VMware App Volumes 4, version 2206 Release Notes

VMware App Volumes 2206 | 19 JUL 2022 | Build 4.7.0.64 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New

• VMware Cloud: vCenter on VMware Cloud on AWS option is removed from the App Volumes Manager’s vCenter configuration.  The option included legacy compatibility checks that were unnecessary for current versions of VMware Cloud on AWS.

• Writable Volumes migration support is added to App Volumes 4, version 2206 with the App Volumes Migration Utility Fling 2.0.

  To download the fling, go to the App Volumes Migration Utility page.

• App Volumes Manager API includes a new requested_mb value for developers automating the expansion of Writable Volumes and need to see if the volume is pending a user login to expand the partition in the guest.

  For more information about this update, see Using VMware App Volumes API, version 2206 at VMware {code}.

• Package Symmetry Assurance

  This new option on the instance relationship configuration allows you to toggle on or off based on your global deployment needs.  Your source instance checks to see that your packages are indeed available for target instances with the option turned on.

• Added support for Microsoft Azure SQL Database (PaaS)

• Added vSAN Stretched Cluster Support

• Apps On Demand: File Type Associations

  Now applications can be delivered on demand by clicking on a document, using a context menu, or launching by registered App Paths. Users can even change their default associations.  This is because packages that are updated or created with App Volumes 4, version 2206 contain additional metadata including icons and registry information designed to bring a full-fidelity experience to your end users even before the applications are delivered.

  For more information about file type associations, see Understanding Package Delivery Modes in App Volumes section in the VMware App Volumes 4, version 2206 Administration Guide at VMware Docs.

Internationalization

App Volumes content is available only in English.

Resolved Issues

• Connection times out due to an unreachable domain controller leading to multiple ODBC errors. As a result, volume attachment failures occur and the following error message NTLM Authentication Invalid is seen in the System Messages tab of the App Volumes Manager admin UI. [2505263]

• Due to issues such as undefined method `write' for nil:NilClass or AcceptSecurityContext error, data 57, volume attachment failures occur and the following error message NTLM Authentication Invalid is seen in the System Messages tab of the App Volumes Manager admin UI. [2744031, 2963211]

• Even after unassigning an application that is synchronized, deleted assignments might remain in the Synchronization View (Assignments table) on the Application details page and the Assignments page in the App Volumes Admin UI. However, these assignments which are in the Disabled status do not accurately display the state of assignments on the target instance. This issue occurs only if application synchronization fails while synchronizing the assignments of the application. For more information about the Synchronization view, see VMware App Volumes Administration Guide on VMware Docs. [2942256]

• Package name displayed in the Activity Log tab of the App Volumes Manager admin UI changes to the GUID of the package after the package is deleted. Identifying which package is deleted based on the GUID is difficult. [2938008]

• On the Entity (Users/Computers/Groups/OrgUnit) details pages, assignments that are synchronized from a source instance can be unassigned from the target instance. However, removing these assignments results in a difference in the assignments between the source and target instances. Assignment resolution on the target instance can result in an unexpected set of attached applications or packages. [2945877]

• In the Synchronization View, applying any filter does not display the Disabled assignments and filtering with the Status field does not return any results (Enabled or Disabled assignments). Hence, assignments in the Disabled status are not displayed in the Synchronization view. As a result, managing the synchronization progress of the assignments is difficult when there are a large number of Disabled assignments. [2946144]

• Packages fail to delete and remain in the Pending Delete status in the source App Volumes instance when the deletion operation takes a longer time to complete due to other higher priority background jobs in the source or target App Volumes instance. [3026012]

• Application installers that create data at a sub-path of HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider registry key might impact application behavior and the application might not work as expected. The symptoms vary and are dependent on the application. A common symptom is that when the application is captured, the modified registry data at the sub-path of HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider is created on the base volume instead of in the application package. As a result, the application does not behave as expected. For example: In one of the scenarios, the single sign on functionality did not work for an application. [2871141]

• App Volumes is unable to capture the GroupWise Messenger application. The capture fails due to an internal error in App Volumes. This failure is presented as a message displayed immediately by the GroupWise installer: Class not registered. [2924188]

