1. Install the Server App-V Sequencer and Remote Application Packager on your sequencing server
2. Launch the Server App-V Sequencer and select a custom installation workflow
3. Launch the Remote Application Packager, when the Sequencer is ready for you to run an installer
4. Provide the machine name with the natively installed applications
5. Select the applications you want to package and click start
6. The Sequencer copies over your application and produces a Server App-V package

That easy and your natively installed applications can now enjoy the benefits of easy and flexible deployment using Server App-V and VMM Service Templates.

Applicability

The traditional sequencing process may not always be an option in your environment. For example, you may not have the application’s installer or the application’s installation and configuration requirements. Virtualizing an application provides numerous deployment advantages and the tool is a great facility to achieve this especially if any of the following scenarios apply:

1. You need to deploy an application to a newer version of Windows Server
• Note: Using this tool does not guarantee that your application will work with a newer version of Windows Server
2. You need to migrate an application from physical server a to a virtual machine
3. You want to leverage VMM Service Templates to deploy a select number of application workloads

Enter the Server App-V Remote Application Packager.

How It Works

Determining Candidate Applications

The first phase the tool performs is determining the applications that are candidates for packaging. Most applications make entries in the registry that allow the tool to generate a list of the applications installed on the remote machine. After that, the following criteria are applied:

1. Is the application’s installer MSI based?
2. Is it present on the Sequencing machine?
3. Is it installed machine wide and not for a specific user?

If the criteria are satisfied, the application is presented as a candidate application for packaging.

Packaging Selected Applications

The remote application packager uses a variety of techniques to gather information from the remote machine.  Most of the information is gathered using built-in remote management capabilities such as WMI, remote registry, remote SCM and administrative shares. The exception is IIS content which relies on the web deployment tool (the tool needs to be installed on both machines).

There are 3 steps performed:

1. Create an application model – determine the application’s components (files, IIS sites, registry entries etc.)
2. Optimize the application model – perform additional logic to ensure that everything related to the application is included in the model and can allow us to move the components in an efficient manner
3. Copy the application to the sequencing machine – get the components from machine A to B via copy

Note: Your Sequencing OS must match the remote machine OS.

Supported Scenarios

• Server App-V Sequencer SP1 (build 4.9.37.2003)
• MSI based installers
• The following Windows components:
• Windows services
• Registry
• File systems
• IIS
• Environment variables

The tool is available here. We hope you try it and let us know if you have any questions or issues.

Derrick Isoka - Program Manager, Server Application Virtualization

2791762 - A .NET application crashes after installing the Microsoft Server Application Virtualization client (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2791762)

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

System Center All Up: https://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
System Center – Configuration Manager Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
System Center – Data Protection Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
System Center – Orchestrator Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
System Center – Operations Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
System Center – Service Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center – Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Windows Intune: https://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The AD RMS blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/rmssupp/

The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : https://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

• Virtual Machine Manager
  • Improved Support for Network Virtualization
  • Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
  • Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
  • Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image
• Configuration Manager
  • Deployment and management of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
  • Distribution point for Windows Azure to help reduce infrastructure costs
  • Automation of administrative tasks through PowerShell support
  • Management of Mac OS X clients and Linux and UNIX servers
  • Real-time administrative actions for Endpoint Protection related tasks
• Data Protection Manager
  • Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
  • Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
  • Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
  • Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration
• App Controller
  • Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
  • Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center
• Operations Manager
  • Support for IIS 8
  • Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
  • Azure SDK support
• Orchestrator
  • Support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
  • Manage VMM self-service User Roles
  • Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
  • Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds
• Service Manager
  • Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
  • Create chargeback reports
  • Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets
• Server App-V
  • Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
  • Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server

For all the details and a download link please see the following: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34607

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

App-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : https://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity- support/
The Forefront TMG blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

I’m doing all of this on Windows 2008 R2 Server virtual machines with SAV v1 (4.7.27.1491) from the SystemCenter 2012 release. I’ll use WS_FTP from Ipswitch as a sample app. For details on how to sequence and deploy it, see our recipe at https://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv/archive/2012/05/09/server-app-v-recipe-ws-ftp-server.aspx.

