Horizon Cloud on Azure – App Volumes [Part-9]

Table of Contents

Introduction

App Volumes is a real-time application delivery system that VMware offers with Horizon products to manage applications to deliver dynamically.

Horizon administrators can create, assign, update & remove applications without affecting or modifying VDI’s and user logins

VMware constantly Updating the App Volumes capabilities on their every quarterly release of Horizon Cloud on Azure.

How to enable app-volumes for your POD

As per the VMWare documentation by default, every POD from manifest 2298 having the app-volumes feature enabled by default.
We can check whether it’s enabled in our POD by following below

We can confirm by just logging into your Azure Subscription and check delivery & staging file shares are created in the storage account of the POD resource group.
In Horizon admin console check if you can be able to find App Volumes under Assign Desktops & Apps or Inventory –> Applications
Check File share properties showing as 2 in the POD page in Admin console

Create APP Package

This involves multiple steps and let’s discuss one by detailed.

Import VM with App Volumes agent enabled

Import W10 OS VM by selecting App Volumes Agent toggle to enable in Horizon agent features and Domain Join
The above process (Image import –> Install roles –> Restart VM –> Installing Agents –> Restart VM –> Bootstrapping –> Restart VM –> Import successful) will take anywhere between 20-30 mins to complete
Convert the Imported VM to Image
–> Select the VM
–> Click on MORE
–> Select Publish to Images
–> Wait till Agent status changes to Active
–> Provide Company Name
–> Provide Local admin credentials of the VM
–> Click on PUBLISH
Navigate to Monitor –> Activity, In the Admins section of the Activity page we can see the task progress. Wait till the task is completed
Now we can see the image in the Images section

Create App Capture VM

Navigate to Inventory –> Applications –> App Volumes in Admin console then Click on NEW –> Create
Enter the application package name that we need to create and select the Image & POD (the Image drop down is auto-populated with the image having app volumes agent installed)
Once you click on SAVE, we can an assignment getting created in VDI & RDSH section with a name starting appcapture<random number>
This process will take anywhere between 20 – 30 mins to complete and we can see 2 VM’s created in Azure portal

Login to App Capture VM

Once the assignment online (as shown above, please note we can’t click on the pool to see the VM names), login to the user portal with your horizon admin console login ID & password (not the user portal login details), so that you will be presented with one appcapture VM to login
Launch the appcapture VM, wait till it’s ready and able to see the desktop

Provide administrator rights

Goto the “Local Users & Groups” by typing ‘lusrmgr.msc‘ in run and add logged in user as administrator
If the login user account not part of the administrator group, then you won’t be able to see the appcapture dialog box in the desktop (please refer image in Step6)

Install the Notepad++ application

Once logged in user added to administrator group then restart the VM and launch the desktop again so that you can see the appcapture dialog box (shown as below)
Copy the Installer to this machine and let’s start install

Start App Capture

Once application is installed, Click on OK on app volumes packing
Click on Yes to start the packaging process
Click on Finalize
Click on OK to restart the appcapture VM
After restart, launch the appcapture VM.
Now you can see Packaging successful dialog box
And now you will be logged from the appcapture VM
This appcapture vm will get delete automatically after a successful capture
Also, you can see the import successful from the admin console Notifications
In the same page, you can see the Notepad++ package is added and in Pending state

Create App Volumes Assignment & User Login

It’s time to create an app volumes assignment and assign the users group to whom this app needs to be delivered when they launch the desktops

–> Navigate to App Volumes under Assign Desktops & Apps

–> Click on NEW and select App Volumes

–> Provide a name to the assignment and click NEXT

–> Select the Notepad++ application and click NEXT

–> Enter the User group needs an access to this package

–> Review the Summary and click FINISH
Now if a user login to an app volume agent installed assignment, he/she can see the Notepad++