Learning VMware App Volumes

Table of Contents

Learning VMware App Volumes

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewer

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Why subscribe?

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introduction to App Volumes

What is App Volumes?

How does it work?

Why do you need App Volumes?

A comparison between App Volumes, Mirage, ThinApp, and RDSH

App Volumes use cases

VDI desktops

RDSH-delivered applications

Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp environments

Project A2

How to license App Volumes

How does this book work?

Introducing the Example Lab

What you will need for the lab

Summary

2. Architectural and Feature Overview

App Volumes components

App Volumes Manager

App Volumes Agents

AppStacks

Writable Volumes

The provisioning virtual machine

Storage groups

The App Volumes architecture

Network ports

Summary

3. Designing and Building an App Volumes Deployment

Phase I – Project definition

Identifying business drivers

Building the business case

Assessment

Defining the success criteria

Phase II – Proving the technology

Proof of concept

Proof of technology

Pilot

Design

Deploy

Test

Review

Phase III - Design and Deploy

App Volumes Manager deployment best practice

AppStack design considerations

AppStack logical grouping

AppStack deployment best practice

How many AppStacks per VM can I have?

Application provisioning best practice

VMware Horizon View integration with pod and block design

Storage considerations

AppStack storage capacity considerations

Writable Volumes storage capacity considerations

Scalability

Availability

Performance

Summary

4. Installing and Configuring the App Volumes Software

Prerequisites

App Volumes requirements

System/hardware requirements

Software requirements

Downloading the App Volumes software

Installing the software

Installing App Volumes Manager

Initial configuration tasks

Installing App Volumes Agent

Summary

5. A Guided Tour of the Management Console

Logging in to the management console

The DASHBOARD page

The VOLUMES menu

AppStacks

Writables

Attachments

Assignments

Applications

The DIRECTORY menu

Online

Users

Computers

Groups

OUs

The INFRASTRUCTURE menu

Machines

Storage

Storage Groups

The ACTIVITY menu

Pending Actions

Activity Log

System Messages

The CONFIGURATION menu

License

Active Directory

Administrators

Machine Managers

Storage

Summary

6. Working with AppStacks

Creating your first AppStack

Creating an AppStack for Microsoft Office

Creating an AppStack for Microsoft Visio

Creating an AppStack for Evernote and VLC Media Player

Creating an AppStack for Adobe Reader

Creating an AppStack for OpenOffice

Assigning and delivering AppStacks to end users

Assigning the Visio and Adobe Reader AppStacks

Testing AppStack assignments

AppStack delivery process

Agent start up process

Agent shutdown process

Agent login process

Agent logout process

Managing AppStacks

Editing AppStacks

Updating AppStacks

Deleting AppStacks

Unassigning AppStacks

Importing AppStacks

Rescanning AppStacks

Backing up AppStacks

Summary

7. Working with Writable Volumes

Creating Writable Volumes

Creating your first Writable Volume

Managing Writable Volumes

Importing Writable Volumes

Updating Writable Volumes

Rescanning Writable Volumes

Editing a Writable Volume

Disabling a Writable Volume

Deleting a Writable Volume

Backing up AppStacks

Summary

8. Delivering ThinApp Packages with App Volumes

What is ThinApp?

What is application virtualization?

Understanding ThinApp application virtualization

Why is this different from App Volumes?