Installing the Sequencer

The Sequencer installer is actually a chainer (an executable that orchestrates the install process) wrapped around a few MSI files. To get the most verbose logs from the MSI installers, you can turn on MSI logging by setting the registry value Logging to ‘voicewarmup’ under HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer before you install. For more details on that technique, see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/314852.

I set this registry value and ran the Sequencer installer with no command line parameters, just clicking through and taking all the default options. I didn’t run into any errors, but if I had, I would have first looked at the chainer’s log, since this summarizes overall setup progress. This is a file called SavSetupChainerLog.txt in your temp directory. (Easy ways to find the temp directory are to open an Explorer window and type ‘%temp%’ in the address bar, or open a command prompt and type ‘cd %temp%’.)

When the chainer runs, it installs an MSI with the SAV Sequencer components, pre-requisite MSIs, and the desktop App-V Sequencer (because the SAV Sequencer is built on top of the desktop App-V one). In this example, the 2005 VC redistributable was the only pre-requisite that needed to be installed. Since the installation was pretty straightforward, the log was, also. Here’s the whole thing:

6/15/2012 11:43:41:753 Setup will perform an Install on the product.

6/15/2012 11:43:55:721 Performing install of product Packages\SavSequencer.msi with command-line INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Server Application Virtualization Sequencer" REBOOT="ReallySuppress" ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT="1"

6/15/2012 11:44:4:110 Performing install of product Packages\vcredist2005sp1_x86.exe with command-line Packages\vcredist2005sp1_x86.exe /Q

6/15/2012 11:44:18:218 Performing install of product Packages\Setup.msi with command-line INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Server Application Virtualization Sequencer" REBOOT="ReallySuppress" ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT="1"

You can see the command lines passed to each phase of installation, which can help you figure out what might have gone wrong if anything did. Also, if the MSIs return any errors, they’ll show up here so you can tell which phase of the install failed. In the event of a failure, the next step is to look at the MSI logs. The link about verbose MSI logging above has more details on how these files are named, but in short they are the files in the temp directory that start with MSI and end with .txt. They tend to have a lot of information and as a result can be hard to interpret. A good technique is to search for the first instance of the word ‘error’ to get to the approximate area of the log file where you might learn something about what went wrong.

Sequencing the Application

I started the Sequencer, chose Create a New Virtual Application Package, and got to the Prepare Computer page. This page automates some of our best practices and troubleshooting tips.

It’s a great idea to pay attention to warnings and errors you see here. In my example, both System Center Configuration Manager (“SMS Agent Host”) and an antivirus program were running, and either of those could kick off tasks during sequencing that would invalidate the package I produce. Double-clicking on each warning provides a pop-up dialog with more info on what is wrong and how to fix it.

I continued through the Sequencer, specifying the WSFTP installer and a name for the package, to the point where the Sequencer started the installer for me. If I saw any errors up to this point, my best option would have been to look in the Sequencer’s log file, sft-seq-log.txt in the Logs folder under the Sequencer install path. By default on a US English machine that’s C:\Program Files (x86)\Server Application Virtualization Sequencer\Logs. This is a simple text file with the date, time, and a couple other pieces of information in square brackets at the start of each line. For example, here’s a section of the log file where virtualization subsystems are being loaded. Note the warnings about IIS and WebDeploy not being installed—I had to go back and fix these before I could sequence WSFTP).

...

[06/15/2012 14:46:04 VRB ] The 'Performance Counters' subsystem factory was loaded from module 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Server Application Virtualization Sequencer\sav_perf32.dll'.

[06/15/2012 14:46:05 WRN ] The Virtual IIS Subsystem could not be loaded because the IIS WMI Provider is not installed. IIS applications cannot be sequenced (error 4960113B-8004100E).

Corrective actions:

Enable the IIS role.

Enable the IIS Management Scripts and Tools role service (on IIS 7).

Restart the Server Application Virtualization Sequencer.

[06/15/2012 14:46:07 WRN ] The Virtual IIS Subsystem could not be loaded because the Web Deployment Tool is not installed. IIS applications cannot be sequenced.

