Virtually There with Kevin Kaminski Episode 5: Tim Mangan

Tim has been a mentor of mine; he helped get Microsoft to recognize my community contributions when App-V was still referred to as SoftGrid. We developed an App-V master's class together though he is the one that is laser-focused specifically on App-V. I thought it would be good to catch up and see where he is at with his App-V tools, research and book publishing.

Virtually There with Kevin Kaminski Episode 3: Bob Kelly

Bob Kelly is a long time member of the application packaging world where he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP, written books and has done public speaking engagements. He is currently over at Flexera, and I take a few minutes to catch up with him and discuss the current state of application packaging.

Curious About Modern VDI?

For the latest set of MVPDays events in Western Canada, I had the opportunity to speak about VDI. The MVPDays team was really on the ball this time around to record some of the presentations, so I had the opportunity to have my video posted to Microsoft's Channel 9. It was a great time to reconnect with fellow MVPs and customers in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. Hope to do it again next year.

The session looks at how new hardware, software and the cloud is changing the world of VDI. Many smaller organizations have found traditional VDI to be too complex and expensive to adopt while enterprises have struggled to manage it. In this session, I have an overview of some of the modern challenges facing VDI and the options you have to overcome it.


I will review some of the latest trends in hardware to create easy to deploy VDI environments on-premises and look at how the cloud is simplifying the design and operation of VDI. I also explore other technologies at the software level that manage the VDI environment from the hypervisor all the way up to the user data. It has been a long journey for VDI, but I believe we finally see cost effective solutions that make a stronger case for organizations to phase out traditional desktop computing devices.

Sequencing with App-V on Windows 10 Enterprise

The holidays are almost over, but I have been busy with many little side projects. I've meant to produce some instructional videos for years, and I finally got around to making something. I've been teaching App-V since the SoftGrid days and maintain a set of courseware with fellow MVP Tim Mangan.

My first video is a simple overview of sequencing a simple application. In these 15 minutes, you should have enough information to get a quick primer as to how to sequence an application on using App-V 5.1 on Windows 10 build 1607.

I hope you find the video useful and I hope to produce some more. In my next video, I will cover running the sequenced application on a Windows 10 1607 client.

Real World ClickOnce and App-V 5: AFE Navigator 7.5

Introduction

The reason I thought it would be good to look at a ClickOnce applications and App-V 5. Out of the box App-V does not handle the packaging of ClickOnce applications without changing the Sequencer configuration and jumping through some hoops afterward. Remko Weijnen provides a great overview as to how ClickOnce has played out in the enterprise and why some people just don't like leaving it alone with its default deployment architecture.

http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2013/08/05/clickonce-applications-in-enterprise-environments/

Why Sequence ClickOnce Applications?

What I want to illustrate is a real world scenario using an application called AFE Navigator. The issue with this application is that it is a rather large ClickOnce application which is around 80MB. Now imagine every user installing this in a Remote Desktop Services environment where there profiles begin to bloat by 80MB a user. It was clear that App-V would be more than convenient to properly distribute the application by providing a master copy of the application that all users can share.

Sequencing AFE Navigator

First what you need to do is launch the Sequencer (I am using 5.0 SP2 HF4 in this example), go to the Tools menu and open the Options... tab.

In the options window go to Exclusion Items and remove the LocalAppData exclusion.

Of course you get the warning message confirming the deletion of the exclusion. Click yes to continue.

Click OK when complete.

Now you are ready to package AFE Navigator, click Create a New Virtual Application Package to begin the Sequencing process. I'll assume you know how to start up the sequencer to save a few standard screenshots.

I will stop on the Package Name screen as I do define the primary virtual application directory as being a folder off the root of C:\ rather than trying to figure out a way to make the ClickOnce application install to that folder. In App-V 5.0 SP3 and newer you will not see the option to specify the PVAD by default.

I will skip over most of the sequencing because there isn't much that is needed other than the shortcut used to launch the application. Before I finish sequencing I manually create a shortcut which points to the ClickOnce application. The shortcut would have the following properties.

Shortcut path: \\Server\Share\AFE Navigator\AFENavigator\AFENavigator.application
Icon: \\Server\Share\AFE Navigator\AFENavigator\setup.exe
Working Directory: \\Server\Share\Apps\AFE Navigator\AFENavigator

* Remember to launch the application at least once while sequencing to capture the locally installed files.

Now the big question is updates, ClickOnce is designed to have the application automatically check for updates each time it is launched. By default the VFS is not write enabled in the App-V sequencer so these upgrades will not work which is good in my opinion. If you did enable a writeable VFS future updates would be redirected as user settings for the application and would bloat the size of the user profile which wouldn't happen if we packaged the latest update. That is why I would recommend installing different versions of the application in different folders on the network share so the packager can access the latest version then package and deploy the the upgrade as a new sequence.

