It converts the command line for a published application into all lowercase characters – and if you use the SFTTRAY command and specify the App-V application’s name here, SFTTRAY  requires case sensitive spelling of the vApp name.
In that case, App-V throws an error 04-00000A09

Luckywise there’s a Hotfix by Citrix at CTX136159.

This issue does not occur if you only use published desktops. It also does not occur if your XenApp publication ‘command line’ points to OSD files instead of SFTMIME

Recommendation: Apply HF03 for XA60R02 right away (… or migrate to XenApp 6.5)

(Fast publish article)

When you install several App-V 5 Server components onto a single machine, each component requires a separate IP Port during installation. If IIS’ Default Web Site is bound to port 80, you cannot use that, even when you only want to install a single component on that machine.

So, clients communicating to a ‘co-hosted’ App-V 5 Server initially need to establish a connection to a non-default (‘higher’) port. If more than one component (Publishing, Management, Reporting or Streaming) is used, more of those ‘higher’ ports are required. This is fine in an internal network, but as soon as there are firewalls or proxies involved (network security zones, VPN), you may want to limit the amount of open ports, and you may want to use a ‘default’ http port only.

So what can be done to bind all App-V components to a single port, let’s say 80?

Lucky wise IIS supports the concept of Host Headers that allow to distinguish between web applications based on the URL they are queried at. Unluckily, the App-V setup wizard does not support that, so we need some tweaking here.

Here are some up-front guide lines (It wouldn’t be me if I would not declare some)

• Operations in this guide may (temporarily) disrupt certain IIS features. Do not perform them during production hours
• This guide is not directly applicable for secured (https) connections. Using Host Headers with SSL certificates requires additional configuration.
• Validate that the individual IIS Site have a “started” state after completion. Some operation may have stopped them
• Validate that all individual services can be contacted. For the App-V specific services, connect to the ‘/help’ subfolder with a browser (described below)
• Do not remove any of the bindings that were created during the App-V Server installation
• Do not attempt to ‘adjust’ App-V Server’s registry settings

Initial Configuration and Installation

At the beginning, you prepare your IIS machine as described in the App-V Server’s system requirements. This includes installing the IIS role with some features. Note that you should leave the Default Web Site’s port to 80 and don’t change it.

Then, you install the required App-V Server components at once or one after-the-other. It doesn’t matter if you use the graphical wizard or the command line – just install them, assigning different ports to each component. In the example below, I used 8013 for the Management server, 8016 for Publishing and 8018 for Reporting.

Prepare DNS Aliases for hosts

As indicated, ‘host headers’ will be used to identify individual services. Essentially this means that every service has to get an individual DNS name. You may create three new aliases on your DNS server, like AppvManagement, AppvPublishing and AppVReporting, each pointing to the same IP address of your IIS machine. In my example I added ‘Host01′ just for the sake of demonstration.

For the Streaming Server feature, you don’t need to add a dedicated host header/port. If you decide for http streaming from the co-hosted server, this usually is achieved by adding a new Virtual Directory to the Default Web Site. Since the Default Web Site already listens to port 80, no additional preparations have to be made. Later on to all incoming connections on port 80 that are not covered by a host header still will be processed by the Default Web Site.

For a test, try to ping all hosts. Or, if not disabled on IIS, even try to connect to them using a browser. At this time queries should point to the default web site.

Configure Host Header redirection in IIS

In IIS Manager, configure the “bindings” for each of the App-V services. You may do this using the GUI or command lines. Note that IIS7 (Win2008R2) and IIS8 (Win2012) can use different commands.

• Do not remove the original binding (to the upper port)
• For each service, add a binding for the short name and the FQDN

Using IIS Manager’s GUI

Using IIS Manager, navigate to the individual site. A right-click on the site name or the action pane shows you the “Binding” action. Here you can add/modify them.

