Configuration best practices for virtualization of Microsoft Office 2010 hosted on a remote machine

  • 7007402
  • 18-Dec-2010
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization 8.0.2

Situation

This TID provides best practices for virtualization of Microsoft Office 2010 using ZAV 8.0.2.

Resolution

Following are the recommended environmental configurations for Microsoft Office to be virtualized and run on a remote machine:
  1. Install Microsoft Office 2010 on a host machine running a supported Windows OS platform and activate it with valid license.
  2. Launch installed MS Office applications once on the host machine with the same account as the one which will be used on ZAV machine to virtualize MS Office.
    Note: The above applies when the MS Office host machine and the ZAV machine are in a domain (in a domain environment, both machines have to be in the same domain). If the MS Office host machine and the ZAV machine are in workgroups, then the workgroup name and user account name and passwords on both machines should be the same/ditto. This is important for ZAV to harvest license info from the native MS Office installation and use it for virtualization of MS Office. See example below.
  3. In a workgroup environment, Windows pre-built Administrator account has to be used.
  4. Ensure that Remote Registry & Server services are enabled and running on the MS Office host machine.
  5. Ensure that File and Printer Sharing is installed and enabled in the properties of network adapter properties of the MS Office host machine.
  6. Ensure that system drive (C: by default) is shared and accessible remotely. System drive is a default share on Windows OS. Command “net share ” will output the default shares on a Windows machine.
  7. Windows Firewall is configured to allow File and Printer Sharing. This will require File and Printer Sharing to be added as an exception in Windows Firewall settings.
  8. If MS Office is hosted on the Windows XP platform, then Simple File Sharing has to be disabled. This can be done in Windows Explorer > Folder options > View Tab > Advanced Settings .

Example for point# 2:

 If:

A. MS Office 2010 is installed on machine X in domain DOM-ABC.

B. ZAV is being run on machine Y in domain DOM-ABC under domain admin account (DOM-ABC\Admin).

Then:

MS Office has to be run once on machine X under same account (DOM-ABC\Admin) as used on machine Y to virtualize MS Office.

 If:

C. Office 2010 is installed on machine X which is in a workgroup.

D. ZAV is being run on Machine Y also in a workgroup.

Then:

Machine X  and machine Y should have the same workgroup name. For e.g., Workgroup1

Built-in administrator account should be used to run MS Office applications on machine X.

Built-in administrator account should be used to virtualize MS Office in ZAV on machine Y.

Administrator accounts on both machines should have the same password.

 

Virtualization of MS Office 2010 will fail if any of the above conditions are not met.