• An MSIX application delivered as an on-demand package to an end user fails to launch in the first attempt. [2947214]

• Explorer.exe opens instead of the actual MSIX application for an MSIX package when the app run command is used in the target path of the application’s simulated shortcut. [2947387]

• After upgrading to VMware App Volumes 4, version 2203 or VMware App Volumes 4, version 2111, SVservice fails to run scripts that are placed in %SVAgent%\Config\Default\System and %SVAgent%\Config\Custom\System. [2969412]

Known Issues

• If a VMDK of an application package contains a square bracket, '[', the package does not get imported to App Volumes. As a result, the package is not listed in the Inventory tab of the App Volumes Manager admin UI. [3034059]

  Workaround: Rename the VMDK and import the package again.

• Applications packaged on Windows 11 are shown as packaged with Windows 10 and applications packaged on Windows server 2019 and Windows server 2022 are shown as packaged with Windows server 2016 in App Volumes Manager admin UI. [AVM-29123]

• When SSL verification for an App Volumes target instance happens through a cacert.pem file present in the config directory where App Volumes Manager is installed, the following error is displayed: Error while retrieving the certificate. Unable to find the certificate for the target manager instance. After a while, the error is not visible. [AVM-31353]

  NOTE: This is a UI display issue and causes no functional impact.

• If it is not possible to determine the Active Directory site from an IP address or subnet, a default Active Directory site is not set. This might result in App Volumes Manager contacting Domain Controllers out of its (App Volumes Manager's) Active Directory site. [AVM-28680]

• When a database failover occurs, App Volumes Manager displays a maintenance page with the appropriate database error message. The App Volumes service fails to recover and continues displaying the maintenance page even after the database is back online from the failover. [2691524]

  Workaround: When the database is back online after the failover, restart the App Volumes Manager service. Restarting the service removes the maintenance page.

• Applications packaged on Windows 11 are shown as packaged with Windows 10 in App Volumes Manager. [2841689]

• App Volumes Manager installation fails with the following error: Unable to install App Volumes Manager with region language (Control Panel setting) except English when the language setting on the virtual machine is Arabic. [2884143]

  Workaround:Change the language to English and then install App Volumes Manager.

• Certain applications with a large number of icons related to file type associations might increase login duration due to the time taken to transfer the icon content to the virtual machine. [2989141]

  Workaround: Turn off the file type associations feature (CaptureFTA) on the machine that is used to package these applications. For more information about the CaptureFTA parameter, see the Parameters for Configuring svservice section in the VMware App Volumes 4, version 2206 Administration Guide.

• In Windows 11 configurations that include a UIA+profile Writable Volume, printers deleted via the Windows GUI might reappear in subsequent sessions. [3029793]

  Workaround:

  To remove a printer which reappears in subsequent sessions, perform the following:

  1. To list all the printers, use the Get-Printer PowerShell command.

  2. Find the printer which must be removed.

  3. Delete the printer using the Remove-Printer PowerShell command.

• Shortcut data does not get captured in the metadata.json file for shortcuts with path length more than 260 characters. As a result, application shortcut does not appear when the application is delivered on-demand. [3038371]

• Packaging of AutoCAD Electrical 2022 application results in Canceled status in App Volumes Manager. In App Volumes agent too, the same status is seen instead of the Packaging successful! message. svcapture logs have the following error: ERROR: failed to map module for icon retrieval: <file path> Error: 0xc1. [2985555]

  Workaround:For guidance, contact VMware Global Support Service.

• For users with Writable Volumes, Seadrive desktop client fails to open files in Seadrive online storage with the following error: An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. If you continue to receive this error, you can use the error code to search for help with this problem. Error 0x80070185: The cloud operation was unsuccessful. [3001176]

• In addition to the correctly functioning Google Chrome icon, a blank, shortcut icon is displayed to the end user when the Google Chrome application package is delivered on demand and the user is assigned a Writable Volume. The shortcut icon does not work and on clicking the icon, the following message is displayed: The item 'chrome.exe' that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved, so this shortcut will no longer work properly. Do you want to delete this shortcut? However, users can continue using the correctly functioning icon. [2993027]

• An OS junction point from a native folder that belongs to a banned list to a non-virtualized folder (such as %APPDATA% in configurations that do no use UIA+Profile Writable Volume or a Profile-only Writable Volume) does not work properly. Files written to the junction source do not appear in the junction target. [AVA-20343]

• RunAsUser utility fails with No Active User Sessions error message when executed from a custom script run in the system context (for example: OnPreDisableApp). This issue is present for system scripts from App Volumes 4, version 2111 and later. [2998865]

  Workaround: Instead of the RunAsUser utility, use the corresponding "...AsUser.bat" script in the user context (for example: OnPreDisableAppAsUser.bat).

