Independent App-V Blog

From source:

App-V 4.5 Service Pack 2 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 code line. This is the first time the team has delivered via Windows Update. App-V 4.5 SP2 introduces:

• Enhanced failover protection or disaster recovery of your virtual application infrastructure: App-V data-store failover protection enables administrators to quickly recover from disasters and/or recycle servers for maintenance.
• Enable highly available application infrastructure: App-V 4.5 SP2 load balanced management servers can now leverage SQL server mirrored data-store to support high availability scenarios for line of business applications; with automatic failover protection not available with the previous versions of App-V.
• Data replication is now possible across geography: this enables organizations to recover from site wide failures faster.
• App-V 4.5 SP2 clients can now deploy Office 2010.

App-V 4.5 SP2 Release Notes

App-V 4.5 SP2 FAQ

From source:

The SuperFlow interactive content model provides a structured and interactive interface for viewing documentation. Each SuperFlow includes comprehensive information about a specific dataflow, workflow, or process. Depending on the focus of the SuperFlow, you will find overview information, steps that include detailed information, procedures, sample log entries, best practices, real-world scenarios, troubleshooting information, security information, animations, or other information. Each SuperFlow also includes links to relevant resources, such as Web sites or local files that are copied to your computer when you install the SuperFlow. This SuperFlow provides detailed information about the Application Virtualization Sequencing process.

Download here : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=8c4dfab6-7ef5-4188-a531-346cf9bfe7bf

I think it’s really good to see that Microsoft is putting a lot of effort in making the Sequencing process more easy. And this is a step in the right direction. But there is still a lot they can and probably will improve in this area…

One of the new features of App-V 4.6 is the ability to share a pre-populated cache amongst multiple virtual desktops running in a VDI environment. Since running App-V in the traditional way, meaning streaming each application on-demand to each user into each VM, can cause some I/O overhead depending on the architecture of the VDI infrastructure, this could be a useful feature to use.

Since a lot of people are looking for the details on how to implement this feature I will point you into the right direction.

To begin with, First Justin Zarb has posted an article about this on his Blog. Which you can find here.

The official document that describes this feature can be found on this Microsoft Technet page.

A bit off-topic, but might be useful for some of you. Immidio also has some freeware tools available from the Immidio website. Recently two were added:

• ActiveApp Scanner - Monitor which applications are actually used during a user’s Windows session and collect information about the user environment, like keyboard, regional settings, network mappings and connected printers.
• Virtual Battery Indicator - Displays the battery level of your local laptop battery inside a Remote Desktop session, and provides a warning when the level drops below a certain value.

Download from www.immidio.com/resourcekit

Finally, it’s time. After some years it’s time to migrate to the next Operating System on the desktop, Windows 7. After the very low adoption of Windows Vista within companies I am really happy to see in the field is that a lot of companies are planning, or at least considering to migrate to Windows 7. I’ve talked to a lot of customers that are in the planning phase of a migration to Windows 7.

Migrate but innovate

What my story is about now, is to convince you that this is exactly the right time to innovate in your desktop infrastructure as well. Don’t just upgrade each component and think you’re done. Because you will end up with a brand new infrastructure with a lot of the same issues you have now. Also, requirements for the desktop infrastructures must have changed for your IT infrastructure during the last couple of years. Take new technologies into consideration when designing your new desktop infrastructure.

Most migrations to Windows XP within companies were done between 2002 and 2005. It’s been a while, a lot of things have changed in the mean time and everyone has gotten more dependent on IT –often more than they realize. And most probably your company is using more desktop applications than 5 to 10 years ago. The longer a company exists, the more legacy (applications) they have.

Besides the growing dependency and application landscape, technology in the desktop infrastructure area has progressed. Some examples:

• The deployment of Windows has improved
• The way drivers are handled is much better
• It’s possible and even easy to maintain one image for different types of hardware
• Deployment tools like WDS and Microsoft Deployment Tool (MDT) have matured
• Enterprise management solutions like System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) have matured
• The overall user experience has improved dramatically. It will in anyway feel new and not old for users. It could even be a boost of image for the IT department.

Your biggest migration issue

So, taking all this into consideration we can agree it’s time to start preparations to migrate to Windows 7 and try to do everything better that was done wrong the last time when designing and migrating to a Windows XP environment.

But I have one question: what was the biggest issue in your last desktop migration project?

I can hear you thinking: “the applications”.