Corrective actions:

Install Web Deploy.

Restart the Server Application Virtualization Sequencer.

[06/15/2012 14:46:07 VRB ] The 'SSRS' subsystem factory was loaded from module 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Server Application Virtualization Sequencer\sav_ssrs32.dll'.

[06/15/2012 14:46:07 VRB ] The 'Windows Roles and Features' subsystem factory was loaded from module 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Server Application Virtualization Sequencer\sav_roles32.dll'.

...

Once you’ve reached the point where your app’s installer is running, you’re in the same situation you would be in if you were trying to install without SAV. Any techniques you’d use to debug a failed installation of a native application, like looking at MSI log files, are equally valid for debugging failures here.

After I finished with the installer, I went back to the Sequencer and checked the I am finished installing check box, then clicked Next. After the Sequencer collected system changes and generated a package, I got to the package report page:

This is another useful page to look through to proactively find problems with the package you’ve created. For example, I double-clicked Files excluded from package and saw all the files that were modified during packaging time but not included in the package (because of heuristics we use to try to exclude things like temp files from your packages). The Sequencer also saves all of the information on this screen into a file called report.xml that ends up on disk with the rest of the package you create. If you notice a package failure at deployment time, it can be useful to go back and look at this report.xml file to see if you missed anything that would point you at a solution.

After I finished and saved the package, the package artifacts like the SFT file were available on disk for examination. Sometimes looking at these artifacts helps to diagnose other potential problems. A tool like Application Virtualization Explorer is valuable here. AVE allows you to open up the SFT file and see what files and registry settings ended up as part of the package. AVE was originally for desktop App-V packages but works just as well with Server App-V packages, except that the virtual services tab is not functional.

Package Upgrade Notes

If you’re doing a package upgrade in the Sequencer, there are a couple of extra things to consider.

First, if your package had deployment configuration, we have to apply it during upgrade on the Sequencer. If your deployment configuration file has errors in it (like missing credentials for services), you’ll see a failure. We put information about deployment configuration failures during package upgrade in the Application Event Log, not in sft-seq-log.txt, so you will have to open up the Event Viewer to see this set of errors.

Second, a common source of errors on package upgrade is extension point conflicts. As part of setting up the package to be upgraded, we have to deploy it to the machine, which includes registering all of its extension points. If there are any conflicts, e.g. a COM object that’s part of your package but is also present on the native system, this registration fails. You should be able to find more details about these failures in the Sequencer log, sft-seq-log.txt. You can also use AVE to look at the application’s manifest (the appv_manifext.xml file in the root of the package) to see what COM objects, services, WMI providers, etc. we register on the local system.

Installing the Agent

The SAV Agent setup is structured much like the Sequencer setup, with a chainer that orchestrates several MSI installations. The agent chainer log is also called SavSetupChainerLog.txt and will also show up in the temp directory. You can enable verbose MSI logging with the same ‘voicewarmup’ registry value and see the MSI logs in the temp directory.

For the purposes of this blog post, I am going to use the SAV PowerShell cmdlets rather than managing the SAV Agent through System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), so I installed those separately. The same error codes and messages that I talk about PowerShell returning below are also surfaced through VMM when you use it. The cmdlet installer uses the same chainer and the logs end up in the same place (the temp directory).

Deploying the Package

Before I started deployment, I took a look at the package. This can help you get your target machine set up correctly, or can help you debug issues after you see them. The manifest (called <package name>_manifext.xml) includes, among other things, the list of Windows Roles & Features that were enabled on the Sequencing station. Here you can see a bit of that section of my manifest:

Note that if any roles and features were enabled on the Sequencer, you need to enable them on the machine you deploy the package to.

If you use AVE to get into the SFT file (as described in the sequencing section above), there’s a second manifest in the root of the package, called appv_manifest.xml. Near the top of this manifest, you can find a list of applications that were installed on the sequencing machine, like this:

This can help you figure out things like what version of .NET you had on the Sequencing station, since the Agent you deploy to should be configured the same way.