In the end the question is should we package ClickOnce applications in general? Some people do not like ClickOnce because it installs to the user profile and others might view App-V's ability to reset the application state via App-V application repair as an important feature for supporting users. Personally I find these applications mostly benign and small so I think this is going to come down to preference rather than a solid recommendation.

Interested in App-V training? Check out my offerings at: http://bighatgroup.com/courses/

Where Can I Find App-V Training?

Introduction

App-V training takes many forms and I recommend you take a look at the various offerings available to determine what best suits your needs from both a delivery and content perspective. Training for App-V is offered by Microsoft and a number of customized options also exist outside of that offering but I will first start with what Microsoft offers and go from there.

Microsoft Training

Microsoft offers a five day course for App-V 5 that is not lumped in with the rest of the MDOP suite as App-V 4 was. This exam also covers virtual desktops so it is not 100% App-V but I do believe the additional content in the exam will be relevant to many users of App-V. This exam is 70-694 and can be found on the Microsoft Learning Website.

In addition to the traditional learning track at Microsoft there are a couple courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy that I have personally took that offering and has quite a bit of useful knowledge for free. The first course is done by Aaron Ruckman the senior product manager for MDOP at Microsoft where he delivers a session titled MDOP Application Virtualization Deep Dive. The second course is hosted by Steve Thomas aka the Gladiator who is a senior consultant for Microsoft that often is engaged with very large accounts using App-V. His course is titled Deploying Office 2013 with App-V and again I highly recommend it.

Training by Industry Professionals 

Next I will put in a shameless plug for training that both Tim Mangan and myself maintain for App-V since 2007. Tim Mangan worked at Softricity before the Microsoft acquisition and managed the product development at that time. He has since become a semi-retired geek writing tools, teaching, some consulting and presenting at conferences around the world. My role has been more firmly placed in the consulting world as I was an early adopter of the technology as I went to get trained on SoftGrid 3.1 before I had my first SoftGrid project. I teach but my focus is consulting and trying to find time to blog with my schedule. Our course is five days of pure App-V focusing on infrastructure but more so on various advanced App-V sequencing scenarios as that tends to be the most challenging part of using App-V for most of our customers. We are both long time MVPs for App-V which has now transitioned to being a Windows IT Pro MVP and Tim also enjoys being a Citrix CTP. Our joint website is www.gridmastertraining.com but we offer our courses independently at www.tmurgent.com and www.bighatgroup.com. Do note that at Big Hat Group we have performed online training in real time to some North American customers.

Hopefully I can do the others justice as there are some newer options that are worth considering. Another new MVP Thamim Karim formally a Microsoft employee offers training in London UK and this might be of interest to European customers. He is a super bright guy and I have faith that he is delivering a solid course. His course can be found here and he also has a blog on the same side worth checking out.

Kalle Saunamäki is a long time App-V MVP and that also maintains what I think is one of the best third party App-V tools for sequencing called Application Virtualization Explorer. He unofficially offers sequencing workshops at www.gridmetric.com.

I personally don't know much about Erik Havarstien (sorry Eric!) but he is currently a Citrix CTP offing both XenApp training and App-V training programs. His course seems to be more slanted toward XenApp users and it is an online subscription offering from what I can tell. You can find out more about his course by visiting his website for App-V training.

For App-V training in the Netherlands and Belgium as well, you can take a look at AIMED Solutions. They are a leading consulting & training company in the application packaging area. Thier training center, the AIMED Academy is based in the Netherlands, they are offering several courses all related to application packaging / virtualization and desktop management solutions. These courses can be held on-site/in-company/abroad as well. These highly valued App-V courses (also available in English) run on a monthly schedule so if you're looking for their training schedules visit www.aimedacademy.nl.

QA which looks to be a training provider based in the UK offers a three day App-V training program that can be taken online. This course looks to be a mix of infrastructure and sequencing for App-V 5. More information can be found on the QA.com website.

Also in Finland is another company that offers App-V training on top of professional services. This company is offering courses for traditional packaging along with App-V. Visit Centero.fi for more information.

If you happen to be an AdminStudio user Flexera has a course available to better understand how to use the application virtualization features in their product to make App-V packages. This course is specifically intended for packagers using their AdminStudio packaging tool and can be found here.

Finally I did find some training for a group called Avance in the Netherlands. I am assuming the training is in Dutch and can be found here.

If you feel that I have missed something then please feel free to email me at kevin.kaminski@bighatgroup.com to refine this article further and good luck with your training effort!