Best practice for Ivanti EM 10.1 with VMWare Horizon 7 Instant Clones?

Check out the notes below and the attached snippets.  Hopefully this will assist you.  Also, if View is generating new computer names, your OU-based membership rules will not pick up these names, as Discovery runs on a scheduled basis, and won't have had time to run yet.  This means your devices will go into the Default deployment group, unless you use NETBIOS based membership rules.

Notes from the attached zip file:

When View recomposes it brings the machine up first in a minisetup/sysprep using the original machines name. This causes the machine to poll the Management Server and pull the source machines machine ID and group ID. When the machine reboots and comes up the next time with a new name it will still have the old machine ID and group ID. This will delay the start of the CCA until after the machine runs through the mini setup. To implement this fix, import the snipits into startup and shutdown. Before shutting down the VM, change the CCA service to manual. Shutdown the VM and proceed with the recompose.

I am having a similar experience, however, in my example I am using EM 8.6 SP1 with VM7 Instant Clones running Win 10 2016 LTSB.  The problem is that the AppSense User Virtualization Manager service is NOT running on my Instant Clone sessions.  So, even though the sessions are getting the right profile applied from EM (which I presume is because either the CCA or Watchdog service IS running) the policy does not apply because the Virtualization service is NOT running.

In the fix that is attached to this thread, you indicate to import the snipits into the startup and shutdown .  What does that mean?  which startup and shutdown?  The EM Policy?  if the EM policy, in my 8.6 EM the only action I have available to me in the Startup and Shutdown areas of the policy are Environment,  Or, are you talking about importing them directly into the master image, if so, how do you get an xml file as part of startup and shutdown? I am confused.

Aslo, the attached fix seems to be focused on the CCA service, which in my case is up and running.  I think my problem s with the User Virtualization Manager service.  any thoughts would be much appreciated.  Thanks

I have an open ticket with support:  Case# 01414335

Hi Scott. To avoid confusing matters I'd like to keep your issue within your support case for now. If we get a solution we can post it up here.

Thanks

Joe - (Support team)

Hi Scott.  Work with Joe.  He knows what he's doing.

The issue that Sander is having is related to the Deployment Agent (CCA).  That is indeed a completely different issue than what you're experiencing.  If the User Virtualization Service (EM service) isn't started, you won't get policy OR personalization.

Hi Scott,

Did you manage to get a fix for this? I am have the exact same issue!

Yes, we did.  Sorry for not updating this post.

Because of the way that VMware is producing the instant clones, the machines receive a shutdown command as part of the clone prep process, yet the machine does not fully shutdown, so thus the AppSense EMCoreService never receives a command to restart, which then leaves the Ivanti User Virtualization Manager service in a non-running state.

To resolve this, we configured the Instant clone pool in VMware View to use a "Post-Synchronization script name that calls to a .bat file on the master image.  That bat file simply is:

@echo off

net stop "AppSense EMCoreService"

net start "AppSense EMCoreService"

After the clone prep process completes this post-synch script runs and then the

not sure what happened there...

... Ivanti User Virtualization Manager service starts and process the policy configuration as expected.

We also upgraded to Ivanti EM 10.1, but had the same success with 8.6.

It should be noted that while the folder directory called for in the post-synch setting remains, the actual bat file used is removed from the directory of the virtual machine.

We also had some initial issues with certain GPO settings not applying to the instant clone machines at initial creation, so we added a line to the .bat file to gpupdate /force.

I hop that helps

Thanks will give that a go!!