Unified Application Management (UAM) - How Are You Using It?

Hello Brian Mock.  Thank you for the post.  We recently had an advanced training camp in LA that was entirely focused on UAM.  We will reach out to those attendees and invite them into the discussion.  I believe they will have some great insight along with Carl Long who led that particular camp.  Andy Weidner was one of our subject matter experts that delivered the technical portion of that camp.

Kevin Murray very good - thank you!!

I am doing some testing with UAM, looking to replace the Winget Scripted Actions we use to update applications on hosts. I also have questions:

1. Under which conditions will Deployment policies start a stopped VM?
2. Does the 15 minute application check only happen if a maintenance window is not set?
3. If an application is deleted, will the policy install it again?
4. Will the policy keep apps updated, if (Latest) is selected?
5. If so, and a maintenance window is set, does the VM have to be running during the window?
6. If a maintenance window is not set, will the updated application be installed as soon as it hits the repository?
7. Why was there a User scoped installers are not supported warning for Bicep CLI, and not Windows Terminal?

I am registered for the 7/9 Beyond the Basics webinar, but I hope I can get some answers before then. 

Thanks

I don't know if the "Beyond the Basics" webinar will be able to answer all of your questions. Hopefully, I'm wrong, but in case I'm not, it may be best to plan on going to the upcoming Nerdio Advanced Training Camp in September where they are focusing on UAM.

I'm in no way an expert, but I can give you my best guess as to the answers to your questions from my testing and looking through the UAM documentation. 

1. A Deployment Policy will start a stopped VM if you're doing a one-time deployment or it is part of a maintenance window.
2. From what I can see the up to 15 minute check happens if you're using a maintenance window or not
   
3. Yes. If an application is manually uninstalled, the next time the policy is ran/checked, the application will be installed/updated.
4. Yes. If you select Latest, it will always check for/install the latest version.
5. To my knowledge, no. The VM will be started automatically during the maintenance window and shutdown again once finished (using Auto-Scale logic).
6. No. Unless something triggers the application policy, the application will not be updated on the VM.
7. I have no clue on this one 🤔. My best guess is it all depends on the application source (i.e. Windows Store, WGET, Chocolatey, etc.), how the application is packaged, and how NMM interprets that package.

If I'm super off-base on any of my answers, I'm sure someone else in the community (or at Nerdio) can help set us both straight. 🙂🤞👍

Hi DStephenson, I'm sorry I forgot to thank you for you answer. I have been testing UAM on a test host pool, and I can confirm that I'm seeing the host running only a few minutes during its 2 hour maintenance window, so that's nice. UAM is working well, and appears to be faster then the Winget Scripted Action I'm using now to install and update most applications. I'm planning to switch over soon. 

Brian Mock, I am installing applications on the image, not at VM deployment, because I don't want to delay VM deployment in a burst host or auto-heal scenario, but I'd expect the behavior to be install the application at deployment, then do updates during the maintenance window, if it is set. 

I noticed there's a Use pool maintenance window option in the deployment policy settins, but I can't find anywhere to set a pool maintenance window, and have not found any documentation. I'm going to ask support about that.