In Part 1. of this series we Installed vNext.
In Part 2., we then Configured vNext to use the New AD Site as a boundary and Configured Discovery Methods in vNext.
In Part 3, we installed the Reporting Point Role along with some additional roles and configured them.
In Part 4 we configured the client Agents and deployed the vNext Client.
Now we will learn how to Deploy Applications using vNext. But before doing so we need to understand the differences between ConfigMgr 2007 and vNext.
Software Distribution in vNext is very different to what we were used to
in ConfigMgr 2007. In SCCM 2007, we would typically make a package, the
package would contain one or more programs and we would then create an
advertisement which targetted the software to a collection. The user
would get the software in a variety of ways, silently (mandatory) or
optional (via Run Advertised Programs and/or Add Remove Programs in
Control Panel).
In vNext, the Package and Program is replaced with Application and Deployment Types
(Packages and Programs are still available for backwards compatability
in vNext but it’s considered basic software distribution and not
advanced, and more importantly, not recommended.)
What we knew as the Advertisement, is replaced with a state based Deployment via detection method, and now the Run Advertised Programs applet is replaced with Software Center.
Ok then, let’s see how it all works… we will deploy a simple application (in this case, WinZip 15, download the MSI from here), for this Lab, verify that you have enabled Active Directory User Discovery.
Perform the following on the vNext server as SMSadmin
Step 1. Create an Application
In the Wunderbar, click on Software Library, and then click on Application Management in the navigation pane.
Select Applications in the navigation pane
(or on the right hand side pane), it will say ‘no items found’ as we
have not added any applications yet.
In the navigation pane (or in the action pane on the far right) right click on Application and choose Create Application
The Create Application Wizard appears, you will notice that the default setting type is set to Windows Installer (Native),
you could choose Microsoft Application Virtualization or Mobile CAB
files but in this example we will stay with the default (MSI).
Browse to the network path of where your
MSI is stored (I created a network share on d:\ called sources, in their
I created two more sub-directories called apps and winzip.) Include the
MSI filename when you browse. eg:
\\vnext\sources\apps\winzip\winzip150.msi
click Next and you will be informed about the application import, in our case the import succeeded
click Next and the General Information
screen appears, we can enter some info about the application itself, by
default vNext will have picked some values for us (like the install
switches)
Enter some details about the application, and click on select to create a new Administrative Category, in this example I created a category called Nice to Have, in the Install for User or System drop down menu, select Install for User.
review the summary
Note: If you get an error like this “Error: The ConfigMgr Provider
reported an error connecting to the ConfigMgr site database service”
then verify that you added the vNext computer account (vnext$) to the Administrators Group on the vNext server.
Review the Confirmation screen and click Close.
Our Winzip application should be listed.
To see the full post with screenshots look here
