Configuring Existing App-V Sequences for the 4.6 Client Beta

I’ve seen a lot of buzz lately on the release of the App-V 4.6 Public Beta.  Of course, I downloaded the new 4.6 clients because the most exciting feature (to me) in it is support for 64-bit App-V clients.

The second most exciting feature (to me) is the support for packages sequenced with 4.5 to be played on 4.6 clients (even the x64 client!).  The problem I had this morning, though, was there are a ton of blogs touting this support, but no one bothered to publish how.  For instance, from The App-V Team Blog:

All your pre-4.6 packages are valid and can continue to be used on the 4.6 client – just modify the OSD file to include the OS values for the 32 and/or 64-bit platform as target, as appropriate.

So, it can be done, but how do I include support for Windows 7 x64 clients in the OSD?  Like this:

Your current OSD files have a section that includes something similar to the following:

<OS VALUE=”WinXP”/>
<OS VALUE=”Win7″/>

This indicates that the package is available for all Windows XP and Windows 7 clients (32-bit of course, because version 4.5 does not support 64-bit).  So, add the following to your OSD file under the last “OS VALUE” entry to enable support for Windows 7 x64:

<OS VALUE=”Win764″/>

And here’s a list of all the available target operating systems:

<OS VALUE=”Win2003TS”/>
<OS VALUE=”Win2003TS64″/>
<OS VALUE=”Win2008R2TS64″/>
<OS VALUE=”Win2008TS”/>
<OS VALUE=”Win2008TS64″/>
<OS VALUE=”Win7″/>
<OS VALUE=”Win764″/>
<OS VALUE=”WinVista”/>
<OS VALUE=”WinVista64″/>
<OS VALUE=”WinXP”/>
<OS VALUE=”WinXP64″/>

Best Practice: Cabling an EXP810 to a DS4700

We’ve been expanding our storage capacity here at work in the recent weeks.  As such, cabling all of these IBM DS4700s and their associated EXP810s (full of glorious fiber channel and SATA drives) became a task.

The question has always been how best to cable the fiber that keeps all this stuff working properly.  You see, each DS4700 (the controlling enclosure) has two fiber controllers, each with two HBAs for connecting the EXP810 expansion enclosures.  Well, we came across an IBM document that details exactly how they recommend cabling – and here it is.  And here is the recommendation for a DS4700 with its maximum number (six) of expansion EXP810s (click for a larger view):

ds4700exp810cable