For the actual deployment, I used the Add-ServerAppVPackage PowerShell cmdlet. I deliberately typed one of the paths wrong to get an example error message:

The first lines of that include an error code (0FD02560-00000002 in this case), whether it’s a general Windows error code or an App-V-specific error code (Windows, here), and the text associated with that error (“The system cannot find the file specified”). For Windows error codes, the last eight digits are the hexadecimal representation of a standard Windows system error codes. For App-V errors, you can often find help by searching online for the last 10 digits (60-00000002 in this example). In general, answers about desktop App-V error codes will also apply to Server App-V.

To get more information about what was wrong, I looked in the Application Event Log. I opened up Event Viewer, navigated to the Application log under Windows Logs, and looked for errors from the source App-V Services. Here’s what I see:

The text of the message in the screenshot is:

AddPackage could not find or open the Manifest file ‘C:\packages\WSFTPmanifest.xml’ due to error 0FD02520-00000002: The system cannot find the file specified.

I left out the underscore in the middle of the manifest file name, hence this error. In most cases, you’ll see more than one message from SAV in the event viewer so be sure to check through all the ones around the error you saw—sometimes you’ll be able to put together a more detailed picture of the problem by assembling pieces of data that we logged separately.

If you want to crank up the verbosity of the logs we generate, you can do that in the registry. Under HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Client\Configuration, there are values called LogMinSeverity and SystemEventLogLevel. You can set them independently from 1 (least logging) to 5 (most). SystemEventLogLevel controls how much gets written to the event log we looked at here. LogMinSeverity controls how much gets dumped to a corresponding text file log on disk. LogFileName under the same key shows you the path to the log file on disk. You do need to reboot (or at least restart all of the App-V services) to apply log level changes.

The event logs are useful for errors from Server App-V, but you may also see errors directly from your sequenced application. We’ve tried to make the process of debugging application-specific errors as close as possible to the native experience. For example, if a service isn’t starting, you can open the Windows Services console (services.msc) and try to start it there, look at its properties from there, etc. You can use tools like dcomcnfg or wbemtest to interact with COM objects or WMI providers that don’t seem to behave correctly. If you need to launch a tool or process inside a virtual environment, so it has full access to the application’s registry etc., you can do this by appending /RunInVE:<package name> to any command line anywhere on the system. For example, to get regedit running inside the virtual environment for my WSFTP package, I ran “regedit.exe /RunInVE:WSFTP”.

If you run into a situation where a deployment fails and you can’t find the answer in a log message, you may want to examine the state of the system to see if you can find any clues. This can be difficult, since Server App-V rolls back any changes it makes as part of package deployment if the deployment fails. You can prevent this rollback by setting the DWORD value DisableSavUndo to 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Client. After this is set, if you deploy a package and deployment fails, the Server App-V agent will leave the system in whatever partially-installed state it ends up in when the failure occurs.

The ultimate troubleshooting tool for misbehaving virtual applications is Process Monitor. This tool lets you see almost every resource request an application makes, so you can look for errors or compare transcripts of virtual and native instances of an application. Depending on your platform, you may need to add the /HookRegistry flag to catch virtual registry transactions (see ProcMon’s documentation for more details). For many more details about using Process Monitor, see https://blogs.technet.com/b/appv/archive/2008/01/24/process-monitor-hands-on-labs-and-examples.aspx.

Conclusion

I hope this post provides a good reference for the set of techniques and logs that can help you troubleshoot Server App-V problems. If you have follow-up questions or ideas of your own, please feel free to post here.

Eric Jewart

Principal Development Lead, Microsoft Server Application Virtualization

Two things:

New Recipe

I am announcing the posting of yet another Server App-V recipe.  This time it's for SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services.  The recipe shows you how to package a report server instance and easy deploy it as a scale out node to an existing SSRS deployment.  You can find the recipe here:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/serverappvirtualization/thread/cc12ba52-e3cc-4d48-8a1b-f9d795bf814f

New Recipe Site

Second, we've started posting our recipes to a forum-base site.  While this blog site had its benefits, the forum site has two distinct advantages. First, it allows users to contribute their own recipes to help out the rest of the community.  Second, it lets the community vote on the recipes so we can determine which ones are the most helpful.

