A/D assign or Direct via App Stack Manager ?

[Douglas42Adams]

HI ,

Just curious on how everyone is assigning their App Stacks .  I see pro's and con's both ways.

Right now we have One A/D Group assigned to each App Stack and place users in that A/D group .

Only thing we don't like is - there doesn't seem a way via Group Assigning to Immediately give the user the app w/ out a reboot.

Whereas assigning the app stack directly to a User and not a group would allow that.

We are leaning towards Individual assigns via App Stack.. however run into questions on upgrades of App stacks .

Let's say your updating Chrome.. you have 1000 users assigned to 'old Chrome .

You click UPDATE on the 'old' chrome.. hop on an install machine and update it .

Now App Volumes just created a whole new App Stack called 'new' Chrome.  However NO user assigns followed to the 'new' chrome. ( i Get it.. one needs to test it..etc before giving it to everyone )

Assuming we are assigning each app directly to users.. How to I transfer the 1000 people from 'old' chrome to 'new' chrome ?

Is direct assign to users not feasible and we're stuck using A/D group assigning ?

thanks !

[sjesse]

There is an instant methods... don't use it

Assign an AppStack to a User

Option	Description
Attach AppStack on next login or reboot	The AppStack is attached when the user logs in or reboots the machine.
Attach AppStack immediately	The volume is attached instantly to all computers on which the selected users are logged in. If you are assigning the AppStack to a group or organizational unit, all users or computers in that group get the attachments immediately.

its a nice trick but I've seen problems with it. To "update chrome" just update the appstack, which creates a seperate appstack, connect that you provisioning machine to the update and finish the appstack. Then once that is complete unassign the current appstack on the next logout or reboot, and assign the new one on the next login or reboot.

This way updates are applied when the user logs out or the computer restarts. It would be the same no matter the assignment. The immediate option is "immediate, which will break existing user sessions, I wish they would remove that option.

[sjesse]

I'd really suggest against single application  appstacks, there are limits. In general I think most people get do around 5-7 per user, but the technical limit I think is 15. We group our applicaitons in logical groups for the users using our desktops, so they get the applications they need. Things like chrome are in general in a common appstack that request them to be only updated once, some people I think put these things directly in the parent image since its something a large amount of people would use.

[da2125]

We only Assign AppStacks directly to Domain Local Groups (DLG) from within the AV Console,

We then add users to a corresponding Global Group (GG) in AD then add the GG to the DLG.

Ex: Assign Firefox AppStack to FIREFOX_DLG from within AV Console

Add users to FIREFOX_GG

Add FIREFOX_GG to FIREFOX_DLG within AD

We also create FIREFOX_DLG_UAT & FIREFOX_GG_UAT for testing prior to moving the AppStack to Production

Keep N-1 version on console in case something is missed in testing allowing you to revert back to previous version

[Douglas42Adams]

Thanks Everyone.

So it sounds like there is no way from Inside the AppVolumes manager to migrate users from one AppStack to another.

e.g. you update chrome and it creates a new app stack.. and you want to move all users from the old one to the new one VIA the appvolume manager... assuming we are using Single user assigns inside of the appvol manager.

Sounds like Active Directory groups probably are best ?

thx .

[sjesse]

So it sounds like there is no way from Inside the AppVolumes manager to migrate users from one AppStack to another.

This is done my unassigning the old one and assigning a new one.