Using IIS 7’s appcmd command

For IIS7, the command appcmd can be used. Appcmd supports two different ways of how to specify parameters. I opted for the ‘user friendly’ one. Note that appcmd set overwrites (and not adds) the new binding to a service. Therefore, you have to specify the original binding to the original ports as well.

(see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753195(v=ws.10).aspx for more details)

appcmd set site "Microsoft App-V Management Service" /bindings:"http://*:8013,http://AppvManagementHost01.demo.lab:80,http://AppvManagementHost01:80"
appcmd set site "Microsoft App-V Publishing Service" /bindings:"http://*:8016,http://AppvPublishingHost01.demo.lab:80,http://AppvPublishingHost01:80"
appcmd set site "Microsoft App-V Reporting Service" /bindings:"http://*:8019,http://AppvReportingHost01.demo.lab:80,http://AppvReportingHost01:80"

Using Powershell  (IIS8, IIS7)

For IIS8, of course Powershell is used

(Originally found at http://blogs.iis.net/jeonghwan/archive/2012/11/12/examples-of-iis-powershell-cmdlets.aspx, details at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee807834.aspx)

Note that the add-webconfiguration does not replace, but add parameters. Therefor the original ports (8013, 8016, 8019) don’t show up here – and we use two commands for each service, one for the short name, one for the FQDN.

add-webconfiguration '/system.applicationHost/sites/site[@name="Microsoft App-V Management Service"]/bindings'-value @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:AppVManagementHost01.lab.lic"} -pspath iis:\
add-webconfiguration '/system.applicationHost/sites/site[@name="Microsoft App-V Management Service"]/bindings'-value @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:AppVManagementHost01"} -pspath iis:\
add-webconfiguration '/system.applicationHost/sites/site[@name="Microsoft App-V Publishing Service"]/bindings'-value @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:AppVPublishingHost01.lab.lic"} -pspath iis:\
add-webconfiguration '/system.applicationHost/sites/site[@name="Microsoft App-V Publishing Service"]/bindings'-value @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:AppVPublishingHost01"} -pspath iis:\
add-webconfiguration '/system.applicationHost/sites/site[@name="Microsoft App-V Reporting Service"]/bindings'-value @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:AppVReportingHost01.lab.lic"} -pspath iis:\
add-webconfiguration '/system.applicationHost/sites/site[@name="Microsoft App-V Reporting Service"]/bindings'-value @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:AppVReportingHost01"} -pspath iis:\

Ah, yeah, the PoSH of course also work on a IIS7 machine. In fact this Cmdlet was introduced for IIS 7

Validation

At the final step of the Host Header configuration process, you should open a browser and point to the two, three new DNS aliases on port 80. A quite safe method is to establish a browser connection to the new aliases::

http://AppvManagementHost01/help

http://AppvPublishingHost01/help

http://AppvReportingHost01/help

Important

You should not modify the App-V Server component’s individual configurations (in the Registry). They still point to the original server name and ‘high’ IP Port.

Conclusion

Host Headers allow you to offer several App-V Server components from an individual machine sharing the same port, like 80.

This is namely useful for sharing default http port 80 between the Publishing Server component, the Reporting Server component and potentially the Streaming service offered by native IIS. Often you don’t need to configure port sharing for the Management Server, because it isn’t addressed by clients and thus may not require special firewall configurations, but of course you can do it easily as well. Also note that you may want to use a different machine for streaming the .appv files from (file or web server), mainly to separate configuration traffic from data traffic (though we described its co-hosting here as well).

Additions

Remember that configuring a secured connection (using HTTPS) requires more planning (while it is easier for IIS8 than for IIS7), including the requirement for wildcard certificates (*.company.dom).

If you want to use a load balancing service (external or Windows NLB), the virtual hostnames have to be used for the host header entries

It contains dedicated symbols for the Publishing, Management, Reporting and Streaming Service as well as symbols for Clients running in shared-content mode. Symbols are genric enough to be used with App-V 4.x as well.

