6.4.1 App Volumes

App Volumes allows for the lifecycle management and delivery of applications to end-users in an enterprise tenant environment. This allows cloud Tenant Administrators to manage, deliver, upgrade and maintain applications throughout an applications lifecycle. Application delivery is performed near real time, which is also referred to as Just-in-Time (JIT) delivery.

$C:\Users\ray\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCacheContent.Word\App Volumes.png$

As illustrated, applications can be pre-installed inside one or more AppStacks. Each AppStack is a read-only virtual disk (VMDK), that can be assigned to multiple virtual machines (RDSH or a VDI desktop). In addition, a writable AppStack otherwise known as a writable volume, can be delivered to individual users using 1:1 mappings to allow user-installed applications and customization.

Component	Description
App Volumes Manager	Provides a single-tenant dashboard console for user assignments and configuration. The App Volumes Manager is also responsible for agent monitoring and brokering.
App Volumes Agent	The agent redirects file system and registry read operations to the AppStack, in addition to sending changes to a writable volume (if configured). The agent reports its current status to the App Volumes Manager.
AppStack	An AppStack is a read-only volume containing pre-installed data and applications. A single AppStack can be mounted to one or more virtual machines.
Writable Volume	A writable volume is a virtual disk assigned to a single user virtual machine, allowing the user to install their own applications and capture application settings in the user profile.
Provisioning Virtual Machine	This is a clean Windows virtual machine, installed with the App Volumes Agent, and is used to capture the installation or update of applications to an AppStack.
Policy file (snapvol.cfg)	The policy file (snapvol.cfg) resides on the root folder of each AppStack and writable volume, and allows for the exclusion of file and registry locations. This is created by default, but can be customized.