Hi,

I am planning a migration from CM07 to CM12.

There are hundreds of App-V packes to migrate.

The App-v packages within the CM07 environment have the "source directory" on the local CM07 server referenced with a UNC path. This of course is not the original source with manifest used to first import the package into CM07. It is the copy that CM07 created and uses.

As part of the migration I would like to move the package source to a seperate NAS.

When using the CM12 migration wizard the app-v packages successfully migrate however the new CM12 App-v application has an "App-V manifest location" within the deployment type still referencing the location on the CM07 server.

I have tred using a VB script to change the application source before migration. This did change the source when going into the app-v package properties. It then immediately updated the package source version and tried to re-deploy to DP's. I could live with this however it did not work. The distmgr log Failed to create the virtual app store for the package. It appears that APP-V packages create a package specific folder in SMSPKGx$\VirtualAppStreaming. This is required for streaming App-V packages. The only way I found to get around this problem was to manually go into the package properties then browse to and re-select the original xml manifest file. After doing this the package updated and was successfully re-deployed. Therefore this approach means manually updating all packages assuming I can find the original source. Not really an option due to the volume of packages.

The other approach is to change the source location after migration. I tried this using set-cmdeployment type in powershell. Although this did not error it did not change the package. e.g.

set-cmdeployment type -ApplicationName "name" -DeploymentTypeNAme "name" -AppVInstaller -ContentLocation \\server\share\folder

I did discover that in CM12 I could manually run the "Update Content" wizard for each package and specify the new location. Again this is not practical due to the number of packages.

So in summary, can anyone tell me how to change the package source for app-v packages as part of the process for migrating from CM07 to CM12

Thanks

• Moved by Torsten [MVP]MVP Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:03 AM moved to SDK subforum

Hi,

I managed to find a solution to this myself thanks to a blog by Andrew Graig :- http://andrewdcraig.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/configmgr-2012-change-application-source-path/

The solution involves changing the application source after migration to CM12 which is probably better as it reduces risk and change in the CM07 environment.

The blog explains that unlike CM07, in CM12 the application data is stored in XML format in WMI & SQL.
The powershell script leverages the DLLs provided with the admin console to connect to the instance, de-serialize the XML data, edit the information, serializes it then injects it back into the WMI object.

I successfully completed the following tests:

1. Migrated an App-V application and a package from CM07 to CM12
2. Used a powershell script developed from the blog referenced above in CM12 to update the App-V application so it pointed to a new source location
3. Used the set-cmpackage cmdlet to change the source on the migrated package
4. Added new files to the new source locations as well as the copied original source
5. Deployed to all CM12 DPs
6. Advertised and installed on a client
7. Tested apps on client
8. Checked CCM cache on client to ensure the new files existed therefore the new content source location was used

I made a few observations during the testing:

  The migrated app-v package became a CM12 application
  The migrated package became a CM12 package
  The package retained the original package ID and the application had a new package ID
  After migration the files from the app-v application went straight into the content store on the CAS but only a reference to the package did.
             ( This is a network overhead that should be considered during migration )
 

I hope this helps someone else :)

• Marked as answer by JimboUK Thursday, November 14, 2013 9:07 AM

Hi,

Thank you for your sharing.

Best Regards,

Joyce Li