Dan Van Drunen on Deployment
Deploying since Windows 2000

Application Bundles did not exist in BDD 2007 but are included in MDT 2008 and MDT 2010. Application Bundles are used to group applications so that they may be chosen as a group, then deployed together in a specific order. There are a few ways you can use these bundles during your deployment depending on how much interaction your want your installation technician to have. These bundles can either be chosen at time of deployment through the LTI wizard, preconfigured in your customsettings.ini or configured through your MDT database.

 

Understanding the concept of Application Bundles

If you are familiar with how application dependencies work in BDD or MDT on a normal application, then just picture an application with multiple dependencies that doesn’t install itself after all the dependencies have been installed. If you are not familiar with how application dependencies work then just think of an application bundle as a group of applications that will be installed in a specific order.

For those of you who have been using Jason Scheffelmaer’s “Roles Wizard” to deploy groups of applications you may want to look into replacing it by using Application Bundles. Keep in mind that using Roles do give you a bit more added control around configuration, packages and administrators, but it can be a challenge to re-integrate when you decide to ugrade MDT to a newer version or apply and update. If you are only worried about grouping Apps, then application bundles are the way to go as it is a much cleaner way to choose and install applications in the LTI wizard at time of deployment and it also retains the flexibility of configuring through your customsetting.ini or MDT database.

 

Creating an Application Bundle

 To create an application bundle, you must first have some applications added to your deployment share. Creating an Application bundle is very similar to adding an application.

 

1. In the Deployment Workbench, right click on Applications and choose New Application.

 

 

 

2. If you want create an Application, you should choose either of the top two options. However we want to choose the third option, Application Bundle and click Next.

 

 

 

3. Enter a name which you want the Application Bundle to have. For bundles, I do not use the Publisher, Version or Language feilds as they are not really relevant. By putting the full bundle name in the Application Name field, you are able to better format it with spaces and dashes for readability in the LTI wizard. Click Next.

 

 

 

 

4. Review your choices. Click Next.

 

 

 

 

5. The application will then be created and you should be presented with a summary screen. Click Finish.

 

 

 

 

6. Now you should see your application bundle in the Applications container. If you do not see it, refresh your screen by hitting F5 or clicking in Refresh in the right hand pane.

 

 

 

7. To add applications to your bundle, double click in the Application Bundle you just created, click over to the Dependencies Tab, and click add. You will be presented with a list of applications that you have already added to the Deployment Workbench.

 

 

 

8. Lastly, notice the Up and Down buttons in the dependencies tab. The order in which your applications appear in this list is the order they will be installed when you choose this bundle during your deployment.

 

I hope this post of helpful and feel free to post your comments or questions below.

DVD

Tags: application bundles, applications, mdt 2008, mdt 2010