Find the new recipe site here: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/serverappvirtualization/threads

Let us know if you have any questions or issues with Server App-V, or if there are any blog topics you'd like to see articles written on. 

All the best,

Chris

=====

Summary

The following is a list of the custom actions for the Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V) Sequencer installer package.

More Information

Installer : Server App-V Sequencer
CA: MUOptinRequired
Method name: MUOptinRequired
Description: This is an immediate custom action to check if MU optin is required.

Installer : Server App-V Sequencer
CA: OptinToMU
Method name: OptinToMU
Description: This is a deferred custom action to perform MU optin. This Custom action does not run in Sequencer.

Installer : Server App-V Sequencer
CA: SetSSRSRealTlsAllocCountProperty
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes the number of TLS slots to allocate in SSRS Injector subsystem.

=====

For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2704939 - Custom actions for the Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V) Sequencer installer package

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

App-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : https://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: https://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

Verified With

Prepare for Sequencing

1) Dynamics NAV requires that database components be installed as a prerequisite for the server. On a machine with SQL Server on it, run the Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 installer and install the database components. During the NAV installation process described below, you will provide information so that the Dynamics server can connect to this SQL Server.

Sequencing Steps

SAV Sequencer Steps

1) Start the SAV Sequencer and select “Create a New Virtual Application Package”.

2) Address any issues highlighted in the “Prepare Computer” phase. Double-clicking a message will provide more details as well as a suggested resolution. Click Next.

3) Click Browse in the sequencer UI and locate the Dynamics NAV installer. Click Next.

4) Give the package a name (eg, in this example I chose DynamicsNAV).

5) Leave the Primary Virtual Application Directory as-is (the default is fine to use, but you can optionally change it to a different path if you desire).. Click next. This will start the Dynamics NAV installer.

Dynamics NAV Installer Steps

6) In the Dynamics NAV installer, accepting the software license terms and conditions

7) Select "Choose an Installation option"

8) We want to install the Server option, with custom settings. Click the "Customize" link under the "Server" heading.

9) Leave the "Destination Folder" values, the location to where the files will be installed, as they are.

10) Select the RoleTailoredClient option (this will install a client, which we can use to verify the functionality of the server after sequencing). Select "Run from My Computer".

11) Under "Server", deselect the "Microsoft Office Outlook Integration" option.

12) Click "Next"

13) The server must be configured before it can be run. Click on the "Server" link in the Specify Parameters dialog.

14) In the SQL Server pane, in the SQL Server textbox, enter the name of the database server on which you installed the Dynamics NAV Database Components prior to sequencing. Then, click OK.

15) Click Apply to commence the installation

16) When the installation completes, click Close to exit the Dynamics NAV installer.

17) In the Services manager, verify that the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server service is running. This indicates that the installation was successful.

SAV Sequencer Steps

18) Return to the Server App-V Sequencer and select "I am finished installing."

19) On the Configure Software dialog, click Next

20) On the Package Completed dialog, click Close

21) On the Deployment Configuration Items page, add a deployment configuration item for the database server. This will allow you to configure which database the Dynamics NAV server connects to at deployment, in case you want to change it.

22) Click "Add Deployment Configuration Item"

23) Search for "DatabaseServer" to locate the configuration item that stores the name of the destination database server.

24) Select the item that is found, and click Add. Observe that a new configuration item has been added for the database server.

25) Under the file menu, select Save to save your package. On the "Package Completed" screen, click Close.

=====

Summary

The following is a list of the custom actions for the Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V) Agent installer package.

