How To Publish an Internal Windows App on Azure Remote App

 

This week is very important , Azure Team is officially releasing in General Availability Azure Remote App (ARA), if you like of Remote Desktop Services, you will love ARA. Imagine the following situation : delivery your Windows Apps (LOB), Office or any app that run on Windows Server 2012 R2 to your users from their desktops, tablets Windows, IOS and Android and your cell mobile Windows Phone without to need to implement nothing on premises, basically contract them as a service, friendly we can call them like RDP as a Service. Don’t confuse with VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), in first wave only publishing apps will be available, you can’t publish a desktop to your thin clients. Microsoft is studying and validating this possible scenario in the future. By the way let’s focus how to publish your Windows App internally on Azure Remote App.

 

You can deploy ARA to two ways : HYBRID and CLOUD

 

HYBRID mode allows you establishing a VPN between Azure Remote App Tenant / Network and you on premises environment and join your virtual machine image with your windows apps installed to your Active Directory Domain. However if your windows app needs to connect to a database or to do a query to any service to your on premises network ( client-server ) , it is possible.

 

CLOUD mode is more simple, less complex comparing to HYBRID scenario, you don’t need establishing VPN and your identity can be provided by Azure Active Directory or ADFS on premises. It resides completely in Azure and is created using the Quick create option in the Azure management portal.

 

TIP : Your subscription for Azure Remote App comes with template image that contain Office 2013 for trial use programs.

 

I am supposing that you already created Remote App service, but you don’t do that yet, create Remote App service. It can take up to 30 minutes to provision your service. After your Remote App service has been created, go to the Remote App quick start page to continue, during your publishing you need do select your custom image including your internal windows app, it is here that begins my article.

 

Azure Remote App uses Virtual Machines Generation 1 to provide publishing applications, VM Generation 2 is not supported so far, by the way you can’t deploy VHDX file, only VHD, it can be Dynamically or Fixed, we suggest Dynamically to accelerate upload and consume less space on Azure Storage, furthermore Encryption File System (EFS) need to be disabled and Remote Desktop Session Host and Desktop Experience installed. So let’s create a virtual machine on Hyper-V ( Hyper-V Server or Hyper-V Client of your Windows 8).

 

I am using my laptop with Windows 8.1 Hyper-V. Open your Disk Management (DISKMGMT.MSC), to Action menu and select Create VHD, select VHD format and Dynamically expanding. Take care to size, VHD must be maximum of 127 GB and multiple of 1024, it is mandatory, if you don’t do that you can have issues when try to do upload to Azure Store Blob. I have create a file of 60 GB of size, so 60 x 1024 = 61440 MB.

The disk must be initialized using the Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning style. The GUI partition table (GPT) partition is not supported.

Create volume, select NTFS file system and 64K on Allocation unit size to better performance, on Volume label, fill out to your preference name, here is AzureRemoteAppCI.

After that, detach VHD to release disk.

Open your Hyper-V Manager, create a new virtual machine, chose your preference path folder and select Generation 1 ( be careful, don’t choose Generation 2)

Select your VHD file that you created previously, use an existing virtual hard disk. ( memory and processors you need to adjust to your app, at least 2 processors and 2 GB of memory is recommended )

Select your ISO of Windows Server 2012 R2.

Start VM and during installation select Standard version with GUI interface.

You can create more than one volume but only one instance of operation system must be installed

 

Wait for finishing operation system installation. ( Don’t forget only WS 2012 R2 is supported ).

Take a Log On, don’t join virtual machine on domain and install from Server Manager the following role and feature : Role Remote Desktop Session Host and Feature Desktop Experience

Desktop Experience under User Interfaces and Infrastructure

Wait for rebooting, after disable EFS, Run the following command at an elevated command windows:

C:\Fsutil behavior set disableencryption 1

Now it is time to install your application ( don’t install your windows app before RDSH, Desktop Experience installed ). For testing purpose I have download Project My Screen App, this software project my Windows Phone screen to my monitor, it is a interesting app to do demos for Windows Phone. You can do download it here. Of course here is time to install your Windows App ( .MSI file )

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42536

VERY IMPORTANT : Open your OneNote or Notepad and register full PATH and .exe file. Because you will not have access to VM Desktop do browser this file when you want to publish it, you need know it.

