Independent App-V Blog

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.

MDOP 2009 R2, which containts App-V 4.5, is available for current MDOP customers and MSDN/Technet subscribers.  Besides MED-V, all the products within MDOP now support Windows 7. MED-V will support Windows 7, as Host OS (not Guest OS) in a release planned for Q1 2010.

Check out the detailed article on http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/

The RDS (Terminal Server) team blog announces the release of an App-V for Terminal Services Whitepaper:

 ”We are proud to announce the availability of the white paper “Application Virtualization 4.5 for Terminal Services.”  This white paper discusses the benefits, configurations, and considerations when planning a Terminal Services (TS) solution with Microsoft Application Virtualization for TS (App-V for TS).  Many customers want to find out the best way to configure and/or deploy App-V for TS on terminal servers.  This paper includes topics ranging from choosing an App-V for TS application delivery method to configuring RemoteApp and App-V for TS to work together.  We hope you find this document an indispensible read if you are implementing App-V for TS.”

Download the whitepaper here 

Now that the App-V client is part of the Windows Server 2008 CAL it seems that Microsoft has released the App-V 4.5 TS client as a free download.

Part of the download process is the registration of your 20 digit Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server Product Identification Key or your Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services Product Identification Key.

Download here.

Note: although the article indicates that Windows Server 2008 R2 is supported this particular download can’t be used on that platform since it’s 64-bit only. App-V 4.6 (currently in development) however will support 64-bit and is planned to be available H1 2010.

It is a fact that many applications require other applications to run properly. In App-V these dependencies can be sequenced along with the main application in the same virtual environment or they can be sequenced separately and joined together through Dynamic Suiting Composition.

In the old days we could use the “Run another program first” on the Advanced tab of the Program properties option to chain two applications together. But since App-V applications don’t have Programs we can’t use this anymore.

Luckily this issue can be solved by using Configuration Manager 2007 Task Sequences.(continue at source)

I got this info from our internal forum and thought it was interesting enough to share with you.

When you are sequencing an application the Windows Installer service might give you an error during monitoring phase.

Error 1719. Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that it is properly registered and enabled.

When the application is installed without the sequencer monitoring, the installation finishes without an error and the application works fine.

In this particular situation the sequencer was running Windows Server 2003 and was accessed remotely through a Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc.exe).

The solution to this issue is create a console RDP session to the sequencer machine instead of an regular RDP session. 

You can connect to a console session through the following command:

mstsc /console /v:<server>

Thanks to my colleagues for publishing and solving this issue!

update:
“mstsc /console” has been replaced with “mstsc /admin” on newer Windows Operating Systems (Windows 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 and up). So the correct syntax would then be:

mstsc /admin /v:<server>

Thanks Floris for pointing this out to me.

Microsoft has announced Service Pack 1 for App-V 4.5 recently. It will be released as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Package (MDOP) 2009 R2 in late October 2009.

Once available, App-V 4.5 SP1 can be deployed immediately to production environments running XP, Vista, Windows7, and Windows Server 32-bit platforms. For customers preparing to run App-V on 64-bit Windows Client and Server platforms they can download App-V 4.6 Beta at Microsoft Connect. App-V 4.6 will be available in H1 2010…”

Some of the new features are:

Official support for Windows Server 2008 R2, both on the Server and on the Client side

Official support for Windows 7 (32bit) (actually this has been introduced with 4.5CU1 already)

Seamless integration into Win7 User Interface (Pin Icons, Jumplistst)

Microsft AppLocker integration (use AppLocker to control Virtual applications)

Support for BranchCache (not sure if that applies to all protocols. MS names http only)

Support for Bitlocker ToGo

3rd Party LDAP Integration

Read more at source.

Credits to Falko Gräfe for this text.

My collegae Falko Gräfe has a dedicated website (www.kirx.org) about App-V related information.

He recently pointed me to his latest publication, an App-V Sequencing Recipe template.

The “Sequencing How-to Template” collects lots of the information that might be important to re use an application package or to create a new App-V package based on an older how-to guide. It contains fields for each value that normaly has to be entered or modified during sequencing with space to make notes about unexpected tasks.

The original idea came from the old “SoftGrid Sequencing Recipe Template” that was provided by Softricity in the past and never seemed to be updated and published by Microsoft.

The template maps the different steps in the sequencing process (preparation, sequencing wizard, wrap up) to documentation paragraphs, fields and tables. So it’s easy to document and easy find information back.

Download the template and read more at source.

Updated with some info, thanks to collegae Falko Gräfe.

Did you see:
http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/09/04/what-s-the-difference-between-a-rds-cal-and-a-ts-cal.aspx

Microsoft announced that Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) for Terminal Server will be included in both the Windows 2008 TS CAL and 2008 RDS CALs. This means that customers that have the 2008 TS CAL or the 2008 RDS CAL also have the right to use Application Virtualization! Since only the client is licensed in App-V this also means the right for all of the components of App-V!!

No App-V for Terminal Server licenses nor App-V for Remote Desktop Services licenses will be sold after Nov. 1st 2009.

Some important notes though:

Advice:
Consider purchasing W2008 TS/RDS CALs before January 1st if you want to save 5% TS/RDS CAL costs. Do not buy any App-V for TS CAL today if you already have your Terminal Servers running on Win2008 or if you are migrating soon.