Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6 Guide

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6 enables organizations to implement application virtualization and effectively respond to the associated challenges. This IPD guide takes you step-by-step through the process of planning your application virtualization infrastructure; and now includes information on how App-V supports Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, including such features as BranchCache; support for 64-bit clients; and server-sizing data. Strategically planning your infrastructure can help you avoid problems before they begin, allowing you to serve your customers more accurately and reliably, as well as saving you time and money.

Figure 1. Decision flow chart

In More Detail

The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6 includes the following six-step process:

Step 1: Determine Project Scope. Before designing a Microsoft Application Virtualization infrastructure, an organization needs to determine the project’s scope: that is, determine which applications will be available virtually and identify the target user population, and their locations, that will access them. The output of this step is used to determine what type of App-V infrastructure should be implemented in Step 2 and to drive the sizing and placement of the servers in Steps 5 and 6.

Step 2: Determine Which Models Will Be Needed. A model refers to the process by which virtualized applications are published and delivered to users.

Deciding how to deploy virtualized applications will come down to determining what model or combination of models for distribution will be required in the organization’s environment to support the business scope defined in Step 1. The distribution models discussed in this step are the Standalone Model, the Streaming Model, and the Full Infrastructure Model.

Step 3: Determine How Many Instances Will Be Needed for Each Model. Step 3 focuses on determining how many instances of each model will be required. (This step can be skipped if the Standalone Model has been selected as the Standalone Model can be used wherever it is needed in the organization since no infrastructure is required.)

Step 4: Assess Client and Sequencer Considerations. This step discusses certain considerations relating to clients and sequencers that need to be taken into account when utilizing Microsoft Application Virtualization in a production environment. Although these considerations do not affect the decisions around the infrastructure design, they do have an impact on the day-to-day performance and functioning of the environment.

Step 5: Design Streaming Infrastructure. Streaming is the term used to describe the process of obtaining content from a sequenced application package, starting with Feature Block 1, and then obtaining additional blocks as needed. In this step, the method that the Microsoft Application Virtualization Management System will use to stream the virtual application packages, or .SFT files, from the server to the clients is determined for each location defined in the scope in Step 1.

Step 6: Designing Full Infrastructure. If it was determined in Step 2 that the Full Infrastructure Model is needed, this step determines the server resource scaling requirements and fault tolerance for each role.

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Quick overview video on Microsoft Application Virtualization - App-V

Quick overview video on Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). In a physical environment, every application depends on its OS for a range of services, including memory allocation, device drivers, and much more. Incompatibilities between an application and its operating system can be addressed by either server virtualization or presentation virtualization; but for incompatibilities between two applications installed on the same instance of an OS, you need application virtualization.

Supported command line options for the Microsoft App-V 4.5 Management Server installer

Here is a overview of all the supported command line options in App-V.

The table describes the Microsoft Application Virtualization (also known as App-V), command-line parameters that are available for the Microsoft App-V 4.5 Management Server.

As an example, the following sample command line installs the Management Server using all the command line options mentioned above:

msiexec /i "setup.msi" /qn /l*vx %temp%\serverinstall.txt OPTIN="true" USERNAME="UserJim" COMPANYNAME="Contoso" ADDLOCAL="Release_SoftGrid_Server,Release_AppVirt_Vss_Writer,Release_SoftGrid_Management_Console,Release_SoftGrid_Mgmt_Web_Service" DB_HOST="MySQLServer" DB_SERVICE="MySQLDatabase" DB_PORT="1433" SWICERTHASH="1A7E958464C90DABC1232372538A83624600E276" SWISERVERRTSPPORT="322" SWIDOMAINNAME="corp.contoso.com" SWIADMINGROUP="MyAppVAdminGroup" SWIUSERGROUP="MyAppVUserGroup" SWICONTENTDIR="c:\program files\Microsoft System Center App Virt Management Server\App Virt Management Server\content\" INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center App Virt Management Server\"

Source: kb2384955

A guide to App-V publishing and streaming using IIS

From an App-V point of view, this deployment method is not too complicated, but there are some aspects that have the potential to cause confusion in the community and with this I hope to avoid the confusion and hopefully, one can test, play and deploy this method with confidence.

In this article, we will discuss the following:

The configuration of IIS

- The installation of IIS

- The creation of the virtual directory

- The MIME types

The creation and configuration of the Publishing Document

- How HTTP streaming works with App-V and how we use and create the Publishing Document

- Testing the Publishing Document

The configuration of the App-V Client

- The configuration of the HTTP server

- The configuration of the App-V client settings

- More information

For the creation of this document, I have used a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine with Internet Information Services 7.5 and a Windows 7 client with App-V for Windows Desktops 4.6 x64.

The configuration of IIS

The configuration of the IIS server is not that complicated for use with App-V; however, there are some things we should keep in mind.

The installation of IIS

When installing IIS for App-V, we should make sure the following role components are installed:

· Common HTTP Features – ALL except HTTP redirection

· Application Development – ALL

· Health and Diagnostics – HTTP logging and Request Monitor only

· Application Development – ALL

· IIS 6 Management Compatibility – ALL

· Security – ALL authentication options

· Management Tools – ALL

The creation of the virtual directory

A virtual directory in IIS must be created in order to represent the App-V content share that contains all application packages. The virtual directory has to be pointed to the location where the content share is. The content share should be configured as a default file share. For the virtual directory, the default settings can be maintained, but make sure that the virtual directory is located under the default website and that Directory Browsing and Read are checked.

The MIME types

In IIS, we have to configure a couple of MIME types to make sure we can handle the App-V files properly. Below is a summary of these MIME types:

The creation and configuration of the Publishing Document

Whether HTTP Publishing and Streaming works or fails depends mostly on the Publishing Document. The Publishing Document is an .aspx page to which the App-V client connects to send its request for applications (icons, FTA’s etc.). If the Publishing Document is not functioning properly for any reason, the clients will not be able to connect and the App-V applications will not work. There are several methods to create a proper Publishing Document, some of them are easy and some complicated and some of them are suited for quick tests and some not.

We can create a Publishing Document manually, which is a good one for testing purposes. However, when we are looking for a larger deployment, we would not be happy to process each application package manually. This would also be prone to errors and it would require manual modification when a new package is deployed to the environment. Because this is not desired, we can also use more complicated ways to achieve our goal, making our lives much easier in the end by creating your Publishing Document automatically.

How HTTP streaming works with App-V and how we use and create the Publishing Document

When we deploy App-V with Management or Streaming servers, the App-V clients are configured to point to the App-V server, which handles their request. When we only use IIS for the publishing and streaming of App-V applications, we need to have a slightly different approach.

From a client perspective, we do not have to do much, except configuring it to point to a HTTP server and configure some settings. However, from the IIS point of view, we should understand some things before we can implement this properly.

When the App-V client performs a Desktop Configuration Refresh (DC Refresh), it sends a request to the IIS server. With this request, the client is asking what applications are available, and where icons should be placed and whether this application has File Type Associations (FTA’s). The client needs to receive this information in XML format.

Therefore, in order for the client to get all information properly, we have to make sure that this information is accurately available on the IIS server. In order to achieve this, we have to make a Publishing Document. This Publishing Document is an .aspx file that is located in the root of the content directory. The client needs to be pointed to this page in order to work, but this will be discussed later on. This Publishing Document needs to contain information about the Desktop Configuration, which includes (but is not limited to) the Refresh Settings, the Refresh Interval, Reporting Settings and of course, the Applist.

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