Paul SlagerVirtualization, Storage, Exchange, SharePoint, and Backup Expert

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Installing & Configuring VMware View 4.5 Part9: – ThinApp Configuration/Management

April 21, 2011 at 9:28 pmPaul Slager 21 comments

I bet some of you are thinking “it’s about stinking time.” I apologize to those of you who have anxiously been waiting for this article to be released. I hope it answers all of your questions surrounding Thinapp.

This blog series has been a great success and I have gotten a lot of positive feedback. In appreciation to your feedback and to help out a lucky winner I am offering 6 free hours of VMware consulting services to the individual who comments/twitters the most about my site in the next month. These consulting services are no way affiliated with my current company. The contest begins today and ends May 19th.

So what is Thinapp anyway? Thinapp is simply a tool that allows you to virtualize your applications. This separates your applications from the desktop keeping your operating system registry squeaky clean. These virtualized applications run in

a sandbox so to speak. One of the benefits is being able to quickly grant users access to certain applications based on their role or other criteria. There are some monetary savings that come from Virtualizing your applications as well because you can minimize the number of licenses needed.

You have two Thinapp installation choices either you can stream the application from a shared file server or install the application on the VMware View desktop. If you stream the application you must take network bandwidth into consideration especially if streaming to satellite offices across a WAN.

Virtualizing your applications is actually a good place to start if you are thinking about entering the realm of desktop virtualization. It’s really the applications that matter in the long run and if you have a good application virtualization solution the rest is a bit easier to fall into place. On the flip side there are times were application virtualization doesn’t really make sense either though. For instance, if you are a small company with maybe 10 major applications. It might be easier to create 2 or 3 different desktop pools based on the applications required. Or you could even use Windows 2008 RDS. Deploying applications quickly and on demand is a great selling point for any administrator though, especially when an upgrade to that software occurs. You can push out that upgrade in a matter of minutes to all of your desktops.

This article is part 9 of a ten part series. Future articles are listed below.

Part 1:   Installing & Configuring VMware View 4.5 Part 2: Configuring VMware View 4.5 Local Mode Part 3: Configuring VMware View 4.5 with Linked Clones Part 4: Managing VMware View 4.5 Linked Clones Part 5: Managing VMware View 4.5 Local Desktops Part 6: Configuring Juniper SSL VPN with VMware View 4.5 Part 7: VMware View 4.5 Planning & Implementation Guide

Part 8: VMware View 4.5 Thin/Zero Clients Part 9: VMware View 4.5 ThinApp Configuration/Management Part 10: VMware View 4.5 Event Logging

 

Preparing the Desktop

The first thing you want to do before you start virtualizing any applications boot-up a clean virtual machine with no software installed. After you have a clean operating system take a snapshot, so you can go back to that clean image if you mess up. This clean operating system virtual machine will be used to install all of your applications that will be captured by the “Thinapp Setup Capture” application. I have had issues in the past where I would install an application and then try to capture that application and the capture would fail because of some other applications I installed/uninstalled previously, it can be a bit sensitive sometimes.

VMware View Thinapp Requirements

The requirements listed below are for packages deployed to VMware View 4.5 Desktops

1. You must use ThinApp 4.6 or later2. You must package your applications as Microsoft Installation Packages (MSI)3. To run streamed ThinApp applications on View Desktops users must have access to the network share that

hosts the MSI packages4. The MSI Packages must be stored on a Windows network share that resides in the Active Directory domain that

VMware View can access.5. Do not deploy an application that is already installed on your View Desktop image you will get an error in the

events tab under the ThinApp section in the VMware View Administrator.6. Do not assign a ThinApp to a desktop or pool more than once with a different installation type, you will get an

error. So for instance, you don’t want to install a streaming ThinApp for Adobe Reader and then turn right around and install the full ThinApp of Adobe Reader to the same desktop.

*IMPORTANT* Deploying ThinApp’s to your local desktop is not supported but it does work. ThinApps’s are only fully supported when installed on View Desktops.

