I've been looking forward to App-V 5 for a while and read through the various beta impressions but they've mostly been either very technical how-tos on things that may not be (strictly speaking) supported or a bland two paragraphs on the fact that it's 'different'. So, I thought I'd throw together some stuff here that might help fill things out for people.
Server Side - Install
I genuinely don't remember installing App-V 4.x server side, but I think it was vaguely uneventful. The App-V 5 server install is similarly uneventful as long as you're prepared. Pre-reqs that you likely won't have installed already but will need are .NET 4.x (4.5 is the Features option in Win2012 which seems to work fine), Powershell 3.0 (aka WMF 3.0 / KB2506143) and some random insecure library loading vuln patch (KB2533623). Roles and features you're primarily looking at IIS stuff, nothing too surprising - I think ASP.NET with registration to .NET 4.x is the only thing to watch out for. On Win2012 I didn't have to do any hoop jumping.
Server side is split in to multiple parts:
- Publishing, Management and Reporting Servers (each installable separately)
- Management and Reporting Server Databases (each installable separately, must be on SQL Standard or greater, no Express)
Installation is relatively straight forward, I installed the two DB roles on a SQL 2008R2 server and the three server roles on their own server (each utilizing a different IIS port). Did I mention the entirety of the management and configuration is really done via Powershell now? There's a web based console for the management server that'll make you wish you had spent more time using Powershell, but you're still welcome to use it. I think the only functions that are available in it are setting App-V admins and importing packages.
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| App-V 5 Management Server Web "Interface" |
Client Side - Install
Same prereqs as the server side - .NET 4.x, WMF 3.0, and that one-off vuln patch. Other than that there's literally no configuration - I think the expectation is that you'll control all of your clients via GPO or (I'm guessing these are available) command line switches. Post-install all configuration options are only available via Powershell. Thought I'd toss in a screen of this thing too since I'd never seen one prior to install. I like the idea that it's much simplified and user friendlier.
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| App-V 5 Client GUI |
Sequencer - Install
Also the same prereqs as the server side. You'll notice that the sequencer didn't get the big face lift that the other two components got, so you'll feel right at home if you sequenced in App-V 4.6. The Q: recommendation is gone as is RTSP (yay!) so for me the sequencing is much simplified when teaching it to other people (when folks are new to packaging in general adding in the weirdness of capturing to Q:\[8.3] and then post capture having to enter in the client-accessible package URL was always a nuisance to me).
More on this later - I've sequenced a couple quickie apps and setup the publishing behind a hardware load balancer and some other stuff that someone might be interested in. So far everything is working stellar, so I'll report back as I progress.
