Possible Bug or by Design?

Im not sure if this by design or perhaps a bug. Here is the scenario.

In our testing environment I have a 64bit 2k8 host running the web portal as well as being the primary TS config server. The point of this server is to not be used to publish apps, only to act as the farm gateway and redirect client requests to other servers. Previously I had two 64bit TS servers part of the farm. I removed those servers and added a 32bit server to the farm. The problem is, whenever I publish an app from the 32bit server (in this case excel 2007) I do it using the 32bit location ie: %ProgramFiles\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE, however after applying the changes it keeps reverting to: %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE the 64 bit version path.

Its as if its inheriting the path from the gateway server. If that is the case this raises a concern. Is it not possible to mix and match 64 and 32bit servers in the same farm? Am I doing something incorrectly?

I removed the published app, restarted the gateway server and republished the app with the same results.

 

The path does inherit from the gateway server when publishing apps and using installed programs option.
In general the paths are built by using a local version for the app.
You can however select different paths on a per server basis !

see pic
Hope it helps ;-)

 

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. When I was testing this yesterday I had ensured the publishing target was selected. Actually in my this particular server is now the only server part of the farm. When I make the selection of the 32bit path the target and start in: fields are populated correctly after applying. If i exit the app server / load balancer console and go back in, that app is set back to the 64bit path again.

It looks like a limitation of being able to mix 32 and 64bit servers in the same farm - although I have not come across this documented anywhere.

 

Can you write the paths you are using here? ( or are the ones above actual)
Better still :
Export your settings ( .dat ) file and upload it here?
Just a sample scenario make sure not to leave any private or licensing information public

Thanks

 

I will post this info tomorrow when back in the office.

 

We have reproduced your issue and are looking into it but a quick fix is using the absolute path instead of the %env% type of environment variables.

Thanks for pointing it out.

 

Thanks David. Using the absolute path works for us.

 

Great !!

 

We solved this issue by making a environmental variable on the 32 bit server for programfiles x86.
after this everyting works fine

 

Thanks for sharing.