Config Mgr 2012 and App-V

Previously when using App-V and leveraging the infrastructure of SCCM 2007 and the integration of the App-V you were “limited” to using anything from Configuration Manager. In itself – this wasn’t all that bad, but any type of migration scenario were very much dreaded and the enabling or disabling of the integration was a big on-off switch – that dropped anything previously distributed to App-V Client and took over the control of the client. Configuration Manager 2012 has come a long ways and especially when migrating between different scenarios – it isn’t as controlling in some scenarios.

First – a few notes; There isn’t any configuration on the Configuration Manager 2012 infrastructure or client that enables or disables any functionality. By default – its capable of integration with App-V and will do so without any particular tasks required to be performed by the administrator. Reviewing a previously installed App-V Client that has one single application distributed gives us the following views;

(registry configuration to start an application)

(one application distributed using stand-alone method)

Even though this wasn’t part of the experiments conducted today – any Publishing Servers should be removed once the client controlled by Configuration Manager 2012. Not only once – but it should continuously be removed in the future.

After installing Configuration Manager client, adding applications and creating new deployment (that didn’t require the install – so we could control the time of installation) for our device – the above registry keys didn’t change. Once we initiated the deployment and installed the App-V package – the registry keys switched to the below;

Interesting part is that the old application is still there and will still start (as opposed to using the integration with Configuration Manager 2007 – where it would not start). What was rather surprising though – is that even though all three applications are started, the one not distributed via Configuration Manager 2012 will never say that it is In Use.