One rack-mounted symbol is covered with ‘labels’, allowing to indicate that several services are running on a ‘co-hosting’ server.

The App-V 5 Visio Stencil can be downloaded from http://www.kirx.org/resources/App-V_VisioStencil_www.kirx.org_121217.zip or by clicking the image above.

As for with every new Minor Release, Hotfix or Service Pack for App-V, IT Organizations should be aware that this update modifies the ‘execution platform’ or ‘runtime environment’ for a potentially large amount of applications. In return, you should test and validate your business-critical App-V applications before you apply this update (or allow Microsoft Update / WSUS to deploy it).

While (as far as I remember) there was only one SP for an older version of SoftGrid/App-V that caused some applications to fail, Hotfixes which were published for App-V 4.6 SP1 apparently were ‘nice’ to the applications.

The KB article for App-V 4.6 SP2 can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2738315

Note that SP2 contains all the Fixes up and until HF8 for App-V 4.6 SP1 with the exception of HF7 fixes.

PS: the Update logo was taken from http://foremostmedia.blogspot.de/2012/10/monthly-microsoft-windows-update.html

“Hi there” ? This – for me – quite exuberant blog introduction may indicate to you that I am really excited about the book announcement that Nicke, Kalle, Ment and I published just yesterday

I now can unveil that I persoanlly started to think about writing a book quite a while ago (I found an MindMap which is dated back 4 years), I even started to write something… but as you probably know there were the books by Nico Lüdemann, Mitch Tulloch, Tim Mangan & Kevin Kaminski or Augusto Alvarez which cover quite a lot of the potential content one can imagine around App-V Version 4. Not much left here.

So, when we discussed the idea of an App-V “vNext” book almost one year ago in Vienna, I got hooked.

I won’t disclose any ‘relevant’ information here – if you want to learn about the content, delivery model or timelines, appvbook.com is the primary source. But I can tell you that we made some sginificant progress since we really started working on in. In fact, at the beginning we four guys moved slower than I did alone with my ‘old’ engagement. This was not mainly caused by four different working styles (and I do tell you that it is not always the German who discusses an hour about a specific phrase ;-) ) – no, in fact it was Microsoft that slowed down the book creation process. Why? Well, MS just “reinvented the wheel”:  Comparing App-V 4 and App-V 5 is like comparing a ’classical’ car with an E-Car. Sort of they are all the same, but of course they are not.

The product which is now released as Microsoft Application Virtualization Version 5 is so fundamental different, that we really needed to put a lot of efforts into understanding it. And with every pre-release, which Microsoft submitted to selected customers and us, they changed the product. They did not just ‘fix bugs’, they also added a bunch of new features to every version, plus they applied changes that were requested by customers and MVPs.  So… we installed a new version, tested it, reverted the VMs, installed some even newer Version, tired to understand the changes… And if that’s not enough, we published some offline and online articles about the Public Beta… leaving us only a very limited amount of time to contribute to ‘the book’. But things changed a little, it is not “all new” any longer and talking about the writing we are ‘getting into it’.

Considering this you may understand why I am so enthusiastic about our App-V 5 Book announcement… and I hope you get exited as well, once you can start reading it :-)

PS: you may want to follow @appvbook for most up-to-date information.

I strongly recommend that you read the ‘old’ article first. It explains some background Information and still is valid (though it was written for a Beta version).

Let’s start with the same constraints that we assumed for the last article.

• You want to implement a Microsoft Application Virtualization with a ‘Full Infrastructure’ and/or you want to implement App-V 5’s Reporting Feature
• You are not the SQL Server Administrator and the SQL Admins refuse to run any installer nor executable on their SQL Server machines
• MS’ instruction of how to ‘install’ the database tells you some of the things for a ‘remote DB configuration’

Warming up

With App-V 5 RTM (and even in the pre-release versions) Microsoft allows you to ‘install’ the database(s) using the Setup Wizard – so you take your CD and go over to the SQL Admins: and they just start laughing  ;-)

Luckily there is a less shameful way to get things done: Along with the RTM version of App-V 5 Microsoft provides the necessary SQL scripts (*.sql files) that allow to prepare the SQL databases and configuration in a ‘clear text’ way – which SQL Admins easily can inspect and validate.

