Learning VMware App Volumes

Learning VMware App Volumes

by Peter von Oven
Released March 2016
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781785884382

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Book description

Deliver applications to virtual desktop environments in seconds and at scale with the click of a button

About This Book

  • Learn how can you deliver a great user experience and drive down storage and management costs
  • Discover hidden gems to deliver applications to virtual desktop environments in seconds
  • This book will help you fully utilize the true potential of VMware App Volumes and design and build a complete production environment

Who This Book Is For

This book is for administrators and IT teams who would like to take full advantage of App Volumes to deal with application workloads. It will also be useful for virtualization professionals and teams who are working on VDI deployments and VMware end user computing solutions.

What You Will Learn

  • Find out how the VMware App Volumes solution can enhance the management and delivery of applications in your desktop environment
  • Design a real-life App Volumes solution using best practices and following the recommended sizing guides
  • Install, configure, and deploy App Volumes so it is ready to start delivering applications
  • Create and prepare applications ready to be delivered to end users
  • Discover how App Volumes can enhance other desktop solutions by looking at how it integrates with VMware Horizon View, VMware ThinApp, RDSH, and Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp
  • Understand how to configure the advanced options within App Volumes

In Detail

App Volumes provides a virtualized, real-time application delivery engine for virtual desktop infrastructure and is designed to enable VDI deployments to ensure greater flexibility, agility, and cost reduction.

This book starts with an in-depth overview of the architecture and components used to design an optimized solution. We then show you how to install and configure App Volumes for different use cases such as VMware View integration, using VMware ThinApp, Citrix XenApp, and more.

Throughout the chapters, we provide hints, tips, and tricks as well as best practices. By the end of the book, you will have built a working App Volumes environment and acquired the skills to build and run a production environment.

Style and approach

This book comprises of the theoretical explanations that will help you perform a complete App Volumes deployment through step-by-step instructions

