Distribution: Applications to Terminal Servers

Novell^® ZENworks^® Desktop Management lets you manage applications that are being hosted in a terminal server environment. This includes the ability to both distribute applications to the host terminal servers and then make the hosted applications available to users through Novell Application Launcher^TM.

This section provides information about how to distribute applications to your host terminal servers. For information about distributing terminal server applications to users, see Distribution: Simple Applications and Distribution: Complex Applications.

Distributing applications to a terminal server is much the same as distributing applications to a user or workstation, which means you can follow the processes described in the sections referenced above. However, you should also be aware of the following:

• You can distribute simple applications, AOT/AXT applications, or MSI applications to a terminal server.
• You can use user associations or workstation associations to distribute applications.

  To use user associations, you must install Application Launcher on the terminal server, create a User object in Novell eDirectory^TM for the terminal server, and associate the desired applications with the terminal server's User object.

  To use workstation associations, you must install Application Launcher and Workstation Manager on the terminal server, import the terminal server into eDirectory as a Workstation object, and associate the desired applications with the terminal server's Workstation object.

• For both user-associated applications and workstation-associated applications, you must be logged on at the terminal server console through a Windows administrator account to ensure successful distribution to the terminal server.
• Application Launcher does not create a NAL cache directory on the terminal server. Because there is no NAL cache directory, the following applies:
  • Distribution of MSI applications to the terminal server requires the appropriate network client (Microsoft Client or Novell Client) to be installed on the terminal server. Distribution cannot occur through the ZENworks Middle Tier Server because there is no NAL cache to copy the MSI source package to. A possible workaround to this issue is to create a simple Application object that distributes the .msi package to the terminal server and launches the Windows Installer to install the package.
  • Force cache does not work.
  • Uninstall does not work. You must manually uninstall the application files.
• For MSI applications, to ensure that the applications are installed for multisession access, use the change user /install command in the pre-distribution script and the change user /execute command in the post-distribution script. This causes the application to be installed to the systemroot rather than an individual user's home directory.
• You can use the Terminal Server distribution rule to ensure that an application is only distributed to a terminal server. For information about the Terminal Server distribution rule, see Distribution Rules Page
• If you want an application to be distributed when a user launches it (rather than you installing), the user needs to have appropriate file system and registry access. To install an MSI application on the terminal server, the user must be a member of the Administrators group. Microsoft Windows Installer does not allow non-administrator users to do installations from a terminal client session.