However, these scripts

• Are embedded in the server installer Setup.exe
• Need some adjustments

Extract the SQL scripts from Setup.exe

This one is easy. Just take a Test VM (you even might use one of the later App-V server machines or your current Desktop PC) and run the following command:

appv_server_setup.exe /layout c:\Temp

This extracts the content of appv_server_setup.exe into the specified directory (C:\Temp in my case). The content then should look like this:

And guess what – it’s the DatabaseScripts folder that contains the ‘plain’ scripts. In there you’ll find two subfolders – one for the Management database and one for the Reporting database

Each subfolder contains a readme.txt that instructs you what to do. Essentially, you have to replace the targeted database name in the “Database.sql” files and enter the SID and Name for the Read/Full database access groups into the “Permissions.sql” scripts.

Because there are some things I sort-of don’t like (you have to figure out the group’s SIDs, you have to remove the “-“ of them, manually add them into the .sql files, run the .sql files in the right order…) I wrote a Powershell scripts that does some of the work for you. I suppose you and the SQL Admin are different persons, so here is the process:

Gather the information

Ask the SQL Admin how the new databases for App-V Management (and optionally Reporting) should be named.

Ask the SQL Admin (or ask the Active Directory team) which groups should be used to configure the database access. For each App-V 5 Database (Management and Reporting) you need two groups (Read access and Write access).

You should NOT ask for individual user accounts, but for groups. Following the AGDLP model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGDLP) these groups fall under the “Permission” Group category. You (or someone else) will add “Accounts” groups (that include the individual users) . As a Best Practice you should have dedicated groups for every permission, so four in total.

Side note: I’m planning for a dedicated article on App-V Accounts and Permissions. (But I don’t commit to an expected release date ;-) ).

For now add yourself and the App-V Management Server’s account (<servername>$) to all groups.

Prepare the Powershell Script

To make the task somewhat easier, I wrote a Powershell Script that you can download from kirx.org.

Copy the Powershell file (PrepareSQL_inplace.ps1) into the same folder where the ManagementDatabase and the ReportingDatabase folders (erhm… copies!) are located: C:\Temp for my example.

Open the .ps1 file with an editor, like Notepad, Microsoft’s PowerShell ISE, Quest’s PowerGUI or alike.

I think the variable names are self-explaining, you should verify/adjust the ones which are highlighted in the screenshot.

If ‘$AlsoPrepareReportingSqlScripts’ is set to $true (the default), the .sql scripts for the Reporting database are prepared as well. If it is set to $false, only the .sql scripts for the Management DB are adjusted.

‘$SqlFilesSourceDirRoot’ should stay as it is (empty), because then the scripts looks at its own location for the subfolders and files.

After your modifications, save the script.

Run the Powershell Script

Important

The script is ‘destructive’, i.e. it modifies and renames the files directly. It does NOT create a backup copy.

To run the script, you ‘only’ need write permission in the current folder (C:\Temp). You may need to set the Powershell ExecutionPolicy (and for that you might need Admin rights on your test machine).

The script should run without “red” Powershell errors. If there are any, verify that the ‘original’ files are at the proper location.

Verification

After the script finished, the ManagamentDatabase folder should look like this (and the ReportingDatabase folder should look similar, but not identical). Check the ‘1-1_Database.sql’ file(s) if it contains the right Database information and the ‘2-5_Permissions.sql’ file(s) if it contains the right permission groups.

Execute the SQL Script.

