| VMware App Volumes 2.14 | 29 MAY 2018 Check for additions and updates to these release notes. |
What's in the Release Notes
What's New
The release notes for VMware App Volumes 2.14 includes the following new features and enhancements.
- Roles and Privileges with Role-based Access Controls
Delegate the ability to create AppStacks, assign applications, and perform other end-user support and environmental monitoring tasks.
Use pre-packaged roles to grant Active Directory groups access to the App Volumes Manager console. The following roles are now available by default:- Administrator
- Administrator (Read Only)
- AppStacks Administrators
- Security Administrators
- Writables Administrators
In addition, you can create custom roles to grant a combination of specific privileges based on your security requirements.
- Writable Volumes on Shared Datastores
You can share Writable Volumes across vCenters using Shared Datastores and the users can access their Writable Volumes from multiple vCenters with a Shared Datastore. In larger deployments, end user persistence is no longer pinned to a specific vCenter. A user can use their Writable Volume in one session, log out and log in to a session on another vCenter and continue to use their volume.
- Move, Back Up, and Restore Writable Volumes
Manage your user's data more easily with App Volumes Manager. Use the new controls to move, back up, and restore Writable Volumes.
- Move Writable Volumes - Rebalance storage by moving user volumes from one datastore to another.
- Back Up and Restore - Make a copy of a Writable Volume to be kept outside of the system. If the volume is no longer needed in production, the admin can select to have the volume deleted from App Volumes manager after the copy. At a later time, the volume may be copied back to restore a user's previous state.
- Regular Backups - The administrator can now provide a datastore and indicate how often to make a full copy of all Writable Volumes in the system. If a user's volume has been attached after the time period has elapsed, a copy will automatically be made to the specified datastore.
- Support for Cached Exchange Mode and Windows Search Indexing
Microsoft Outlook and Windows Search indexes are now saved along with the Outlook OST file to the user's Writable Volume. If User Environment Manager (UEM) is configured to redirect the user's OST file, then Outlook will use that configuration.
- Improved Login Performance
When asynchronous mounting is enabled, the App Volumes Manager no longer waits for disks to be attached before responding to the agent. Login times are faster and App Volumes Manager will be able to handle more simultaneous login requests. There is also reduced load on Active Directory and vCenter. For less performant vCenter configurations, administrators can configure mount throttling to further reduce peak load on the vCenter server.
- Auto-enabling One-time Volume Deletion Protection
In previous releases of App Volumes, if the AVM_PROTECT_VOLUMES environment variable was not enabled, the App Volumes Manager required multiple operations per login to protect volumes from unintended deletion. When using vSphere 6.5 and above, the manager now automatically leverages the more efficient, one-time protection upon volume creation.
- Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel Alignment
Starting with App Volumes 2.14, Windows 10 versions 1709 and 1803 are supported. Every six months Microsoft plans to release a new version of Windows and App Volumes plans to align with Windows 10 Guest OS. See the Support FAQ for details.
- Extended Service Branch for Horizon
App Volumes 2.14 is an Extended Service Branch (ESB) release. See the VMware blog for more information.
Resolved Issues
- Deep Security Agent status is unknown or unreachable when attaching a Writable Volume.
- Unable to provision Instant Clones when AppStacks were assigned to a computer Organizational Unit (OU).
- Manager1 registry gets removed post-VM cloning processes resulting in failed AppStack attachments.
- No pop-up dialog observed if a Writable Volume failed to attach in VHD configuration.
- Failure to delete the Appstacks when the name contains high-ASCII characters.
- BSOD due to kernel stack overflow when attaching Writable Volumes.
- Windows Search does not work when an AppStack is attached without a Writable Volume.
- Template volumes were uploaded to datastore even without ESX credentials/ESX host selection.
Known Issues
- Users who have Writable Volumes created with the UIA+Profile template on Windows 10 1703 will encounter Start Menu issues after using the same volume on later versions of Windows.
- When using Microsoft Outlook Cached Exchange Mode with a UIA-only type Writable Volume and no profile persistence solution such as UEM or roaming profiles, a new .ost cache file will be created in the user’s volume upon each login.
- When creating custom administrator roles, granting view privilege to either AppStacks or applications will effectively grant view privileges to both functions.
- During a login storm, when a large number of users are logging into their desktops simultaneously, Writable Volumes may not get created for a few users and they may not be able to log in to a desktop.
Note: This issue does not occur if the users already have an existing Writable Volume.
Workaround: The users must must log in again or have an administrator pre-create the Writable Volume for the user. - A Writable Volume move or copy operation may fail when bulk operations are performed on a large number of volumes.
Workaround: Retry the move or copy operation.
Internationalization
App Volumes documentation is available in English.
