Integrating VMware Dynamic Environment Manager with Microsoft App-V

You can manage the profile information for App-V-enabled applications with VMware Dynamic Environment Manager.

You can decouple personal application settings from the App-V 4.x App-V delta files and from the App-V 5.x redirected storage locations.

With App-V 4.x, you do not control what is stored into the user delta .PKG files. With VMware Dynamic Environment Manager you can explicitly configure the settings to be restored and saved when an application starts and exits, which removes the need to use .PKG files.

Using App-V 5.x, all personalization changes are stored in redirected locations in the user profile. With VMware Dynamic Environment Manager you can restore and save the personalization when an application starts and closes, which removes the need to use redirected storage locations and provides roaming capabilities without depending on traditional roaming profiles.

When using VMware Dynamic Environment Manager with Microsoft App-V, you can migrate user application settings from an installed instance to a virtual instance. When moving from traditional installations, such as .MSI to App-V-enabled, sequenced applications, users lose their personal application settings because the settings are stored in the native location of their Windows user profile. If you are using VMware Dynamic Environment Manager in this situation, you can migrate the settings you specify to the App-V-enabled applications. You can also run Windows XP with .MSI installations and migrate to Windows 7 with App-V-enabled applications.

You can also enable VMware ThinApp 5.2 support. When you are using ThinApp, only the packages created using ThinApp 5.2 can be used with DirectFlex. The configured DirectFlex executable path must be the virtual executable, not the ThinApp entry point.

Using a single, transparent approach to manage all user and application settings is efficient in situations where you use different deployment solutions and users work on different Windows platforms, for example, when users are connecting to remote desktops on terminal servers or VDI and are also working on traditional desktops. With VMware Dynamic Environment Manager, you can also manage user settings for both virtual and installed applications in the same way.

You can migrate user application settings from App-V 4.x to App-V 5.x. When migrating from App-V 4.x to App-V 5.x, only the application sequence is migrated and users lose their personal application settings. With VMware Dynamic Environment Manager, you can migrate the personalization from App-V 4.x to App-V 5.x. You can also roam personalization back and forth between App-V 4.x and App-V 5.x applications.

When managing user settings for App-V-enabled applications, it is necessary to restore and save these settings at application start and exit, as registry and file information does not apply for the virtual environment these applications run in.