Creating a new ThinApp

Running Setup Capture

Creating the ThinApp AppStack

Assigning the new ThinApp AppStack

Updating existing ThinApp packages

Updating the ThinApp Package to .msi

Creating an AppStack for the updated .msi package

Using THINREG.exe to mass-deploy packages

Creating the ThinApp AppStack

Assigning the Audacity ThinApp packages AppStack

Summary

9. Horizon View Integration

Building and configuring a virtual desktop

Creating and configuring a desktop pool

Entitling desktops

Logging on to a View desktop

Summary

10. Deploying App Volumes in a Citrix XenDesktop Environment

Building and configuring a virtual desktop

Creating a machine catalog

Creating a delivery group

Logging on to a XenDesktop virtual desktop

Summary

11. Deploying App Volumes in a RemoteApp Environment

Building and configuring an AppStack for RemoteApp delivery

Installing the RDSH role on the provisioning machine

Installing App Volumes Agent

Provisioning the RDSH AppStack

Starting the provisioning process

Installing applications

Assigning the AppStack to the RDSH server

Configuring applications for publishing

Launching AppStack-based published applications

Summary

12. Deploying App Volumes in a Citrix XenApp Environment

Building and configuring an AppStack for XenApp

Installing the RDSH role on the provisioning machine

Installing the App Volumes Agent

Provisioning the RDSH AppStack

Starting the provisioning process

Installing applications

Installing the Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent

Installing the App Volumes Agent

Assigning the AppStack to the XenApp RDSH Server

Creating a machine catalog

Creating a Delivery Group

Launching AppStack-based XenApp applications

Summary

13. Deploying App Volumes in a Horizon View Hosted Apps Environment

Building and configuring an AppStack for Horizon View hosted applications

Installing the RDSH role on the provisioning machine

Installing the App Volumes Agent

Provisioning the RDSH AppStack

Starting the provisioning process

Installing applications

Installing the Horizon View Agent

Installing the App Volumes Agent

Assigning the AppStack to the RDSH server

Configuring applications for publishing

Configuring a Horizon View application Farm

Configuring a Horizon View application pool

Launching AppStack-based Horizon View hosted apps

Summary

14. Advanced Configuration and Other Options

Customizing AppStack templates

Creating new virtual hard disk

Initializing and formatting the new hard disk

Attaching the existing virtual hard disk template

Copying existing template files

Copying new template to App Volumes datastore

Renaming new template

Importing the new template

Customizing Writable Volumes

Creating and working with Storage Groups

Advanced Agent configuration

Working with batch script files

Advanced configuration parameters

SVdriver configuration parameters

DriveLetterSettings

SVservice configuration parameters

Volume behavior parameters

General behavior parameters

Using VHD In-Guest operation mode

Upgrading to a new version of App Volumes

Upgrading the App Volumes Manager

Upgrading the App Volumes Agent

Summary

Index

Learning VMware App Volumes

Learning VMware App Volumes

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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First published: March 2016

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Credits

Author

Peter von Oven

Reviewer

Barry Coombs

Commissioning Editor

Kunal Parikh

Acquisition Editor

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Cover Work

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About the Author

Peter von Oven is an experienced technical consultant and has spent the past 20 years of his IT career working with customers and partners in designing technology solutions aimed at delivering true business value. During his career, Peter has been involved in numerous large-scale enterprise projects and deployments and has presented at key IT events, such as VMWorld, IP EXPO, and various VMUGs across the UK. He has also worked in senior presales roles and presales management roles for some of the giants of IT, such as Fujitsu, HP, Citrix, and VMware, and has been awarded VMware vExpert for 2015 and 2016.

Over the past 10 years and more, Peter has focused his skills and experience by specializing in the desktop and application virtualization market and today works for the market-leading desktop transformation specialists, Liquidware Labs.

Peter got his first taste for writing when assisting with some of the chapters in the book Building End-User Computing Solutions with VMware View, which then lead to four other Packt titles, VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials and VMware Horizon Workspace Essentials, co-written with Peter Bjork and Joel Lindberg, and VMware Horizon View Essentials and Mastering Horizon View, co-written with Barry Coombs.

Acknowledgments

There are a few people I want to thank for the continued and ongoing support they have given me during the writing of this book. Firstly, and most importantly, I would like to thank my wife and daughters for their continued support while I spent many evenings and weekends writing—I couldn't do it without their support.

This book wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had support from some of the vendors. Firstly, I would like to thank my friend and colleague Arash Ghazanfari at Tintri for his support and knowledge of the storage market, and secondly, a thank you to Mark Maclean at Dell for lending me the server hardware used in the Lab examples.

I would also like to say, a big thank you to my reviewer, Barry Coombs, who I have collaborated with on a number of projects over the years. The other person I would like to than is friend and ex-colleague Steve Horne for his expertise and knowledge in defining how to approach any desktop or VDI transformation project.

Finally, a thank you to the Packt Publishing team for again giving me the opportunity to write this book and for their support, which has yet again been outstanding.

About the Reviewer

Barry Coombs is the operations director for Computerworld Systems Ltd., a UK-based, virtualization-focused, value-added reseller. He has been focusing on virtualization, storage, and end-user computing technologies as a customer, consultant, and architect for the past 9 years.

In his current role, Barry manages a team of technical architects and is actively involved in engaging with customers and designing solutions to meet their needs. He also works with the business to set implementation standards and act as a point of technical escalation. Barry is responsible for identifying new technologies as well as speaking and hosting customer-focused events surrounding virtualization, storage, and end-user computing.

Barry has been awarded VMware's vExpert award for contributions to the VMware community every year since 2010. He is also part of the VMUG leadership team for South West UK and blogs at http://www.definetomorrow.co.uk. He is active on Twitter (@virtualisedreal), particularly reporting live from many industry-related events.

Barry has been a co-author on two VMware Horizon books; more information can be found at http://virtualisedreality.com/eucbook/.

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Preface

When we talk about end-user computing, we are typically referring to the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), where desktop operating systems are virtualized and hosted centrally in a data center, and users connect remotely to them using some form of client endpoint device over an optimized network delivery protocol. But what about the applications?

Deploying VDI decouples the OS from the local hardware, making the OS portable. However, the applications still remain wedded to the OS, meaning you have to continually manage multiple OS images just to manage applications. After all, the only reason you have the OS in the first place is to run applications.