Then, turn over to your SQL Admins…. And pay homage to them. They deserve it. After that, you may send them the .sql scripts. They should like you, because you don’t want to run an executable on their servers, plus you don’t require them to create and adjust the databases manually.

For the SQL Admin:

• Start with the “ManagementDatabase” Folder
• Run the 1-1_… Script against the server. It will create a database
• Then, verify that the database exists. And MAKE SURE that the following .sql script are executed on the new database (DO NOT! run them on the ‘master’ DB).
• Run them in the order defined by the number: 2-1, 2-2 and so on
• If required continue with the ‘ReportingDatabase’ folder.
• Same procedure as above: Run the 1-1 script against the server and the 2-x scripts against the newly created reporting database.

Executing the ‘ScheduleReportingJob.sql’ script may throw errors or warnings, depending on the status of the SQL Agent Server

After that is done, you can install the App-V 5 infrastructure servers and point them to the new remote database(s)

Again, the Powershell Script be found here.

Dedication and Disclaimer

The information in this blog were put together by Volker Kleiner, who offered me to publish that here. This tweak was introduced by Sebastian Gernert during the German App-V User Group meeting in June this year.

As for now, this is NOT a supported method by Microsoft and it might happen that this tweak disappears in the final version of App-V 5. We’re talking Beta here.

The Challenge

Beginning with App-V 4.5, there was that “/exe” command line parameter of SFTTRAY that allowed users to launch ‘any’ application in the context of a virtual application – without OSD modifications or ‘tricks’ like File->Open dialogs. In App-V 5, there aren’t any OSD files any longer (and the Beta’s configuration.xml have still some limitations on scripts) and there is no launcher (like sfttray) either… so how to get into an virtual environment to validate the files and registry settings that are present in the virtual application?

The Solution

With the Beta of App-V 5, Microsoft introduced a command line switch “/appvve” that apparently can be added to “any” executable to launch it inside a VE. It seems that the App-V Client 5 installation mystically adds this switch to applications – and believe it or not, I have absolutely no clue how they do that!

The command line for it is

executable.exe /appvve:PackageGUID_Version_GUID

So, to launch a CMD in a given virtual environment, launch

cmd.exe /appvve:3b58d5f6-72ee-417c-9813-5d296b4f131f_d04e507d-7c5b-4396-9e0c-a7685fa99484

An Improvement

Because that is not exactly handy (just close your eyes and repeat the two GUIDs), Volker created a small PowerShell script that simply takes the “friendly” App-V 5 Package Name as an input parameter. No rocket science here, but way easier than the pair of GUIDs:

$APP = $args[0]
$pkg = get-appvclientpackage –name $APP
$AppvPackageId = [string]::join("", $pkg.PackageID)
$AppvVersionId = [string]::join("", $pkg.VersionID)
$AppvGUIDs=$AppvPackageId +"_" + $AppvVersionId
Cmd.exe /appvve:$AppvGUIDs

A Final Mystery

Now you may ask why the heck Volker Kleiner didn’t publish this on his own site at www.app-v.info? Well, he is about to reorganize that page (worth observing it… did you notice his “Error Code” section?) and so Volker decided not to publish new things there in between. You should follow @vkleinerde, not only learn about his site’s progress

Other Resources

After goog.. searching, I found another article by Sander Zegveld that I read before… but I didn’t notice then that here an Internet Explorer has been started using the same method. And yes, if you like App-V Sander (@funnyproffy) is one of the “to follow” guys as well.

Normally one would start at the point the error occurs (hence on the client) and follow the golden thread of communication down to the source. (see http://bit.ly/JFI5Z0). In here we’ll start (almost) at the beginning and follow the data down to the client.

For some guidance on how to install the server pieces, look at http://bit.ly/INN3y0.

Disclaimer:

Request:

App-V 5 Management Server

The Management Server is an IIS Web Application, so checking if IIS is running and verifying some configurations there is a good starting point.

Verify that the Web Application really uses .Net version 4 (and not any older one). Open the IIS Management Console and navigate to the “Application Pools” node.

