The following is a quick an easy example of creating an AppStack in App Volumes. App Vols is an awesome product thats straight forward to use. App Vols is available as a standalone SKU, a part of Horizon Enterprise and as part of the VMware Horizon Application Management Bundle. App Vols can be installed following this link. This example is for a single application - WinZip for simplicity. Its a good practice to have a reference VM that is used for provisioning AppStacks, have a pre capture snapshot running and revert the snapshot once the capture is complete. The app is removed after the capture but its still a good practice to revert the snapshot
Log in to your App Vols server via the webpage and go to volumes - Create AppStack
Give the AppStack a name, choose a path on the datastore to store the AppStack and choose the template it will use
Click Create and you will be prompted to wait for completion or perform in the background. In most case select wait for completion.
Once complete the new AppStack will be created on the datastore and will be listed within App Vols webpage. Select the AppStack and choose ‘Provision’
Now search for your reference VM, if its online and the App Vols service is running ok the VM will be listed as ‘Available’. Select the VM and choose to provision. Note any machine running the App Vol service that is online will be listed as available and can technically be used to capture an AppStack. The reference VM should mirror the config of your target machines as closely as possible, if using Linked Clones the reference VM could be a clone of the Gold Image.
Now connect to the console of the reference VM, a App Volumes box should now appear asking you to install the application. In the background the vmdk has been attached and a VSS mount point has been created in the guest, at this point all installation instructions are directed to the attached disk. Install the application as usual, copy any files to the C: that need capturing, create any required ODBC connections, install any required drivers - anything needed for the application to work. Feel free to reboot the guest as much as needed it wont effect the capture process
Note - an AppStack can include multiple application not just the one.
Once complete go back to the App Vols box and select ‘Yes’ to complete the process. It will prompt that the VM will reboot and will be complete once the reboot is finished
After the reboot the AppStack will be available in App Vols to assign