SVS Layer Settings Migration Utility

As with any application, sometimes SVS layers need to be 'reinstalled' or updated. Of course, with SVS this is done by resetting a layer, or deleting the layer and importing a new one. When you perform either of these actions, you generally lose all of the personal settings configured on the layer before it is reset or deleted and re-imported.

This issue is addressed in the article here: http://www.symantec.com/community/tip/3132/even-le... which outlines a process whereby the settings for a layer may be backed up and then restored after the reset or delete/import occurs. The article focuses on MS office products, but I found that this process was effective with most all of the applications we have virtualized. Once more, going from one version of a layer to a newer one (sometimes even when the app version was newer), I found this procedure effectively restored personal settings.

The biggest hurdle in my environment is that with several thousand machines, there is no way we could deploy a new version of a layer and retain the settings in this way given the amount of time and effort it would take to manually perform the backup/restore.

So then, I created a command line utility that does it for me. It takes in as arguments: the old layer name, the new layer name, and either the path to the new layer or a switch indicating you just want to reset the layer. It can be run from a flash drive, network drive, or can be built into an NS or DS job. Running it without any arguments will bring up the help window, and it has a verbose mode as well. As of this writing, I have not yet built in return codes for the executable.

Obviously, you will want to test it with any layer or layers to be sure it is migrating the settings over correctly before a production roll out. Generally, if ANY of the settings are restored you can assume that all that can be have been. Keep in mind though, that it does not (could not) test for settings compatibility between layers. You could conceivably mis-match a new layer - e.g save the settings from MS outlook, and restore them to a layer of adobe acrobat if you gave it the parameters to do so. Not sure what would happen there, but as you can imagine, probably not what you want. And while resetting the new layer would resolve the issue(s), the settings you were hoping to restore would be gone.

Some apps have additional settings that are stored in different places, so they can't always all be restored via the method this utility currently uses (see article above). However, I'd be happy to modify it to include other methods if anyone knows of other common places SVS app settings are stored. I've tried to create a universal utility that can be used with any layer, but I'm open to creating specialized versions if there is a need...