In the next step check if you can communicate with the service. On the Management Server machine, open a Browser and navigate to http://<managementservername>:Port (http://AppvMan:50536 in my example)

Here you should see a “Service” page. Or you go to http://<managementservername&gt;:port/help and you should see a list of supported commands.

You should not use “localhost” as the address, because sometimes IE then assumes a different security zone and prohibits some activities.

So, you are not sure which port you defined during installation? That’s an easy one: Read your Installation Documentation. Don’t have it (because somebody has stolen it)? There are some options.

You could check the “Binding” settings while you are in the IIS Management Console.

Or you browse the registry’s HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Server/ManagementService. Here is the MANAGEMENT_WEBSITE_PORT that should lead your way.

So, now that you know that the service itself is listening, let’s check the Management Console. It is a sub-feature of the Management WebApp, so you can open it using a browser and http://<managementservername>:Port/Console. Make sure you have Silverlight installed.

If your Console shows a red-bar-error-message, communication issues with the Database are probably the cause.

A “common” reason (hey, we still talk about a Beta here- so how “likely” or “common” can things be?) are insufficient privileges on the Database. The good news is that App-V tells that quite descriptive.

While you are in the App-V Management Console – stop by the “Servers” tile to check if your Publishing Server is listed here.

App-V 5 Database

If issues occur, the first thing you should determine is, to which database the Management WebApp actually tries to connect to.  HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Server is the root location for this info as well. Check values in the “ManagementDatabase and the ManagementService keys. (The registry screenshots were taken from a machine with a locally installed database)

Remember that it is probably necessary that the <domain>\<computername>$ account as well as your user has write access rights there.

App-V 5 Publishing Server

Now that we know that the “Management Infrastructure” components appear to work, let’s go a step further and have a look onto the Publishing Server. Depending on your decision you may have it installed on the same box as the Management Server – or you have chosen to use a separate machine for this.

I assume you already got it: Use a browser and open http://<publishingservername&gt;:port, first locally from the Publishing Server machine, then from a Client. The result should be an XML formatted page that does (or does not) include a list of applications your user has access to. When you perform this action after you ‘imported# some applications with the Management Console, enabled and assigned it to a group, the XML file should include some application information already.

For some info about the publishing server, check the registry’s HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Server/PublishingService.

For additional tweaks, open the “web.config” file that you can find it in the Publishing Server’s installation directory.

Take a closer look onto the “metadataRefreshInterval”. This one controls, how often the Publishing Service queries the Management Service for a new list of applications (defaults to 600[seconds]). If – for testing purposes – you want your newly published applications to appear on the Client in under 5 minutes – reduce that value. Of course decreasing this value in return decreases the load for both, the Management and the Publishing Service.

Package Repository

App-V 5 support HTTP and SMB to download the actual .appv file. You determine the protocole while you are importing the package with the Management Console. If you specify an URL, the client uses http. If you specify and UNC path, the client uses SMB. In my Publishing document example above, I’m using SMB for one and HTTP fo the other package.

There are actually two consideration to take:

Regardless of the protocol, the Client (user) has to have read permissions on that file

If using HTTP via IIS, you have to add  “.appv” as a MIME Type. I’d recommend to assign it as “application/appv” or “application/x-compressed”. In fact there are some general guidelines of what to use at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type.  (.appv can be opened read-only when making a copy and renaming it to .zip)

App-V 5 Client

The last piece of the deployment chain is the App-V Client (which actually also consists of several modules).

To see if and what Publishing Server has been configured for the Client, you can use the Registry and/or PowerShell.

In the Registry, HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Client/Publishing contains the list of configured servers.

You also can run the “get-AppVPublishingServer” Posh cmdlet to see a list of them.

Use “Sync-AppVPublishingServer” to refresh the application list (running the cmdlet without specifying  ‘–serverid 1’ is asking for the ID. ‘’1’ is usually a good answer here).

And then ?

So, what to do in the case of trouble. Even for the Beta all App-V Components write information into the Windows Event Log (eventvwr.msc), Application and Services Log/Microsoft/AppV.

However, the Event IDs aren’t configured to have a description yet, so you’d need to guess what the actual issue could be – or open a ticket at Microsoft Connect

Well, no, this is not a full-featured troubleshooting workflow, but I hope it’s of any help anyway.

Request:

We are currently in the preparation of our fifth German App-V User Group Meeting (“App-V Day”) for June 22nd close to Erfurt (Sömmerda).

Not only it is the fifth German App-V Day. This year we also have an Organizer Team of five people. And yes, for sure we will talk mostly about App-V 5 (but we have more than 5 topics to cover).

UPDATE: Agenda and Registraion online at http://bit.ly/IHYhW7

Following topics are on our Agenda

• Deployment Workflow (From the Sequencer to the Client, GUI driven)
• Powershell Cmdlets for App-V: Overview and Samples
• Application Groups (Dynamic Suiting re-architected)
• Dynamic Configuration: OS Entry Points for Machines and Users
• Migrating from App-V 4 to 5: Scenarios and Tools
• App-V 5 Troubleshooting
• MS User Experience Virtualization (UE-V)
• Notes from the Field
• Best of Communities

UPDATE: There will be one track. Registration and Agenda online at http://bit.ly/IHYhW7

All presentations will be held in German.

Server Systems

In the past (well… ), there was one Server called the “App-V Management Server” (or Softgrid Virtual Application Server) that played several roles in a “native” App-V infrastructure.

Most environments had (err… have) one or more machines that run the “App-V Management Server” (Windows) service. This service actually has two task: Tell a client (upon user request) which applications are available (“Publishing”) – and then serve the actual application packages using RTSP(s):  the “Streaming”. So we had one service being responsible for two different tasks. Moreover, in most scenarios this machine(s) hosted a Management (Web) Service that was used by the Management Console to import applications, assign user rights to apps and something more. Management and Publishing information were stored in a SQL Database

With App-V 4.5 Microsoft introduced the “Streaming Server” (or “Lightweight Server”) that only served packages using the RTSP(s) protocol. So we had a “Streaming Server” that streamed and a Management Server that, well, yes, was used to Manage, but also to Publish and to Stream.

With App-V 5, this mixture is resolved. There are different components that are separated clearly in Microsoft’s communication. Like in the past, ‘all’ of the server components can be installed and used on one and the same machine without major functional issues (I’m not talking about performance here).

SQL Database

The SQL Database (= Microsoft SQL Server) stores configuration information for the “common” App-V infrastructure as well as meta information about Applications, Packages, Connection Groups, their Publishing Configuration and User/Group assignments. Like in the past the Database does not contain the “packages” itself.

App-V 5 Management Server

As the name indicates, this instance is used for App-V administration. It is implemented as an IIS Web Service and provides a communication interface for the Database. A (web) Management Console is used to administer application sets, access models and so on. The Management Server is the only one component that directly interacts with the Database. It does not have any communication relation with App-V Clients.

While it is a IIS application, the Management Server listens on a different port than the IIS. This port is specified during setup.

Navigate to http://<ManagementServerAddress&gt;:Port/Console.html to open the Management Console.

App-V 5 Publishing Server 

The Publishing Server can be understood as the interface between the Client and the Management Server. It regularly queries the Management Server for a set of Publishing Information. Unlike in the past, the Publishing Service does not query the Management Server on demand, triggered by Client/User requests. Instead it pulls that information for all apps every few minutes.

Like for the Management Service, also the Publishing Service is an IIS Web Application that listens on a specific port. This port has to be different form IIS’ own port. If Publishing Server and Management Server run on the same machine, two different ports are required.

