To deploy the VMware Identity Manager Desktop application to multiple Windows systems and have the same configuration settings applied to all of those systems, you can implement a script that installs theVMware Identity Manager Desktop application using the command-line installation options.

Important: Error messages do not appear on screen when you deploy VMware Identity Manager Desktop silently. To check for errors during a silent installation, monitor the %TEMP% folder, checking for new vminst.XXXXXX.log files. The error messages for a failed silent installation appear in these files.

Typically, this deployment scenario is used for Windows systems that are View desktops. For a description of settings to use for non-persistent, also known as floating or stateless, View desktops.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that the Windows systems are running Windows operating systems that are supported for the version of the VMware Identity Manager Desktop application you are installing. See the VMware Identity Manager User Guide or the release notes.
  • Verify that the Windows systems have supported browsers installed.
  • If you want the ability to run a command to familiarize yourself with the available options before you create the deployment script, verify that you have a Windows system on which you can run that command. The command to list the options is only available on a Windows system.

Procedure

  1. Obtain the VMware Identity Manager Desktop installer's executable file and locate that executable file on the system from which you want to silently run the installer.
    One method for obtaining the executable file is to download it using the your VMware Identity Manager system's download page. If you have set up your VMware Identity Manager system to provide the Windows application installer from the download page, you can download the executable file by opening the download page's URL in a browser.
  2. Using the installer's command-line options, create a deployment script that fits the needs of your organization.
    Examples of scripts you can use are Active Directory group policy scripts, login scripts, VB scripts, batch files, SCCM, and so on.
    For example, if your VMware Identity Manager instance has a URL of https:// identitymanagerFQDN, you want to silently install the Windows client to Windows systems that you expect will be used off the domain, with the ThinApp deployment mode set to download mode, and have the VMware Identity Manager Desktop application sync with the server every 60 seconds, you would create a script that invokes the following command: 
    VMware-Identity-Manager-Desktop-n.n.n-nnnnnnn.exe /s 
/v /qn WORKSPACE_SERVER="https://identitymanagerFQDN" INSTALL_MODE=HTTP_DOWNLOAD POLLING_INTERVAL=60
    where you replace the n.n.n-nnnnnnn portion of the file name to match that of your downloaded file.
  3. Run the deployment script against the Windows systems.

Results

If the silent installation is successful, the VMware Identity Manager Desktop application is deployed to the Windows systems. Users logged in to those Windows systems can access their entitled assets from those systems.

Note: A user's entitled ThinApp package is streamed or downloaded and cached to the user's Windows system after the polling interval elapses. As a result, users might see the ThinApp package displayed when they log in to the VMware Identity Manager user portal. The ThinApp package does not start until the client syncs the application on the next polling interval.

What to do next

Verify that VMware Identity Manager Desktop is properly installed on the Windows systems by trying some of the typical user tasks.