table identifying boundaries between each opcode. Each opcode is written to memory in an opcode-by-opcode manner by atomically writing standard blocks of memory. Debug break point opcodes are appended to opcode to create a full block of memory when needed. The block of memory may be thirty-two or sixty-four bits long, for example. Long opcodes may overlap two or more memory blocks. Debug break point opcodes may be appended to a second portion of the long opcode to create a full block of memory. A stream fault interceptor identifies when a requested data page is not available and retrieving the data page.

Lock free streaming of executable code data

A cloud computing environment may use a virtualization layer within a stateless cloud computing process to capture, store, and retrieve state information generated by a stateful application executing within the process. The virtualization layer may monitor various state storage systems to identify changes to stateful items and store the stateful items in a state storage mechanism. The virtualization layer may intercept and redirect calls to the stateful items stored in the state storage mechanism. A cloud computing manager may start and stop the stateless cloud computing process, and may recover the state and resume executing the application.

Stateful applications operating in a stateless cloud computing environment

Execution of an application is suspended and the runtime state of the application is collected and persisted. Maintenance operations may then be performed on the computer that the application was executing upon. The runtime state might also be moved to another computer. In order to resume execution of the application, the runtime state of the application is restored. Once the runtime state of the application has been restored, execution of the application may be restarted from the point at which execution was suspended. A proxy layer might also be utilized to translate requests received from the application for resources that are modified after the runtime state of the application is persisted.

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Acton, MA, United States of America

Kristofer Hellick Reierson