Update an App Volumes Application

To update an existing application which has been captured, use the /source parameter in the appcapture.exe start command. The command-line capture program creates a copy of the existing package's disk (.vhd format) and updates the disk.

Prerequisites

• Ensure that you perform this task on a clean virtual machine.

• Ensure that the User Account Control (UAC) in Windows is deactivated.
  To deactivate UAC, see Microsoft Windows documentation.

• You must run the command-line capture program as administrator.

• Ensure that the command-line capture program utility is installed at C:\Program Files\Omnissa\AppVolumes\Agent.

• Ensure that you have the path of the existing application package (.vhd).

  This path is used as the source when starting the capture session. For more information about starting a capture session, see Capture an App Volumes Application.

• Ensure that you have downloaded the installer of the application that needs to be updated.

• Ensure that you are aware of the command line arguments that can be used with the appcapture.exe command.

  For more information about the commands and parameters, see Windows Command-Line Arguments for the App Volumes Application Capture Command-Line Program. Alternately, you can use appcapture.exe help on the command line.

Procedure

1. Take a snapshot of your virtual machine.

   You can revert to the snapshot after the capture session.

2. Open a command line window.

3. Update the existing application package from the location where the command-line capture program is installed by using the following command:
   
   appcapture.exe start /name <package_name> /source <filepath> /noreboot

   • package_name - name of the application package that is updated.

     Important: package_name must be different from the name provided during the application's initial capture session.

   • filepath - path of the .vhd package generated during the initial capture session

   • Using the /noreboot parameter is optional. When used, the agent machine does not reboot at the time of finalizing the capture.

4. Install the application updates.

   1. If your application install requires a virtual machine reboot, perform the reboot or wait for the reboot to finish.

      The command-line capture program session automatically restarts.

5. Finish the capture session using the following command: appcapture.exe finalize.

   Machine reboots and the command-line capture program session automatically restarts. If the /noreboot parameter is used, then the machine does not reboot, and the capture process completes.

   This completes the update process and the updated .vhd application package is generated at C:\ProgramData\Omnissa\AppVolumes\Packages by default. Additionally, the following files are also generated at the same location as the captured package: package_name.report.html and package_name.report.json.

   package_name.report.html is the package report that gets generated for the captured application. For more information about the package report, see the About the App Volumes Application Package Report section in Capture an App Volumes Application.

6. Revert to the virtual machine's snapshot taken before you started the capture session.

What to do next

• If you have generated the VMDK format, then to import the *_workstation.vmdk package to App Volumes Manager, place the .vmdk and .json files on the App Volumes Manager server at <installation_directory>\CloudVolumes\Manager\ppv\packages and upload these files to the datastore that you want from the Storage page in the admin UI.

  For more information about uploading these files, see Upload Templates.

• To import the .vhd application package to App Volumes Manager, copy the package (including the .json file) to a file share and follow the Import an Application to App Volumes procedure.

After the package is successfully imported to App Volumes Manager, you can assign the application and deliver the package to the end users.