• A black screen error occurs when the Box Drive application is assigned to a computer and packaged and delivered to a user in a built-in administrator or a built-in domain administrator’s role. When the application is delivered to a user in any other role, application launch fails when using the shortcut and the following error is seen: This action is not allowed for application ‘Box’. Please contact your administrator. [2953421]

  Workaround: Assign Box Drive to a User entity instead of the Computer. In scenarios when an application is assigned to a computer and the black screen error does not occur, for a successful application launch, when accessing the application for the first time at every login, user must navigate to C:\Program Files\Box\Box\Box.exe and open the application. Subsequently, application shortcut can be used to launch the application successfully.

• An OS junction point from a native folder that belongs to a banned list to a non-virtualized folder (such as %APPDATA% in configurations that do no use UIA+Profile Writable Volume or a Profile-only Writable Volume) does not work properly. Files written to the junction source do not appear in the junction target. [2991078]

• When Microsoft Office applications are delivered as on-demand, the application icons displayed in the New menu of the Windows Explorer context menu are of different versions before and after package delivery to the end user. However, this issue does not affect the package delivery. [2993048]

• On Windows 10 1607 and Windows Server 2016, folders on App Volumes are occasionally changed to zero-length files.  Sometimes this makes the applications in these folders unavailable.  Other times, the applications in these folders are still accessible. [2937254]

• When a remote printer is defined on a UIA+Profile Writable Volume and the printer is attached to its print server through a USB interface, the printer definition on the Writable Volume might get deleted on the next non-persistent logon. [2845852]

  Workaround:

  On the system volume, add the following two scripts to %SVAgent%\Config\Custom\uia_plus_profile:

  OnPreLoadApp.bat: sc config spooler start= disabled net stop spooler OnPostEnableApp.bat: sc config spooler start= auto net start spooler

  If you already have the same script names on the Writable Volume, add the spooler commands to the scripts.

  When a script is present on a Writable Volume and in the system volume at %SVAgent%\Config\Custom\uia_plus_profile, App Volumes agent runs the script present on the Writable Volume and ignores the script on the system volume. To ensure that the App Volumes agent runs both scripts, you can add the following to the script on the Writable Volume:

  if exist "%SVAgent%\Config\Custom\uia_plus_profile\%~nx0"
  ("%SVAgent%\Config\Custom\uia_plus_profile\%~nx0")

• When many users are logging into their desktops simultaneously, Writable Volumes might not get created for a few users and they might not be able to log into a desktop. This issue does not occur if the users already have an existing Writable Volume [2115623]

  Workaround: The users must log in again or have an administrator pre-create the Writable Volume for the user.

• A Writable Volume move or copy operation might fail when bulk operations are performed on many volumes. [2115593]

  Workaround: Retry the move or copy operation.

• App-V packages do not load when App Volumes agent is used either with a UIA+profile or Profile-only Writable Volume. [2434176]

• Sometimes, the applications that are packaged using App Volumes versions older than 2.18.2 have many redundant firewall rules. These rules can impact the end-user login time on agent computers where the application package is deployed. This issue is fixed in App Volumes 2.18.2 and later. [2624048]

  Workaround: If you are migrating an application package created in an App Volumes version earlier than 2.18.2 with such an issue, repackage the application after migrating to the target version.

• When a Writable Volume and FSLogix Office Container are deployed together in a VDI, the FSLogix Office Container VHD is not created on an SMB file share. This issue occurs only when the Cloud Cache feature is enabled. [2791414]

  Workaround: Disable the Cloud Cache feature of FSLogix Office Container.