App-V Clients query the Publishing Service on demand (like during User Logon or triggered manually). Based on the Access Rights, the Server returns an XML formatted publishing document.

And guess what? Navigating to http://<PublishingServerAddress&gt;:Port allows you to see the XML file based on your access rights.

Package Repository / Download Server

In previous versions, App-V Packages (.SFT files) usually were delivered to the client using the RTSP protocol  from an SoftGrid Virtual Application Server, App-V 4 Management Server or Streaming Server. In version 5, there is no longer any proprietary service that delivers Virtual Application packages (.APPV files) down to the client.

App-V 5 leverages industry-standard based Web Servers or File Servers to server .AppV files. This means that you don’t have to plan and scale a separate “file-server like” machine any longer for your own. Just add a new File or Web Server (cluster) to your environment or extend the usage of existing ones. While this means that the RTSP streaming protocol is gone, this doesn’t mean that you have to take the burden of unreliable downloads of x GB BLOBS. Both, Web and File server allow the App-V 5 client to download resources in smaller chunks – if the network connection drops, a download will not need to start from the beginning. So, still only missing pieces are transferred when necessary.

The Package Repository is queried by the Management Server (to retrieve meta data and configuration templates) and it is queried by the Client to download the .AppV file.

Client

The new App-V 5 Client is – like the server components –  more or less a complete redesigned and redeveloped agent for Desktops, Remote Desktop Servers or VDI machines. The App-V 5 Client consists of several modules and performs various tasks. Describing these module more detailed would go far beyond the scope of this article, so here is an overview:

• Query the App-V 5 Publishing Server to get a list of Packages, Applications and Connection Groups along with publishing information like Link Locations, File Type Associations and other OS entry points. During this “client announcement” several sub-steps are made. Interestingly the Client also communicates with the Package Repository (.AppV file) during that task
• Download Packages (content of .AppV files). As mentioned before, the App-V 5 Client does not just download the .AppV file as a whole but loads specific data from within that file  
• Create the Virtual Environment
• Execute the virtualized application
• Store User Modifications

The App-V 5 Client does not communicate with the App-V Management Server (and it does not communicate with the Database).

Sequencer

From the look&feel, the Sequencer will be the component you’d feel most familiar with. Like it or not, the App-V 5 Sequencer does very much follow the Sequencing Steps that were introduced with SP1 for App-V 4.6 with only some smaller changes. Of course there are some fundamental changes under the hood (no more Q-Drive, no SFT file format or OSD files). From the communication perspective, nothing changed here: After Sequencing, you have to save the package and manually copy it onto the Package Repository (we used to call that “Content Share”).

Summary

When you compare the Version 5 communication architecture with the previous one you’ll notice that Microsoft separated different tasks from each other more clearly.

The Management Server is strictly for managing meta data in the backend. It is interacting with the Database (SQL), the Management Console (HTTP), the Package Repository (HTTP or SMB) and the Publishing Server (HTTP). It does not communicate with App-V 5 Clients.

The Publishing Server is designed to deploy user/machine specific configuration data to the client (what apps are available and how should they be integrated with the User Interface. It gets those information from the Management Server (HTTP:XML).

The Package Repository / Download Server is not any App-V specific solution any longer. File or Web Server are the technologies used. The Management Server, Publishing Server and Client are initiating communications with it via HTTP or SMB.

The Client does quite a lot, but essentially gets and executes Virtual Applications. The Client communicates with the Publishing Server (HTTP:XML) and the Package Repository (SMB or HTTP)

The Sequencer does not play any role in this “online” communication overview

Note: All server-like services can be hosted on a single (virtual) machine, like for a small Test or Proof-of-Concept scenario. When running on the same machine you’d have to plan with different ports for IIS itself (that actually could serve the Package Repository), the Management Server and the Publishing Server.

I would not install the App-V 5 Client onto such a test-box, just to ensure that the services can be reach from “the outside”. And of course I won’t install the Sequencer onto such a box either.