In my lab is that below

C:\Program Files (x86)\ProjectMyScreenApp\ProjectMyScreenApp.exe

Take all settings that you need like configuration files, database setting and other thinks. All right ? Test your application, run it a lot time to guarantee that all was done, Now it is time to do a system preparation and to do upload VHD to Azure Storage Cloud.

SYSPREP the image. At an elevated command prompt, run the following commando :

C:\Windows\System32\Sysrep\Sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown

Note : Don’t use the /mode:vm switch of the SYSPREP command even through this is a virtual machine.

Wait for VM is shutdown, open your Azure Portal, select Remote App session and TEMPLATE IMAGES, select Upload a Template Image arrow.

Fill out of a friendly name of your custom image in my case ProjectMyScreenApp-TEMPLATE and region that you want to deploy, click to arrow.

Download script powershell Upload-AzureRemoteAppTemplateImage.ps1

Open your Azure Power Shell as a Administrator, run Add-AzureAccount cmdlet, fill out with your credential of Azure Subscription. Copy and past all command how are in COMMAND TO RUN DIALOG BOX, don't change nothing, after you run a dialog prompt will open to you select your VHD, upload will start, wait for finishing, it can take some minutes if your internet access is not so good. Just wait !!

When all are done, you are going to see templates available and Ready to use.

 

Now we are going to publish our windows app, clique App Services, REMOTE APP, Quick Create, put your Friendly name, select your region and select your template that you have been created

Wait for finishing, after click on Dashboard and publish remote app programs

Now put your friendly name that remote users will see and full path of your .EXE app

Give access permission, select on USER ACCESS and put your e-mail address, in my case my personal email, you have your Active Directory objects synchronized by DIRSYNC or Azure Active Directory Sync, you can grant access for your corporate users like alias@domain.com. Flag should be green. One invite will be sent to users inside.

Done ! Now do download of Azure Remote App client, just access link below, it does not matter if your device is IOS, Android or Windows, it is smart do detect your operation system and suggest you a correct version.

https://www.remoteapp.windowsazure.com/

When you open Microsoft RemoteApp, you need to put your e-mail, my e-mail address is @outlook.com, it will redirect to authentication page of outlook.com, when I put my e-mail and password will show for us. If you are using your AD users, it will redirect to your Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) Web Application Proxy ( or ADFS Proxy ) page.

Click on your Window App and wait for open. Done Project My Screen App is working and showing for me. 

Believe or not, you can access by your Windows Phone too, just download from Windows Store, REMOTE DESKTOP APP, it is available here

https://www.windowsphone.com/pt-br/store/app/microsoft-remote-desktop-preview/299b09ab-207e-441c-9e8e-c8d66c20b76b 

Clique on + button and inform your credentials, done, all apps are available to you connect.

All apps are available for me to use.

When you click in Paint, it starts and

When I click on Project My Screen app I have a Project My Screen inside of my real physical Project My Screen

Azure Remote App Rocks ! This is all guys, I hope that this article can help you day by day of IT Pro Azure Admin !

Official document of Cloud Deployment for Azure Remote App is here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/remoteapp-create-cloud-deployment/

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 18, 2014
  Bacana Gilson!
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2015
  While preparing a RemoteApp virtual lab, I gathered a handful of white papers, articles, blog posts and
• Anonymous
  April 17, 2015
  So if all I want to do is deploy a small simple app (<100k) to the Azure cloud so users at our company can access it from any device, anywhere, I need to partitian a hard drive, load a WinServer 2012 VM and upload a 40G template image? Seems like this should be a lot easier than that. Or do I have it all wrong?
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2016
  Hi, is it possible to publish a collection hosted on premises? Assume a customer has an 3-tier application OnPrem and wants the client to run near his Oracle database for instance.
  Thanks
• Anonymous
  April 23, 2016
  Hi I'm having a problem publishing and application that needs to write to a temporary file within the program files directory. is there anyway you can allow the app to write to temporary files.