In my previous blog post I explained the major difference between default snapvol.cfg and custom snapvol.cfg in VMware App Volumes 4.x. In this blog post, I will focus on how you can customize snapvol.cfg for more granular control and, more importantly, in which use cases this would greatly improve your environment and user experience.

The custom snapvol.cfg configuration file is not available by default and you have to create the same manually. This file contains information such as what should be captured and not captured on the Writable volume (UIA, UIA+Profile, Profile only) with the help of exclusion and inclusion policies.

To customize a policy file, a Custom folder is required.

Note

The following keyword values must not be modified:

• virtualize

• virtualize_registry

• virtualize_registry_notify_change

• reverse_replicate_file

• delete_local_profile

Only the below contains keywords that can be used to customize the policy for application packages and Writable Volumes:

• exclude_path

• include_path

• exclude_registry

• include_registry

• exclude_process_path

• include_process_name

• exclude_process_name

Procedure

1. Log in as administrator or other users with local admin privilege to the machine where the App Volumes agent is installed.

2. Create the folder with the name of “Custom” in the %SVAgent%\Config\ directory

3. Copy the default snapvol.cfg from the default directory (%SVAgent%\Config\Default ) to %SVAgent%\Config\Custom

4. Add the above mentioned entry in the snapvol.cfg file, where the path is the location of the application or registry that you want to exclude.

Example

Modify the snapvol.cfg file to exclude the following carbon black process & files

Use notepad ++ or any text editor to add the following lines to the snapvol.cfg file.

################################################################
#Carbon Black Exclusions
################################################################
exclude_process_path=\Program Files\Confer
exclude_process_name=RepCLI.exe

Once the changes are applied in snapvol.cfg save the file.

Then follow the regular Image post customization process and push the snapshot to the VDI desktop pool.