With the introduction of VMware App Volumes, you now have a solution that allows you to abstract applications from the OS of the virtual desktop and deliver them back individually and on demand to the end users' virtual desktop machine. This approach is now more commonly referred to as application layering. Application layering allows you to separate applications from the underlying OS and then deliver them back into the OS, merging the application files and the OS files together or layering the application in.

By doing this, you can not only manage applications independently of the OS, but also get one step closer to deploying the nirvanic solution of a truly stateless virtual desktop infrastructure.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to App Volumes, gives you a high-level introduction to App Volumes. We talk about how it works and what benefits it can bring to your desktop environment. We also look at where it fits within the overall VMware EUC portfolio, where you would use App Volumes compared to some of the other application delivery/packaging technologies, before finally discussing some of the key use cases.

Chapter 2, Architectural and Feature Overview, takes you a little deeper into the different component parts that make up an App Volumes solution. Then, once you are familiar with these different components, we discuss how they fit and work together.

Chapter 3, Designing and Building an App Volumes Deployment, covers the recommendations for sizing, scalability, and making the solution ready for a production environment. The chapter starts by taking a step back and looking at what we have in our current environment, how we are going to approach the overall project, and how to move it forward. We look at both the business and technical elements of a project and break those down into three distinct project phases.

Chapter 4, Installing and Configuring the App Volumes Software, takes you through installing App Volumes and completing the initial configuration steps. Before we do that, we take a few minutes to walk through the prerequisites and what you need to have in place before you start the installation. We also cover the App Volumes infrastructure requirements.

Chapter 5, A Guided Tour of the Management Console, spends a short while walking you through an overview of the management console so that you can familiarize yourself with where the different options are located and how the console pages are laid out.

Chapter 6, Working with AppStacks, takes a deeper look into AppStacks, how they work, and how to start building them, before finally showing you how to assign them to end users. We also look at some of the best practices of how to build an AppStack. At the end of this chapter, you will be able to create, assign, and deliver an AppStack to an end user and then perform ongoing management tasks.

Chapter 7, Working with Writable Volumes, takes a much deeper look at the Writable Volumes feature of App Volumes, how they work, and how to create them, before finally demonstrating Writable Volumes in action. We also look at some of the best practices of how to build a Writable Volume, with particular attention to the dos and don'ts. At the end of this chapter, you will be able to create, assign, and deliver a Writable Volume to an end user as well as perform ongoing management tasks.

Chapter 8, Delivering ThinApp Packages with App Volumes, starts by discussing the background for the ThinApp solution and what it delivers, for those that have not used this solution before. We then go on to look at how and why you would deliver ThinApp packaged applications with App Volumes. Once we have an understanding of what ThinApp is and why you would use it, we use the Example Lab to create a ThinApp package and then build an AppStack that contains the ThinApp package. Once this is created, we go ahead and assign it to a user. In the final part of the chapter, we look at how you can use existing ThinApp packages in order to create AppStacks.

Chapter 9, Horizon View Integration, looks at how App Volumes integrates into the VMware Horizon View virtual desktop solution. We configure and build a VMware Horizon View deployment to deliver virtual desktop machines, with applications being delivered using App Volumes.

Chapter 10, Deploying App Volumes in a Citrix XenDesktop Environment, takes a closer look at how to deploy App Volumes to deliver just-in-time applications to a virtual desktop machine delivered by Citrix XenDesktop.

Chapter 11, Deploying App Volumes in a RemoteApp Environment, takes a closer look at how to deploy App Volumes to deliver just-in-time applications to a Microsoft RemoteApp environment. We build an environment and demonstrate how to deliver the AppStacks for hosted applications.

Chapter 12, Deploying App Volumes in a Citrix XenApp Environment, takes a closer look at the other key Citrix solution and how to deploy App Volumes to deliver applications that are published using Citrix XenApp.

Chapter 13, Deploying App Volumes in a Horizon View Hosted Apps Environment, looks at how to build and configure a Horizon View environment designed to deliver hosted applications to end users with the applications being configured as AppStacks and delivered using the Horizon View hosted app feature.

Chapter 14, Advanced Configuration and Other Options, is the final chapter and looks at some of the advanced configuration options, such as batch script files and App Volumes Agent configuration, as well as some other additional administrations tasks, such as how to customize the App Volumes templates used for creating AppStacks and Writable Volumes and how you can create your own template sizes.

What you need for this book

To get the most out of this book, you should have some experience of working as a desktop administrator with skills and knowledge around building and designing Windows-based environments—both operating system and application skills. Active Directory skills will also be a major benefit.

You should also be familiar with the VMware vSphere platform (ESXi and vCenter Server) and be comfortable with building and configuring virtual machines as well as storage and networking.

Who this book is for

This book is for administrators and IT teams who would like to take full advantage of App Volumes to deliver applications in real time while providing a solution that allows easier management. It will be useful for virtualization professionals and teams that work on VDI deployments with VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft end-user computing solutions.

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Errata

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