I’m new to App-V, how do I get started?

10With Microsoft now including App-V directly inside the operating system for Windows 10 Enterprise and Education SKU desktop customers, we need a way to help people get started with App-V today.  While there is a wealth of detail information available online from the community some of it is outdated and most is too detailed for someone starting out. This five part blog covers the basics on how to get started and gives you links for more resources when you are ready to dig in.

Introduction:

If you are reading this, then you have taken the first correct step already. My name is Tim Mangan and the TMurgent Technologies website offers a lot of resources to help you. There is also a great App-V technical community filled with people who like to help others; so you’ll also want to check out some of those sites and people.  I’ll provide a lot of links to those resources in this post that you will want to keep on hand.

With Microsoft broadening the set of companies with access to App-V by including it directly in the Windows 10 Enterprise 1607 build, and in Server 2016 when that ships, we have a new wave of companies coming to App-V so I have built an up-to-date series of articles that I will be releasing this week to help you understand the basics, and get you started.

Now I’ll be honest. I give away a lot of information and tools for free on my site. My hope is that you’ll succeed with App-V enough that you want to dig deeper. Which could mean wanting to attend one of our training classes or bring us on-site for a quick-start program. But you can think about that later.

I suggest that you start by reading this set of five “getting started” articles covering the following:

  1. “I’m new to App-V so how do I get started?” (This article)
  2. What is App-V and how does it work?
  3. How do I get App-V?
  4. Getting Started with Sequencing
  5. To Manage or not to Manage

Resources:

Websites: The following websites are of tremendous value when working with App-V. The order of the listing is not indicative of the value.

www.tmurgent.com This is probably the best known site for App-V. Of interest here:

  • The Resources/Research, and Resources/White Papers sections provide access to research and white papers.
  • The Resources/Videos section has a number of videos helpful for App-V.
  • The Resources/Tools houses the famous App-V tools. Most of those tools are free. The tools area also contains lists of App-V versions, and VC-Runtime versions.
  • There is a forum on the site, but it is intended only for supporting the TMurgent tools and not for App-V related problems.
  • Tim Mangan’s primary blog is on the site and is a “must follow” blog.
technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/mdop/appv-v5/index This is the official location of administrator guide documentation, and release notes.
technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hh826068 This is the official location for other forms of documentation for App-V.
blogs.technet.microsoft.com/appv This is the official App-V Team blog. The content is infrequent and supplied by Microsoft support personnel.
blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualshell David Falkus’s blog.
blogs.technet.microsoft.com/gladiatormsft Steve Thomas is the Microsoft field engineer (not his technical title) with the most experience with App-V and his blog is on the “must follow” list.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/sgern Sebastian Gernert is in escalation support and typically posts about upcoming hotfixes before they are released. Often, this is the first we hear about issues. It is written in German, so google translate is your friend here.
https://www.applepie.se Nicke Kallen’s blog.
https://www.stealthpuppy.com Aaron Parker’s blog.
https://www.rorymon.com Rory Monaghan’s blog.
https://codylambert.info Cody Lambert’s blog.
theorypc.ca/blog/ Trentent Tye’s blog.
packageology.com/ Dan Gough”s blog.
Virtual Vibes/ Thamim Karim’s site.

Support Forums:

www.appvirtguru.com This is an independent support forum for many types of App Virtualization products. It has been around since 2003 (originally called SoftGridGuru.com) and maintained by a number of MVPs.

Microsoft Technet Forums for MDOP is Microsoft’s official forum site for App-V. Technically it covers all of MDOP but nearly all of the content is about App-V.

Twitter:

The App-V community heavily uses twitter to communicate and keep up-to-date. Most related tweets will include “App-V” or “#AppV, so setting up searches on these is helpful. If you prefer to follow individuals, the following people are good folks to follow:

@TimothyMangan Tim Mangan
@MadVirtualizer Steve Thomas
@Appvirtguru Auto-tweet of new/updated forum posts from AppVirtGuru.com
@znackattack Nicke Kallen
@packageologist Dan Gough
@ksaunamaki Kalle Saunamaki
@ThaminKarim Thamin Karim
@leodesk_IT Jurjen van Leeuwen
@stealthpuppy Aaron Parker
@kkaminsk Kevin Kaminski
@kirk_tn Falco Graffe
@RoryMon Rory Monaghan
@cody__lambert Cody Lambert
@TrententTye Trentent Tye
@ThamimKarim Thamim Karim
@Roel_Beijnes Roel Beijnes
@SimonDettling Simon Dettling
@Rodney_Medina Rodney Medina
@mentvanderplas Ment VanDerPlas

Summary

So how do you get started? Start by reading the entire series here! Links to additional articles in the series are at the top of this post.

By Tim Mangan

Tim is a Microsoft MVP, and a Citrix CTP Fellow. He is an expert in App-V and MSIX.