Wednesday 29 September 2010

Installation Manager for XenApp 6 as a Published Application

From XenApp 5, Installation Manager is a nice name for what is in fact a package of MMC add-ins, powershell scripts and the Windows Task Manager.  The old Installation Manager from Presentation Server has basically been removed (let’s be honest, it wasn’t that great) and replaced with lots of standard Windows functionality.

Though everything is streamed, right, so you don’t need it anymore. Right?  Well, just in case…

This is how to install IM on XenApp 6 and allow the management interface as a Published Application:

  • Download Installation Manager for Windows Server 2008 R2 from My Citrix and extract
  • On all the servers to receive deployments, install IMUtilities-x64.msi
  • Set up a network share that IM can use as a cache
  • On the server that will host the admin tools, install IMAdmin-x64.msi.  There is a 32-bit version as well, but if this is on a 2008 R2 server, you need the 64-bit one.
  • Search in vain through the Start Menu for a link to it.  There isn’t one.
  • Start, Run, MMC
  • Click File > Add/Remove Snap-In
  • Find Installation Manager and click “Add”
  • You will get prompted for your network location you created earlier

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  • Click OK and OK to finish adding the snap-in – you should return to the MMC, now with the Installation Manager appearing on the left hand side, with the file server location you specified at the end of it.
  • Click File > Options to finish the configuration. 
  • Click Change Icon if you want to give it a more jazzy icon than the standard MMC one.  Click Browse and find an ico file – or load C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll which has loads in it.  I went for a nice floppy disk icon from here!

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  • Change the console mode from Author – “User mode – Full Access” should do.

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  • Save it to the local drive of the Citrix server and log off.
  • Open the XenApp Delivery Services Console
  • Right click Application, select Publish Application
  • Enter Installation Manager as the Display Name.
  • Click Next and Next to confirm as an Installed Application, accessed from a server.
  • You actually run mmc.exe with the name of the MSC file you just created as an argument.  So, if you saved it as c:\installationmanager.msc, your command would be
    %SystemRoot%\system32\mmc.exe c:\installationmanager.msc

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  • Click next, add the icon to your admin users and click next again.
  • Click Change Icon again to find a nice icon again if you want to for your published application.  Or pick a default one.  It depends how much you like icons. Personally I am not a big fan of half the management apps on the farm having the standard MMC icon, but maybe I think about it too much. 
  • Click next and finish to save the icon.
  • I would then edit its properties again and click the Limits tab.  Set it to only allow one instance per user – a second launch will not work as you already have that MSC file open.

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  • Refresh the application list on your client PC and you should see your new Installation Manager icon.

installationmanager

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am getting following error. Installation manager

Failed to assign read permissions of computer {0} to the path {1}. Ensure the path and computer name are correct, and that you have sufficient access rights to the path.

Anonymous said...

Please provide the Installation Manager for Windows Server 2008 R2 download URL.
I can`t find it at all.

Anonymous said...

For those who are trying to find this as it took me awhile. go to you my citrix > downloads
then go to the xenapp 6 Enterprise Edition, on the next page one of the available downloads is the Installation Manager.

Anonymous said...

Same here! "Failed to assign read permissions of computer {0} to the path {1}. Ensure the path and computer name are correct, and that you have sufficient access rights to the path."

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