More Information

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: MUOptinRequired
Method name: MUOptinRequired
Description: This is an immediate custom action to check if MU optin is required. If MU optin is required, MU optin page will be shown to the user by the user interface, if the user is running in UI mode.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: OptinToMU
Method name: OptinToMU
Description: This is a deferred custom action to perform MU optin. This custom action runs as elevated and impersonated (Runs as the user running setup)

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: RegisterMOFFile
Method name: RegisterMOFFile
Description: This custom action registers a MOF file during install

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: RollbackRegisterMOFFile
Method name: RegisterMOFFile
Description: This custom action unregisters a MOF file during rollback when install is interrupted

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: UnregisterMOFFile
Method name: RegisterMOFFile
Description: This custom action unregisters a MOF file during uninstall

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: RollbackUnregisterMOFFile
Method name: RegisterMOFFile
Description: This custom action registers a MOF file during rollback when uninstall is interrupted

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: ModifyAppInitDllProperty
Method name: ModifyAppInitDllProperty
Description: Reads the AppInitDll registry value from registry and appends a space to the cached value if the original value is not empty

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: ModifyAppInitDllRegistryValue
Method name: ModifyAppInitDllRegistryValue
Description: This is a deferred custom action, that is run during uninstall. This custom action modifies app init registry value and deletes the value avcpmon.dll from it. If this results in app init registry value being empty, on windows 2008 and above machines, this also sets load_appinitdll registry value to 0.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: RollbackAppInitDllRegistryValue
Method name: RollbackAppInitDllRegistryValue
Description: This is a rollback custom action, that sets the value of AppInitDll registry value back to its original state at the time of uninstall

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetModifyAppInitDllRegistryValue
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes new AppInitDll value with avcpmon dll path.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetOptinToMU
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes a path to the MU auth cab file.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetRegisterMOFFile
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes a path to the MOF file to register the MOF file.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetRollbackAppInitDllRegistryValue
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes the AppInitDll Registery value

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetRollbackRegisterMOFFile
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes a path to the MOF file to unregister the MOF file.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetRollbackUnregisterMOFFile
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes a path to the MOF file to register the MOF file.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetSSRSRealTlsAllocCountProperty
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes the number of TLS slots to allocate in SSRS Injector subsystem.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetUnregisterMOFFile
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes a path to the MOF file to unregister the MOF file.

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetAVCPMon32PathProperty
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes the path to avcpmon DLL file

Installer : Server App-V Agent
CA: SetAppInit_Dll32AdditionProperty
Method name: n/a
Description: This sets an MSI property which includes the path to avcpmon DLL file

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For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2704938 - Custom actions for the Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V) Agent installer package

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer

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Hi everyone, this is the next instance of a couple planned Server App-V “recipes” that we will be posting.  These are written with two specific goals in mind.  First, if you need to sequence this particular application, you can following these directions to get a successful deployment.  Second, even if you aren’t sequencing this app specifically, reading these guides is a good way to get introduced to sequencing apps for Server App-V in a general sense.

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Special Notes

1) Dynamics AX requires a database, which must be installed separately from the AOS and Client which will be packaged as part of this recipe. Prior to sequencing, run the Dynamics AX installer and install the database. During sequencing you will point to the database you created in this step.

Prepare for Sequencing

Before sequencing, prepare the OS with the following prerequisites:

1) Enable Web Server IIS Role including all features

2) Enable .NET Framework 3.0 features (WCF Activation, Non Http Protocols)

3) Enable Message Queuing feature with default options

4) Enable Windows Internal Database feature

5) Enable Windows Process Activation Service feature

6) Install all Windows updates before starting the sequencing

For information on how to enable Windows Server roles and features, see here:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732263.aspx

Sequencing Steps

SAV Sequencer Steps

1) Start the Sequencer and select “Create a New Virtual Application Package”.

2) Provide the Package Name. In this example, I chose “DAX”.

3) Provide the Package Root. It will default to Q:\DAX, which you can use or optionally change it to something different. Click next.

4) Locate the Dynamics AX installer (setup.exe) and click Next to start monitoring.  The SAV sequencer will now start the Dynamics AX installer.

Dynamics AX Installation Steps

5) Accept the EULA.

6) Select the “Custom Installation” Option and continue next.

7) Select the following options from the Select Components menu, then click Next:

a. Application files

b. Application Object Server (AOS)

c. Client

8) Select the database type you want to which you want to connect. Select “Microsoft SQL Server” in this case. Click Next.