Table of contents

  1. Learning VMware App Volumes
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Learning VMware App Volumes
    3. Credits
    4. About the Author
    5. Acknowledgments
    6. About the Reviewer
    7. www.PacktPub.com
      1. eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
    8. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the color images of this book
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    9. 1. Introduction to App Volumes
      1. What is App Volumes?
      2. How does it work?
      3. Why do you need App Volumes?
      4. A comparison between App Volumes, Mirage, ThinApp, and RDSH
      5. App Volumes use cases
        1. VDI desktops
        2. RDSH-delivered applications
        3. Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp environments
        4. Project A2
      6. How to license App Volumes
      7. How does this book work?
      8. Introducing the Example Lab
        1. What you will need for the lab
      9. Summary
    10. 2. Architectural and Feature Overview
      1. App Volumes components
        1. App Volumes Manager
        2. App Volumes Agents
        3. AppStacks
        4. Writable Volumes
        5. The provisioning virtual machine
        6. Storage groups
      2. The App Volumes architecture
      3. Network ports
      4. Summary
    11. 3. Designing and Building an App Volumes Deployment
      1. Phase I – Project definition
        1. Identifying business drivers
        2. Building the business case
        3. Assessment
        4. Defining the success criteria
      2. Phase II – Proving the technology
        1. Proof of concept
        2. Proof of technology
        3. Pilot
          1. Design
          2. Deploy
          3. Test
          4. Review
      3. Phase III - Design and Deploy
        1. App Volumes Manager deployment best practice
        2. AppStack design considerations
          1. AppStack logical grouping
          2. AppStack deployment best practice
            1. How many AppStacks per VM can I have?
            2. Application provisioning best practice
        3. VMware Horizon View integration with pod and block design
        4. Storage considerations
          1. AppStack storage capacity considerations
          2. Writable Volumes storage capacity considerations
        5. Scalability
        6. Availability
        7. Performance
      4. Summary
    12. 4. Installing and Configuring the App Volumes Software
      1. Prerequisites
      2. App Volumes requirements
        1. System/hardware requirements
        2. Software requirements
      3. Downloading the App Volumes software
      4. Installing the software
        1. Installing App Volumes Manager
        2. Initial configuration tasks
        3. Installing App Volumes Agent
      5. Summary
    13. 5. A Guided Tour of the Management Console
      1. Logging in to the management console
      2. The DASHBOARD page
      3. The VOLUMES menu
        1. AppStacks
        2. Writables
        3. Attachments
        4. Assignments
        5. Applications
      4. The DIRECTORY menu
        1. Online
        2. Users
        3. Computers
        4. Groups
        5. OUs
      5. The INFRASTRUCTURE menu
        1. Machines
        2. Storage
        3. Storage Groups
      6. The ACTIVITY menu
        1. Pending Actions
        2. Activity Log
        3. System Messages
      7. The CONFIGURATION menu
        1. License
        2. Active Directory
        3. Administrators
        4. Machine Managers
        5. Storage
      8. Summary
    14. 6. Working with AppStacks
      1. Creating your first AppStack
        1. Creating an AppStack for Microsoft Office
          1. Creating an AppStack for Microsoft Visio
          2. Creating an AppStack for Evernote and VLC Media Player
          3. Creating an AppStack for Adobe Reader
          4. Creating an AppStack for OpenOffice
      2. Assigning and delivering AppStacks to end users
        1. Assigning the Visio and Adobe Reader AppStacks
        2. Testing AppStack assignments
      3. AppStack delivery process
        1. Agent start up process
        2. Agent shutdown process
        3. Agent login process
        4. Agent logout process
      4. Managing AppStacks
        1. Editing AppStacks
        2. Updating AppStacks
        3. Deleting AppStacks
        4. Unassigning AppStacks
        5. Importing AppStacks
        6. Rescanning AppStacks
        7. Backing up AppStacks
      5. Summary
    15. 7. Working with Writable Volumes
      1. Creating Writable Volumes
        1. Creating your first Writable Volume
      2. Managing Writable Volumes
        1. Importing Writable Volumes
        2. Updating Writable Volumes
        3. Rescanning Writable Volumes
        4. Editing a Writable Volume
        5. Disabling a Writable Volume
        6. Deleting a Writable Volume
        7. Backing up AppStacks
      3. Summary
    16. 8. Delivering ThinApp Packages with App Volumes
      1. What is ThinApp?
        1. What is application virtualization?
        2. Understanding ThinApp application virtualization
        3. Why is this different from App Volumes?
      2. Creating a new ThinApp
        1. Running Setup Capture
        2. Creating the ThinApp AppStack
        3. Assigning the new ThinApp AppStack
      3. Updating existing ThinApp packages
        1. Updating the ThinApp Package to .msi
        2. Creating an AppStack for the updated .msi package
        3. Using THINREG.exe to mass-deploy packages
          1. Creating the ThinApp AppStack
          2. Assigning the Audacity ThinApp packages AppStack
      4. Summary
    17. 9. Horizon View Integration
      1. Building and configuring a virtual desktop
      2. Creating and configuring a desktop pool
      3. Entitling desktops
      4. Logging on to a View desktop
      5. Summary
    18. 10. Deploying App Volumes in a Citrix XenDesktop Environment
      1. Building and configuring a virtual desktop
      2. Creating a machine catalog
      3. Creating a delivery group
      4. Logging on to a XenDesktop virtual desktop
      5. Summary
    19. 11. Deploying App Volumes in a RemoteApp Environment
      1. Building and configuring an AppStack for RemoteApp delivery
        1. Installing the RDSH role on the provisioning machine
        2. Installing App Volumes Agent
      2. Provisioning the RDSH AppStack
        1. Starting the provisioning process
        2. Installing applications
      3. Assigning the AppStack to the RDSH server
      4. Configuring applications for publishing
      5. Launching AppStack-based published applications
      6. Summary
    20. 12. Deploying App Volumes in a Citrix XenApp Environment
      1. Building and configuring an AppStack for XenApp
        1. Installing the RDSH role on the provisioning machine
        2. Installing the App Volumes Agent
      2. Provisioning the RDSH AppStack
        1. Starting the provisioning process
        2. Installing applications
      3. Installing the Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent
      4. Installing the App Volumes Agent
      5. Assigning the AppStack to the XenApp RDSH Server
        1. Creating a machine catalog
        2. Creating a Delivery Group
      6. Launching AppStack-based XenApp applications
      7. Summary
    21. 13. Deploying App Volumes in a Horizon View Hosted Apps Environment
      1. Building and configuring an AppStack for Horizon View hosted applications
        1. Installing the RDSH role on the provisioning machine
        2. Installing the App Volumes Agent
      2. Provisioning the RDSH AppStack
        1. Starting the provisioning process
        2. Installing applications
      3. Installing the Horizon View Agent
        1. Installing the App Volumes Agent
      4. Assigning the AppStack to the RDSH server
      5. Configuring applications for publishing
      6. Configuring a Horizon View application Farm
      7. Configuring a Horizon View application pool
      8. Launching AppStack-based Horizon View hosted apps
      9. Summary
    22. 14. Advanced Configuration and Other Options
      1. Customizing AppStack templates
        1. Creating new virtual hard disk
        2. Initializing and formatting the new hard disk
        3. Attaching the existing virtual hard disk template
        4. Copying existing template files
        5. Copying new template to App Volumes datastore
        6. Renaming new template
        7. Importing the new template
      2. Customizing Writable Volumes
      3. Creating and working with Storage Groups
      4. Advanced Agent configuration
        1. Working with batch script files
        2. Advanced configuration parameters
        3. SVdriver configuration parameters
        4. DriveLetterSettings
        5. SVservice configuration parameters
        6. Volume behavior parameters
        7. General behavior parameters
      5. Using VHD In-Guest operation mode
      6. Upgrading to a new version of App Volumes
        1. Upgrading the App Volumes Manager
        2. Upgrading the App Volumes Agent
      7. Summary
    23. Index

Product information

  • Title: Learning VMware App Volumes
  • Author(s): Peter von Oven
  • Release date: March 2016
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781785884382