Probably the desktop infrastructure was ready to go, but not all applications were packaged, (regression) tested or they simply did not work on the new platform. Probably the whole migration planning was not met because of those applications. There are two reasons why applications are such a problem with each desktop migration:

1. People tend to underestimate the work and wait until the migration project has begun, before starting to handle the applications for the migration. There is just so much time-consuming work to do. Especially running user acceptance tests tends to take a lot of organizational time.
2. The technical issues around the traditional form of application “installation” cost a lot of time and effort. For each application you need to create new packages or at least test them on the new platform to see whether the installer and application work, check for conflicts, etcetera. All time-consuming work mostly caused by the concept of “installation”. This is where Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) comes in-to play.

We all know the benefits and flexibility we gain from machine virtualization, but it does not generally solve application installation issues. Microsoft App-V does so by applying virtualization on another layer, decoupling the application from the underlying operating system. No more worries about application conflicts, no more regression testing on a app-to-app level. For more general information on how Microsoft App-V works, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/appv/techoverview.mspx

App-V migration benefits

Because most time constraints in a desktop migration project are caused by the technical issues around applications, using Microsoft App-V will provide many benefits to help achieve your planning goals.

1. Sequencing an application (i.e. packaging for App-V), generally speaking is faster than (re-)packaging an application into .MSI format.
2. Almost no regression testing necessary. Applications run isolated in their own virtual environment. Virtualized applications do need to be tested on the OS to which you want to deploy. Most problems around virtualized applications that do not work once they are deployed are caused by inadequate app-to-OS testing.
3. Application delivery through App-V streaming technology is on-demand and very fast compared to “traditional” software delivery, keeping OS images small and making them fast to deploy. Also there is much less worry about lengthy waits for the applications to be deployed to the users on their freshly installed PC.
4. Updates are only made to the central package, no more praying that your 10.000 advertised update packages were successful.

If you have not experienced a desktop migration in detail, please talk to someone who has and you will see that these three points would have saved a lot of time and issues at that time.

Not migrating any time soon

The reality is that not all environments will be migrated to a Windows 7 desktop environment right away. Still I have advised a lot of my customers to start using App-V in their current Windows XP environment and make sure that all new applications or major application updates are delivered through Microsoft App-V technology as this will get them ready for migration. I also tell them to test all those sequenced applications (App-V name for package) on Windows 7 as part of their packaging process, making sure these virtualized applications will work once the desktop is migrated to Windows 7 in the future. Each application you virtualize now is one less application to virtualize when migrating to Windows 7. You can get started by reading the App-V sequencing whitepaper or by watching the video on how to create a virtual application using App-V.

So, clearly my advice is to start using Microsoft App-V now because it provides benefits for the future.

NOTE: It is important to realize that there is no guarantee that an application virtualized on Windows XP will automatically work on Windows 7. You still need to test and in a worst case scenario virtualize the application once for each operating system.
App-V benefits after migration

Besides the migration benefits, App-V also provides a lot of benefits in a Windows 7 or even Windows XP environment. Some of them overlap with the migration benefits, but here is the list for completeness.

1. Faster than packaging and less worries about conflicts. Meaning you can respond to business demand faster. Also changes on applications are much easier and faster.
2. Run conflicting legacy applications side-by-side on the desktop.
3. Because of application streaming no more waits on application delivery, especially for users that roam between desktops.
4. Application updates

App-V and Windows 7

Microsoft App-V has been around since 2006 when Microsoft acquired Softricity which have been developing the application virtualization technology since 1998. Since Service Pack 1 for Microsoft App-V 4.5, the 32-bit version of Windows 7 has been fully supported way ahead of other vendors in this space with the following feature set specific for Windows 7:

• Seamless user experience regardless of application format (pin to taskbar and leverage jumplists)
• AppLocker integration. Increase IT control, enforcing compliance of virtual applications
• BranchCache support. Leverage BranchCache technology to deploy virtual applications over the WAN, eliminating the need for streaming servers in every branch.
• BitLockerToGo support. Stream virtual applications from USB storage devices, allowing only authorized users to access the virtual applications.
• Integration with 3rd-party LDAP directories

But now Microsoft releases App-V 4.6 which was designed with Windows 7 and Office 2010 in mind. The following features have been added to App-V to support Windows 7, Remote Desktops Services (including VDI) and Office 2010 even better:

• Enable App-V to run on 64-bit Windows Desktops and Servers
• Enable App-V to launch true 64-bit applications
• Thirteen new languages added for localization in support of global businesses
• Extend virtual Office 2010 usage
• Improved SharePoint integration to Open, Save, Edit files.
• Find your email items quickly with Outlook’s Fast Search
• Connect to your inbox using Microsoft Outlook Send To functionality
• Print your documents directly to OneNote
• Find contents within your documents using Office Document Indexing
• Open Web based calendar items and RSS Feeds in Outlook
• Perform advanced mail configuration using the Virtual Mail Applet
• Point to shared cache instead of streaming into virtual desktops or mount within virtual desktops
• Reduces storage requirements on SAN by eliminating redundancy of application binaries
• Improved Sequencer experience with ability to sequence true 64-bit applications
• Faster virtual application availability when using System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

I really think the future of application deployment is to do this through application virtualization and no longer worry about the concept of “installation” on devices; “Apps can now follow users versus devices”. And all the developments around version 4.5 SP1 and 4.6 of App-V really show that this technology is here to stay and Microsoft is putting in all efforts to become the standard on application virtualization (bye bye .MSI).

Especially considering that the App-V for RDS CAL license is provided for free for each RDS CAL you purchase for Windows 2008 R2 there seems to be no reason left to not start using App-V. And since we all are migrating to Windows 7 the coming years there is no better time than doing so right now.

Finally, after a sneak preview last month, Immidio AppScriber 2.0 is released and a trial version is available for download (registration required)

From the website:

Immidio AppScriber gives users the freedom to activate applications in a secure self-service manner. IT departments save on labor while remaining in control. Immidio AppScriber 2.0 introduces delegated authorization based on workflow.

Some videos that explain the functionality, configuration and administration in short have been posted on the Immidio youtube channel.

• User Interface - Introduction
• Initial Configuration
• Administration - Part 1
• Administration - Part 2

For more information visit the Immidio website.

When I’m troubleshooting an App-V application one of the first things I check is whether the application is loading and running on that particular client. To rule out distribution issues I find myself more than often adding the application manually to the client cache. If you don’t have the ability of supporting tools like my own “ACDC” you have to know that this can easily be done through command line as well. In fact this is basically what ACDC is doing for you.

Keep in mind that you must have set the client to “Standalone Mode”, as decribed here

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Softgrid\4.5\Client

· Configuration\RequireAuthorizationIfCached = 0

· Configuration\AllowIndependentFileStreaming = 0

I’ll show you how to do this is in 6 easy steps with a sequenced version of Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007

Step 1. Copy the binaries to the local machine in a temporary folder (i.e. C:\Temp)

Step 2. Open the command line as an Administrator (right click while pressing SHIFT)

Step 3. Browse to the temporary location and type “notepad [the name of any osd file in the sequence]”

Step 4. In notepad copy the [Package Name] to the clipboard and close notepad.

Step 5. On the command line type “sftmime add package:”[paste your clipboard]” /manifest [name of the manifest file]”

tip: press the [Tab] or SHIFT + [TAB] key after /manifest to locate the correct file.

‘

Shortcuts and File associations should appear on your machine now.

Step 6: On the command line press up to bring back the previous command line. Alter the command line to “sftmime load package:”[Package Name]” /sftpath [name of the sft file]”

That’s it the package is now made locally available.

Immidio will be releasing Immidio AppScriber 2.0 the coming month. This might be the coolest productivity add-on for Microsoft App-V. As I have blogged before, AppScriber is a web-based add-on for existing deployment solutions, which provides application Self-Provisioning.

Version 2.0 of AppScriber now finally adds a configurable workflow engine, which allows you to optionally configure “Approvers” for applications. Which means, that besides users can automatically enable ”General” applications for themselves, for some applications you decide on (Managed applications), upon user request, a notification e-mail will be sent to the associated “Approver”. The approver can then Accept or Reject this request. After this an e-mail will be sent back to the user with the decision the approver made and if accepted the application will be automatically deployed.

I created a video which demonstrates Immidio AppScriber 2.0 in conjunction with Microsoft App-V from a user and approver perspective.

For more information about Immidio AppScriber go to http://www.immidio.com/

One of the biggest issues App-V customers run into when virtualizing (sequencing) the Microsoft Office Suite is the limitation of interaction between locally installed application/functionality and the virtual instance of the Office Suite. With this in mind Microsoft created the MS Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V which is available in beta version as of yesterday.

It consists of some code that needs to be installed on the Sequencer machine prior to Sequencing Office 2010 and some code that needs to be installed (yes, a real install) on each client device where you want the optimal interaction experience.

