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[Sander Wilmink]

Hello!

At the moment we have migrated the infrastructure of one of our customers. It was a big mess, but we have managed to create a nice structured system for the users. Now the infrastructure looks like this:

• Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 Farm
• RES Powerfuse 8 SR4
• App-V 4.5

Powerfuse is assigning applications to user based on group memberships and Powerzones. The applications which are virtualized with App-V are added with their OSD's to the application pool of Powerfuse. App-V packages are created and the protocol is used is File in stead of RTSP. This means Active Upgrade is not functioning. Is their a way to use Powerfuse with the App-V RTSP protocol and use Active Upgrade? This should help Administrators a lot when opening a existing App-V package for upgrade.

Hopefully you can let me know if this will be a idea for a SR or not.

Thanks!

Sander Wilmink

[pkaak]

This should already work (it is some time ago that I tested it as I do no use it anymore at our customers), but you need the full administration infrastructure of App-V and need to use the RTSP protocol.

When you use the full administration infrastructure (so you need the App-V management station) you do the following:
* Sequence a program with shortcuts in startmenu (powerfuse uses the shortcuts)
* Import the project in the management console of App-V, in the import wizard, do not set any shortcut to desktop or startmenu. Set rights to the program as you normally do.
* Import the OSD in Powerfuse, set the same security rights here.

If a user now opens the program, the App-V agent automaticly contacts the database for information about the program (security groups with rights, version, etc.). If all checks out, it starts the virtual program.

Now with Active Update. You import the new package in the App-V management console as new version. You do not have to do anything else, just put the new version in it.
Powerfuse keeps using the old OSD file.

What happens now. The user starts the virtual program. The App-V client checks the security groups. After that it checks the version. Powerfuse for example has the V1 of the package in the OSD. The client gets the V2 respons from the server and downloads the new version and caches the XML information. Next time it's started it reads the new XML from cache and starts the V2 and not the V1 version PF is references to.


Now why do I not use it anymore? As from version 4.5 you have a Streamed Server component with App-V. You do not need the full management interface anymore, as customers got confused with managing one application in the App-V management server and Powerfuse (security rights have to be the same..).
So what I do now is setup a Streamed server. Import the OSD in Powerfuse and secure the application only there. Now as a new version is ready, you put it on the shared directory on the streamed server (but leave the old version on it too). It checks every 30 minutes for new versions.
After 30 minutes I change the OSD file in Powerfuse to reflect the new version. The OSD file hardly change, you only change the v1 to v2 in the filename. The streamed server will do the rest.