Installing ThinApp 4.6

1. Download the ThinApp bits using this demo download link https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/p/activate.php?p=view46&lp=1

2. Run the Thinapp Setup on your clean VM that you created earlier.

3. Accept the Terms and click Next

4. The installation window will disappear for a brief moment, so don’t freak out. Enter in the License Key you got from the demo or purchased

5. Click the Install button

6. Click Finish to complete the installation

Build a Virtual Application Package

1. The first step is to run the VMware Setup Capture Utility. This utility will run a pre-scan of your computer before you install any applications, this creates the baseline. Then you install your application and run a post scan to pick up that new application and all of its registry files, and then build the application package.

2. Click the Next button to continue

3. Click Prescan

4. Your operating system starts scanning

5. You might get a warning saying it couldn’t scan certain registry keys on Windows 7. The keys are:

Unable to Query the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib\009 index 0Unable to Query the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib\CurrentLanguage index 0

These keys really don’t play an important role from my experience and you can ignore them. If you don’t want to see the error message anymore add those registry keys to the Setup Capture Exclusion list. The exclusion list is called snapshot.ini and can be found in the Setup Capture folder.

Click Next to any Prescan warnings.

6. It’s now time to install your application. I recommend starting with a small application while you get familiar with the product. Try Adobe reader, or Adobe flash to get your feet wet.

*NOTE* after you install the application, open it up. Many applications require you to answer questions the first time you use it. For instance, some applications will ask you to accept terms and conditions; others will ask you for a username, others will prompt you for startup considerations, etc.

Click the Postscan button, and then accept the warning message below.

7. After the PostScan completes you will find a list of all of the executable files associated with the new application you installed. I don’t need to present the uninstall executable so I will just select the main flash application and click next. Please note that some larger applications like Microsoft Office have many different sub applications like word, excel, PowerPoint, Office Tools, etc (as shown in the screenshot below)

8. Choose who is authorized to access the application. You can change authentication based on AD groups if you wanted to but for now I am going to keep it simple and allow everyone.

9. I am going to give Adobe Reader Full Write Access, which you can read about below. It’s a trusted application and I don’t have any problem with it writing to non-system directories. When you select your option click Next

10. I am going to choose to store application data with the user’s local profile on the virtual desktop under the %AppData% folder. In my environment user data is stored on a persistent disk meaning all profile information is kept safe during a desktop refresh/recompose. If you were using a floating pool without a persistent disk you really couldn’t store the application information in the user profile folder and would probably want to use option 3 which is to store it on a network drive.

11. Choose to send out quality assurance statistics or not and click the next button

12. Give the package a name that will show up in View Administrator that you can easily identify and select the project location and click Next

13. The next screen asks you if you what the primary data container should be. Usually I take the recommendation that is provided for me. Larger applications will automatically default to “Use separate .Dat file”; however, in this case I will use the Flash.exe entry point. Remember one of the requirements for deploying ThinApps to your View Desktops is that you must “Generate an MSI Package”, which I have checked. Another option you can play around with is compressing the package which will reduce its storage footprint. When finished with your settings click the Save button.

14. At the next screen you can manually edit the package.ini file. (Screenshot Below)

15. When satisfied with all of your settings go ahead and click the Build button.

16. Once the build process has completed go ahead and click the Finish button.

17. Awesome your first package has been created. The next step is to add this package to the VMware View Administrator.

 

Create a Windows Network Share

1. Create a shared folder on a computer that is on an Active Directory domain that VMware View can access2. Place the MSI package that you created from the previous step into this folder.3. Setup the correct share permissions: you must give read access to the built-in Active Directory group Domain

Computers.

Add Applications to View Application Repository

1. Open the VMware View Administrator  View Configuration  ThinApp Configuration Click the Add Repository Button. Give the repository a name and enter in the share path where your MSI packages are and then click Save.

2. Navigate to Inventory  ThinApps  Click Scan New ThinApps. From the ThinApp Repository drop down chose the repository you just created, and click the Next button.

3. Select all of the MSI packages you want and click Scan

4. The new Thinapp should be added, click Finish

Assign Applications to a Desktop Pool

1. Open VMware View Administrator  Inventory  ThinApps  Select the Add Assignmentdrop down button and select Pools.

2. Add the pool or pools you want and click Ok

3. If you check the events tab under ThinApps you will notice that the application gets pushed out. *Important* when you assign an application to a pool the application starts installing when a user signs into a desktop in that pool. If you assign an application directly to a specific desktop or series of desktops then the application will start installing a few minutes later.

4. On the Virtual Desktop you will notice a shortcut for the Adobe Reader. After double clicking the shortcut the following popup will present itself for a brief moment.

5. If you go to Add/Remove Programs you will notice the application shows up and says (VMware ThinApp) next to it.

Assign Applications to Desktops

Assigning applications to a single desktop is pretty much the same thing as assigning it to a pool.

In this instance, I am deploying Adobe Reader 10 to the desktop. The desktop already has Adobe Reader 9.something. When I deploy Adobe Reader 10, Adobe reader 10 becomes the default pdf viewing application not Adobe Reader 9, which is pretty cool.

1. Open VMware View Administrator -> Inventory  ThinApps  Select the Add Assignmentdrop down button and select Desktops

2. Select the desktop you want, add it to the list, and click Ok

Remove ThinApps from Desktop or Pool

1. Open VMware View Administrator  Inventory  ThinApps 2. Double click on the application  Select the assignments tab  Click the Remove Assignment button.

3. If you select the Desktops Tab you will notice that there is a new pending uninstall event

4. It took about 4 minutes to uninstall the application from the desktop, below is the event log.

5. While we are under the Application Page you will notice another button called Package Information, once clicked you will see summary info about the ThinApp

Create a ThinApp Template

Creating a ThinApp Template is a great way to combine many different applications into a single assignment point. For instance, you might deploy the same 12 applications to all of the folks in the sales department. Instead of deploying these 12 applications one by one you could create a Sales Application template.

1. Open the VMware View Administrator  Inventory  ThinApps  Click the New Templatebutton.2. Give the Template a Name

3. Click the Add button and select the applications you want part of the template

4. Click the Ok Button when all of the applications you want are added to the template

5. On the main ThinApp page you can now see summary information about the template

6. You can then deploy this template to a desktop or a pool by following the steps I have outlined above.

Web Browser ThinApp

One of the cool things you can deploy with ThinApp is a new web browser. I pretty much use Google Chrome for everything that I can. One really cool feature when deploying a ThinApp Web Browser is you can list a series of websites that will automatically redirect or use that browser. So for instance, let’s say that I want Google Chrome to be opened when I viewhttp://paulslager.com I can do that.

1. List the websites you want to redirect.

2. If I open Internet Explorer on my Virtual Desktop and go tohttp://paulslager.com it will automatically launch the Thinapp version of Google Chrome

Streaming ThinApp

If you want to stream one of your applications you will need to edit the package.ini file before you build the application. Click the Edit Package.ini button

Locate the line that says MSIStreaming = 0 and change the 0 to 1 and then save the .ini file.

Similar Posts:

Installing & Configuring VMware View 4.5 Part6: – Juniper SSL VPN Installing & Configuring VMware View 4.5: Part 4 – Managing Linked Clones Installing & Configuring VMware View 4.5 Part8: – Thin/Zero Clients Installing & Configuring VMware View 4.5 Part7: – Planning & Implementation Guide VMware View 4.5 Non-Persistent Pools & DHCP

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Written by Paul Slager Paul is the owner of PaulSlager.com and enjoys writing a wide variety of technical articles for the community. Paul specializes in Virtualization, Storage, DR, Strategic Planning, Backup, SharePoint, Active Directory, and MS Exchange. He holds his PMP, MCITP, and VCP. Paul also does free community service and consulting for any companies that wish to use his resources. Last revised by: Paul Slager on June 20, 2012.VMware Application Virtualization , Capture packages, Configure ThinApp, Create packages,Install ThinApp, Streaming Apps, ThinApp, ThinApp 4.6, ThinApp License, ThinApp Packages, VMware Application virtualization, VMware View 4.5, Vmware View 4.6

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