If more packages are converted at once, depending on the required scenario, a parallelism is in use to make sure that the total time needed to finish all tasks is as low as possible.
Bulk Processing Using a Single Virtual Machine
If a single virtual machine is used or multiple virtual machines scoped to the same physical VM files (for example two different machines configurations using the same VMX file but different snapshots), the following logic is applied:
•The machines are running sequentially, this means that the repackaging of a task starts only when the virtual machine is not running.
•The processing of each task starts with restoring the required snapshot and powering on the machine.
•After repackaging, the output is sent to the host and processed there. This step is executed only if conversion to MSI, RPP, App-V (without Sequencer), or Thin-App (with local VM) is selected.
•During post-processing the virtual machine is not needed anymore and is shut down (the machine can optionally be left running if there are no more tasks for this machine and PackBot has been configured to do so).
•Post-processing tasks never run simultaneously and are automatically queued.
•The tasks are executed in the very order defined in the Wizard.
Because post-processing is detached from the virtual machine, the next task starts even if the previous task is not physically ready (the only requirement is that its virtual machine is not needed anymore). This strategy saves time which may save a few minutes in the typical repackaging scenarios.
Bulk Processing Using Multiple Virtual Machines
If multiple virtual machine are used and they can be started parallel (which excludes machine configurations which are in fact based on the same VMX file), the following logic is applied:
•The machines are running in parallel, but to a maximum degree specified during the Wizard.
•RayPack determines the best virtual machine candidate for a given task. To find the candidate it uses the following information:
oWhich machines are available
oWhich machines are assigned to which packages
oAdditional logic that minimizes waiting time is also applied. This means that it is possible that the tasks will not be processed in the order defined by the user, if RayPack determines that it may be faster to process tasks in different order.
•The processing of each task starts with restoring of required snapshot and powering on the machine
•After repackaging, the output is sent to the host and processed there. This step is executed only if conversion to MSI, RPP, App-V (without Sequencer), Thin-App (with local VM) is selected.
•During post-processing, the virtual machine is not needed anymore and is shut down (the machine can be optionally left running if there are no more tasks for this machine and PackBot has been configured so).
•Post-processing tasks never run simultaneously and are automatically queued. For example, the following flow shows that post-processing of task 2 is not executed directly after powering off its virtual machine, because at this point of time RayPack is busy with post-processing of the first task. Similarly, post-processing of task 3 is not attached to the virtual machine, as it needs to wait for both task 1 and task 2 to be ready with their post-processing routines.
Because of that, if the host computer is capable of running 2 machines at once with 3 packages, the total time required for the whole processing can be as low as 50% of the original time requirement if only one virtual machine would be used.