To use VMware Identity Manager to distribute and manage applications packaged with VMware® ThinApp®, you must have a ThinApp repository that contains the ThinApp packages, point to that repository, and sync the packages. After the sync process is finished, the ThinApp packages are available in your VMware Identity Manager catalog and you can entitle them to your VMware Identity Manager users and groups.
ThinApp provides application virtualization by decoupling an application from the underlying operating system and its libraries and framework and bundling the application into a single executable file called an application package. To be managed by VMware Identity Manager, these packages must be enabled with the appropriate options. For example, in the ThinApp Setup Capture wizard, you select the Manage with Workspace check box. For more information about ThinApp features and how to enable your applications for management by VMware Identity Manager, see the VMware ThinApp documentation.
Typically, you perform the steps to connect VMware Identity Manager to the repository and sync the packages as part of the overall setup and configuration of your VMware Identity Manager environment. The ThinApp repository must be a network share that is accessible to VMware Identity Manager using a Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path. VMware Identity Manager synchronizes with this network share regularly to obtain the ThinApp package metadata that VMware Identity Manager requires to distribute and manage the packages. See VMware Identity Manager Requirements for ThinApp Packages and the Network Share Repository.
The network share can be a Common Internet File System (CIFS) or a Distributed File System (DFS) share. The DFS share can be a single Server Message Block (SMB) file share or multiple SMB file shares organized as a distributed file system. CIFS and DFS shares running on NetApp storage systems are supported. DFS shares on Isilon storage systems are also supported.
