VMware App Volumes 4, version 2209 Release Notes

VMware App Volumes 4, version 2209 | 20 OCT 2022 | Build 4.8.0.33 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

VMware App Volumes is a real-time application delivery system that enterprises can use to dynamically deliver and manage applications.

VMware App Volumes 4, version 2209, Release Notes lists New Features, Resolved Issues, and Known Issues for this release.

What's New

• vSphere 8 Support

• vSAN 8 Support

• Packages can now be imported directly as "tested" if the package JSON is marked accordingly by an external testing system.

• App Volumes agent retries a computer startup during login if App Volumes Manager is unable to successfully bring the agent computer online at boot time.

• Writable Volumes snapvol.cfg can now be defined in the base image using the Config\Custom folder.

  For more information about this new update, see the Default and Custom Configuration Files section in the VMware App Volumes 4, 2209, Administration Guide at VMware Docs.

Resolved Issues

The number included after each resolved issue refers to the issue logged in the VMware internal issue tracking system.

• 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]

• The default size of the connection cache was not optimal when more than 15 vCenter Servers were registered, more connections than necessary might have been established. This issue is now resolved. [3017628]

• Troubleshooting issues is difficult when App Volumes Manager server processes occasionally stop logging messages for each web request that typically beings with Started GET|POST /url?query and ends with Completed 200 OK in XXXms. [3017640]

• App Volumes Manager must contact all registered VMware vCenter Servers to discover a virtual machine and link it to the Windows guest session. When there are many vCenter Servers, this results in a lot of traffic and boot storms might take longer time to end. This issue is now resolved. [3019139]

• 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]

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

• 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. [2953421]

• 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]

• 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]

• 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]

• 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]

• Chrome update often fails in computers that have both App Volumes agent and Symantec Endpoint Protection installed. [3023029]

Known Issues

The number included after each known issue refers to the issue logged in the VMware internal issue tracking system.

• 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]

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Certain applications with many icons related to file type associations might increase the 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.

• Applications cannot write large string values (several hundred thousand characters) to the registry. [3034063]

• 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]

• When the Box Drive application is assigned to a computer and any user logs into that computer, 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. [3002403]

  Workaround: Perform one of the following workarounds:

  • Assign Box Drive to a User entity instead of the Computer.

  • 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.

• 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: Deactivate the Cloud Cache feature of FSLogix Office Container.

• 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. [3006443]

• File Explorer is slow when processing files in folders that contain large numbers of files. [3029679]

• Towards the end of an in-app Chrome update, the user is prompted to relaunch Chrome to complete the update process. When natively installed, the current version of Chrome exits and the newer version opens immediately. With App Volumes, though, after the current version of Chrome exits, the newer version of Chrome opens after a delay of several minutes and there is no visible activity on the user computer until then. [3038483]

• 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.

• 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.

• ArcGIS and related applications, such as ArcMap, are slow in the presence of App Volumes, even when ArcGIS is natively installed. [3036343]

• 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")

• 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.

Documentation

VMware App Volumes Documentation

• For information about how to install, deploy, and upgrade VMware App Volumes, see VMware App Volumes 4 Installation Guide.

• For information about how to configure and use VMware App Volumes, see VMware App Volumes 4 Administration Guide.

VMware App Volumes documentation is available at VMware Docs.

Internationalization

App Volumes content is available only in English.

Support Contact Information

To receive support, access VMware Customer Connect.

Alternately, to file a Support Request in Customer Connect and via Cloud Services Portal, you can use the information presented in this KB article .