9) You may be prompted to install prerequisites as shown below. If so, click the button to install these prerequisites:

10) Modify the file location to point to the package root at Q:\DAX. For example, the file location will be: Q:\DAX\Microsoft Dynamics AX\50.

11) On a 64 bit OS, you will be asked for two file locations. One path is for 64 bit and the other is for 32 bit components. For both, make sure you specify a path under Q:\DAX.

12) On a 64 bit OS, you will see the following pop-up. Continue by pressing “OK”

13) If prompted with the dialog shown below, warning about non-default file paths, press “OK”.

14) Provide the details for the database you created prior to sequencing. (Note: make sure the user running the installer has administrative privileges on the SQL Server).

15) Select the country or region you want to install and press “Next”.

16) Provide the port number you want to use to run the AOS instance.

17) Provide the account details to use to run the AOS service

18) Select display language and press “Next”.

19) Select the “Start AOS instance after installation completed” checkbox, then click Install to begin the installation

20) After installation completes, you will see the following screen which indicates that it has succeeded.

21) Verify that the Dynamics AX Object Server service has started in Service Control Manager.  Please note that the services may take some time to start the first time.

22) Start the Dynamics AX Client by locating the shortcut in the Start menu and follow the Initialization check list below.

23) Return to the Server App-V Sequencer and select “I am finished installing”.

24) Save the package.

Intro

Hi everyone, this is the first of a couple Server App-V “recipes” we will be posting.  These are written with two specific goals in mind.  First, if you need to sequence this particular application, you can following these directions to get a successful deployment.  Second, even if you aren’t sequencing this app specifically, reading these guides is a good way to get introduced to sequencing apps for Server App-V in a general sense.

Verified With

Prepare for Sequencing

Before sequencing, prepare the OS by installing the following prerequisites:

1) IIS Web Server role (ensure IIS management scripts and tools are installed)

2) WebDeploy 2.0

Sequencing Steps

SAV Sequencer Steps

1) Start SAV Sequencer

2) Click Browse in the sequencer UI and locate the WS_FTP installer

3) Give the package a name (eg, WSFTP)

4) The SAV sequencer will now start the WS_FTP installer

WS_FTP Installation Steps

5) Accept the terms and conditions

6) Select Custom installation

7) Choose which WS_FTP components you wish to install. In this recipe, I will install only the WS_FTP Server.

8) Choose the database server you wish to use. PostgreSQL is the default, and is the choice used for this recipe.

9) When given the option to choose the destination folder for the installation, click Browse

10) Change the WS_FTP installation folder to the Q:\PackageRoot drive. For example, this package is named WSFTP, so the location should be changed to Q:\WSFTP

11) Now, do the same thing for the PostgreSQL application files and data files.

12) Choose a web server for Admin site. I chose IIS for this recipe.

13) Enter the fully qualified hostname to create. The default value in the textbox is probably fine.

14) Create Admin username & password. In this example, I used:

a. UserName: admin

b. Password: WS!Admin

15) Select the Default website

16) Click Install to begin the WS_FTP install process

17) Enter product key activation information

18) If asked to restart, select Yes. The SAV sequencer will notify you that the reboot request has been canceled.

19) Open the Services management console and manually start the following services:

a. Ipswitch WS_FTP Server

b. PostgreSQL Database Server 8.3

20) Verify that the services are operational

a. Open a Windows comment prompt

b. Run the command "ftp localhost"

c. Observe that a connection was made to the local WS_FTP server

SAV Sequencer Steps

21) Return to the SAV Sequencer window and select "I am finished installing"

22) After the sequencer finishes collecting changes, it will ask you if you want to run specific programs installed by WS_FTP in order to complete configuration. This is unnecessary, so click "Next".

23) On the "Package Completed" screen, click Close.

24) Review your deployment configuration settings, then select File > Save

Special Deployment Steps

1) Remember to deploy the prerequisites as noted in “Prepare for Sequencing” on the OS with the SAV Agent installed prior to adding the Server App-V package.

2) This application adds two services and a local user to the system. Remember to specify passwords to pertinent resources in the deployment configuration file. Here is a screenshot of a sample deploymentconfig.xml file: