App Volumes 2.12.1

[JZizzamia]

App Volumes 2.12.1 should be released soon, has anyone heard updates this week ? I am hoping to upgrade to resolve PDF printer issues and AD sync issues.

Regards,

Jason

[jahegyi]

It's live and available for download.

[Lakshman]

2.12.1 Release notes:

http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/appvolumes/2.12/app-volumes-2121-release-notes.html

2.12.1 Download:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info?slug=desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_app_volumes/2_x

[JZizzamia]

I will be upgrading Thursday evening 10pm EST, from 2.12 to 2.12.1

Thanks for the response on this.

[JHT_Seattle]

So, 4 months from the 2.12 release (both of them), and nothing in resolved items about the major printer regression bug, except a note in Known Issues that says printing on Windows 10 might be an issue?  Forum chatter indicates so far that it's not fixed.

WTH, App Volumes?

[Ray_handels]

We're going to test it today and will keep you posted on progress. If anyone has any news on 2.12.1 please let us know.

[szilagyic]

Unfortunately, some issues are not addressed yet.  Like the one with Windows 10 where the printers go offline.  This one is still plaguing us.

We are also seeing other strange issues with Writable Volumes with Office 2016, none of those appear to be resolved.  I have posted our workarounds in our other posts on Office 2016, until VMware provides a built in fix.

The mention of a direct upgrade vs. a re-install is a plus, however.

[Ray_handels]

Looking at W7 with 2.12.1 the printer issue is indeed fixed althouhg I can't find definitive answers in the release notes. We have tested this and printers are being created correctly.

Only issue we see now (and this might just be the issue with others) is that if you ever logged on with your writable on a 2.12.0 machine without the printer pacth installed it seems as if the writable still removes some of the local printers. We could alter the snapvol.cfg to get this fixed or at least that's my feeling but to be honest it's just for 3 people so I don't really care that much.

[Lakshman]

Have you upgraded the existing writable volumes with the 2.12.1 template?

[Ray_handels]

Nopes. We've got over 1600 writables and we are testing with a user that has a 2.12 template and this seems to work quite well.

As long as it's just 3 people that hve the issue (me and my collegue being one of them) I dont mind.

If we start seeing other people having this issue we might just have a deeper look at it.

[jahegyi]

What is the official way of updating old app stacks to versions with the new templates? Typically what we have done is perform all upgrade on the AVM and agents, import templates to the same datastore as was previously used in AVM, then we open the app stack on our provisioning machine (with the updated agent) and capture it again.

However, I have had GSS tell me conflicting information. One person said this does everything we need and another said the only way to make sure everything is updated properly is to create a brand new app stack from scratch with the new template. They also told me that they have seen issues where importing the templates in AVM to the same datastore doesn't always work because the templates are "locked/in use."

As for our issues, the printer issue is not fixed on Windows 10 for us. Likewise, our logon times are still ridiculous.

[szilagyic]

Does anybody know if they fixed the issue with Adobe Flash plugin, and AppStacks?  I don't see anything in the release notes dealing with Flash but thought I would ask.  We have been dealing with this one for a long time, and we are about to pull those users with the issue back to a full clone desktop, or maybe even back to a physical until this is resolved.  It's very annoying.  Basically, anything that uses Flash, and also we've seen this happen too with Webex via the browser, can cause the PCoIP session to terminate (VM will crash), resulting in data loss and other things.

[jasonkyzer_vmwa]

What is the resolved issue about memory?

```

Fixed memory utilization issue in agent driver.

```

VMware App Volumes 2.12.1 Release Notes

[JHT_Seattle]

I had the issue with updating the templates when we updated to 2.12.  I ended up specifying a second datastore as the template store instead.

As for updating existing stacks, there is a way manually, but it's tedious and probably a bit risky.  So, yes, the only proper way to update a stack is to recreate it at this time.  I've seen one other note here in the forums, and I've seen it myself, that recreating stacks with the latest template *does* improve load time vs older template versions.  One of the more frustrating things to me is that nowhere in the existing stacks is anything to indicate what version of the template was used.

[JZizzamia]

The upgrade process is straightforward, just click next and let it run.

My custom SSL certificate was not replaced with a default self signed, so that was good.

So far it looks like when we attach one of our appstacks, the printer issue is still present. (windows 7 x64). We are thinking that this appstack needs to be manually updated to the 2.12.1 template version.

Does anyone know what the best approach to this would be?

The good news is that the upgrade fixed my database sync issues. I was seeing ASCII code errors and duplicate computer entries, along with some user objects that would not remove from the app vol manager database, even though I removed user from any assigned groups and appstacks/writables. Clean database now.

Thanks for all of your input so far.

Edit: for the flash issue mentioned above, I have not seen any issues with Flash on appstack either. We arent using flash throttling or any flash redirection either. We use chrome on an appstack. I may not have noticed this, but definitely havent seen my connection drop while using View admin console (which is flash).

[jahegyi]

I actually created a brand new app stack and used that and my printer issue was still present (Win 10 1607). I also have not seen the flash issues.

VMWare really needs to figure out an easy way to upgrade existing app stacks. Creating new ones from scratch is tedious enough as it is with us only having 6 in production. Some of the stacks have applications which have very manual installs. It's easily a full days work for us to recreate these.

[Lakshman]

jasonkyzer_vmware

An issue that was observed in earlier versions with the Agent svdriver memory utilization is fixed now in 2.12.1

[Lakshman]

JHT_Seattle

The template version can be seen in the App Volumes Manager UI by expanding an AppStack. You will see the agent and capture versions.

[Lakshman]

JZizzamia​

Good to hear about the clean database and custom SSL certificate being retained.

For the printer issue on Windows 7 x64, could you try creating a new AppStack manually with the 2.12.1 template and check if the issue is resolved please.

[SchwarzC]

szilagyic

do you have the Adobe Flash quality and Adobe Flash throttling option activated in the View Settings? - we have a very similar issue but right now we didn`t think about AppVolume or Flash, rather ESXi Problem or View itself - do you have a case open with VMware?

Best,

Clemens