Lately I’ve been working on a Horizon (View) design which includes the use of Writeable App Volumes. If you are unsure of Writeable App Volumes are, you can read more here: http://blogs.vmware.com/consulting/2014/12/app-volumes-appstacks-vs-writable-volumes.html

I wanted to share a really cool tip that my colleague Dale Carter shared with me, which can help increase the availability of App Volumes (AppVol Mgrs) within your environment when using multiple App Volume Managers (AppVol Mgrs).

In my design [as always] I have endeavored to increase the overall availability of the various components. To achieve this with App Volumes I’ve added an additional AppVol Mgr which shares the same SQL Database as the primary AppVol Mgr. In front of both AppVol Mgrs I have placed redundant F5 BIG-IP Load-Balancers which will be used to evenly distribute the load between theAppVol Mgrs and redirect connections should one AppVol Mgr become unavailable. (See Below)

Although the F5 BIG-IP’s greatly increase the availability of my AppVol Mgrs there is still the small chance that F5 Cluster may fail. This would result in the App Volume Agent’s inside the virtual desktops being unable to communicate with the App Vol Mgrs. This is where Dales little tip comes in.

Within the Golden Master images of the virtual desktops, we can edit the Registry to add additional AppVol Mgr addresses. Within the Registry browse to: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\svservice\parameters 

Manager1 is the default AppVol Mgr URL which was entered during the Agent installation process. The default URL in my example is the vIP on the F5 BIG-IP Load-Balancers. Manager2 and Manager3 are addresses I manually added. These are the URL’s of the App Volume Managers. So if for whatever reason we lost the F5’s, the Agent’s would then attempt to access the App Vol Mgrs directly. (See Below)

For other great App Volume information, visit Dale Carters website here: http://vdelboysview.com/