Some important notes:

• It only works for Microsoft Office 2010
• It only works with App-V 4.6 RC Client / Sequencer and later 
• This will NOT solve ALL interaction/integration issues you potentially can run into when virtualizing Office.

The interaction possibilities that are fixed, are:

• Fast search in virtualized Outlook 2010 using Windows Desktop Search
• Ability for virtualized Office 2010 applications to open, edit, and save Office files hosted with Windows SharePoint
• Search indexing support for Office file types
• URL protocol redirection to virtualized Outlook 2010
• Print to virtualized OneNote 2010

Click here for more information and the download of the deployment kit.

Thanks to Ivan de Mes for providing the info!

Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced is a Windows Profile Management solution which solves a lot of Windows Profile Management issues and optimizes the overall user experience of Windows Profiles.

This is achieved by decoupling and segmenting personal application settings from the underlying Windows OS and Profile, making these settings available cross-Windows Platform and creating a consistent user experience no matter what Windows OS the user is working on.

While this way of handling Windows User Profiles provides a lot of benefits in a scenario where applications are installed traditionally (i.e. no virtualization), it can also be used to decouple personal application settings from App-V enabled (sequenced) applications.

What are the benefits?

• Decouple personal application settings from App-V Delta files (.PKG) proprietary format.

Using App-V there is practically no control over what gets stored into the user delta (.PKG), which in some cases can grow extensively. With Flex Profiles Advanced you can explicitly configure what application settings need to be restored and saved at application startup and shutdown, making you independent of the .PKG files. With Flex Profiles Advanced application settings are stored in an open format (.ZIP).

• Migrate user application settings from installed instance to virtual instance.

When moving from traditional installations (e.g. MSI) to App-V enabled (sequenced) applications, users lose their personal application settings for those applications because these settings are stored in the “real” registry of their Windows User Profile. When using Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced in such a transition scenario, it is possible to migrate settings you specify to the App-V enabled applications.

This even works in a scenario where you now run Windows XP with MSI installations and you are migrating to Windows 7 with App-V enabled applications!

• One transparent way to administrate all user/application settings.

This is especially a good way to manage user settings for scenarios where different deployment solutions are being used and users work on different Windows platforms. For example when users are connecting to remote desktops on TS or VDI and are also working on traditional desktops. With Flex Profiles Advanced it is also possible to manage user settings for both virtual and installed applications in the same way.

How do I configure this within App-V?

Without going into detail on how to implement Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced, which is explained in the Admin Guide, I will shortly explain the App-V configuration part of it.

When managing user settings for App-V enabled applications, it is necessary to restore and save these settings at application startup and shutdown, because the “real” registry and file information does not apply for the Virtual environment these application run in.

Microsoft App-V supports running custom commands and scripts at application startup and shutdown from the App-V application config file, which exists for each application. This file has the .OSD extension and each .OSD file needs to be edited for Flex Profiles Advanced to work.

Editing the .OSD file can be done during sequencing or afterwards using any text editor, XML editor or the App-V OSD editor from Login Consultants.

In each .OSD file there is a DEPENDENCY section. This is where the FlexEngine commands should be placed. Here is an example:

  <DEPENDENCY>
    <SCRIPT EVENT=”LAUNCH” TIMING=”PRE” PROTECT=”TRUE” WAIT=”TRUE” TIMEOUT=”">
      <HREF>c:\flex\FlexEngine.exe /r “%homedrive%%homepath%\PaintNET.zip”</HREF>
    </SCRIPT>
    <SCRIPT EVENT=”SHUTDOWN” TIMING=”POST” PROTECT=”TRUE” WAIT=”TRUE” TIMEOUT=”">
      <HREF>c:\flex\FlexEngine.exe /i \\fileserver\FlexINIs\Paintnet.ini /s “%homedrive%%homepath%\PaintNET.zip”</HREF>
    </SCRIPT>
    <CLIENTVERSION VERSION=”4.5.0.0″ />
  </DEPENDENCY>

For more information about the command line parameters of the FlexEngine, please consult the Flex Profiles Advanced Admin Guide, or type “FlexEngine.exe /?” on the command line.

In the current version of Flex Profiles Advanced, App-V integration is already fully supported! You only need to configure this manually like shown above for each App-V enabled application you want to manage with Flex Profiles Advanced.

In the upcoming version of Flex Profiles Advanced, the Flex Profiles Management Console will provide a wizard for integrating the FlexEngine into the App-V OSD files. This new version of Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced will be available Q1 2010.

Download a trial version of Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced.