The VMware Labs flings monthly for April 2021 – Easy deploy for AVI Loadbalancers & NSX Mobile!

So it feels like yesterday that I created the previous flings post but April flew by and it’s almost summer, time for some more bad weather over here in The Netherlands. I see a three new flings and ten who received an update. One of the new ones already has quite a long changelog with fixes!

New Releases

NSX Mobile

vRealize Orchestrator Parser

Easy Deploy for NSX Advanced Load Balancing

Updates

Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

Community Networking Driver for ESXi

ESXi Arm Edition

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Horizon Session Recording

vSphere Mobile Client

Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool

VMware OS Optimization Tool

SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Event Broker Appliance

New Releases

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NSX Mobile

Are you an NSX admin? Do you spend major part of your work in monitoring the network and/or its security? Do you have the NSX web UI open on your laptop/desktop most of the day to make sure all the services are up and connectivity between systems is fine?

Carrying a laptop all the time with you could be quite challenging task, especially in situations like the current pandemic. However, your smartphone would be on you most of the time. NSX Mobile brings the ease of monitoring the networking and security right from your phone.

NSX Mobile complements the full-fledged NSX-T web UI by providing monitoring capabilities on the go. If you find something wrong, you can use the conventional web UI or ask someone else to investigate the matter immediately. Focus of the app is to provide instant notifications when something goes wrong and side by side ability to monitor the network & its security from a smartphone.

Features

  • Just install it & login with your NSX-T credentials to get started (make sure that the NSX version is 3.0+ and the NSX IP/domain name is reachable from your smartphone)
  • List and search all networking and security entities (e.g. Tier-0s, Network segments, Firewall Rules, etc.)
  • View alarms generated on NSX (e.g. CPU usage high OR a VPN failed to realize OR Intrusion detected in case if you have IDS firewall, etc.)
  • Push notifications – COMING SOON
  • Quick actions (enable/disable options wherever possible, actions on failures/alarms) – COMING SOON

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vRealize Orchestrator Parser

The vRealize Orchestrator Parser is a tool developed to extend the vRealize Build Tools Fling toolchain or to be used stand-alone with the Export Package to Folder option in native vRealize Orchestrator(vRO).

vRealize Orchestrator Parser parses vRO workflow XML files and extracts programming language code (Javascript, Python, Powershell, etc) and stores it as discrete files, that can then be checked into a source code control system, and or edited directly as discrete programming language source code from a traditional text-based source code editor, such as Visual Studio Code. These discrete files can also be consumed by other, third-party CI/CD systems like Maven and Jenkins. They can be edited, and they can be imported back into vRO workflow XML files. ‘Diffs’ and changes on the resulting code files are easily observed and tied to SCCS version numbers and releases, and can easily be merged and branched through normal software engineering development practices.

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Easy Deploy for NSX Advanced Load Balancing

Easy Deploy for NSX Advanced Load Balancer (formerly Avi Networks) Fling is a virtual appliance that helps you deploy Avi in a handful of clicks!
This will enable you to leverage the power of multi-cloud application services platform that includes load balancing, web application firewall, container ingress, and application analytics across any cloud. No extensive knowledge required as it’s meant to make demo, training and proof-of-concept (POC) easy!

Features

  • A familiar VMware Clarity User Interface
  • Automatically deploy an Avi Controller and Avi Service Engines
  • Seamless integration with your VMware Cloud on AWS environment (with AVS and GCVE support coming soon!)
  • Option to deploy sample app that leverages Avi load balancing

For more information, read this blog post: New Fling: Easy Deploy for NSX Load Balancing a.k.a EasyAvi

Changelog

1.2.5

  • New Avi release supported – 20.1.5

1.2.4

  • Fixed SDDC conflict – what if you want to redeploy on the same sddc with another EasyAvi
  • Fixes “Output link /avi at the end does not work” issue
  • Destroy.sh – avoid TF error when trying to delete CL
  • Fixed “Typo in the outputs Advanced pplication Private IP Address”
  • Check for vCenter API connectivity before starting TF
  • Hide the button “DFW – Update NSX exclusion list with SE(s)”
  • Hide Domain Name field in the UI

1.2.3

  • Changed getMypublic.sh by beforeTf.sh

1.2.2

  •  Fix typo in outputs

1.2.1

  • Hide Public IP in outputs if empty

1.2.0

  • MD5 Checksum
  • Remove cat sddc.json from logs
  • Auto Apply
  • Auto routing to Step 3

1.1.0

  • Minor fixes

1.0.0

  • First Release

Updates

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Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

The Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script and module that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the Hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory. It will flag a VM as “TRUE” if it is optimized and “FALSE” if it is not. For non-optimized VMs, a recommendation is made that will keep the same number of vCPUs currently configured, with the optimal number of virtual cores and sockets.

Changelog

Version 3.0.0

  • Script will install or update the required modules (VMCO and PowerCLI). The script is now a single script that acts as the easy button to walk through the module installs, connecting to a vCenter, and exporting the results.

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Community Networking Driver for ESXi

The Community Networking Driver for ESXi fling provides the user the ability to use usually not supported by ESXi.

Changelog

April 08, 2021 – v1.1

Net-Community-Driver_1.1.0.0-1vmw.700.1.0.15843807_17858744.zip
md5: 587d7d408184c90f6baf4204bb309171

  • Resolve issue when using Intel vPro which can cause ESXi PSOD

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ESXi Arm Edition

ESXi on arm based system, nuf said!

Changelog

April 02, 2021 – v1.3

Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.

  • Improved hardware compatibility (various bug fixes/enhancements)
  • Add support for Experimental Ampere Altra (single socket systems only) (please see Requirements for more details)
  • ACPI support for virtual machines
  • NVMe and PVSCSI boot support in vEFI
  • Workaround for ISO boot on some Arm servers
  • Address VMM crash with newer guest OSes and Neoverse N1-based systems
  • Improved guest interrupt controller virtualization
  • Improved (skeletal) PMU virtualization
  • Improved big endian VM support

Build 17839012
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-17839012.aarch64.iso

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Event though we have had the html5 web client around for a while they’re still using the html5 fling to test some new features!

Changelog

Fling 5.0 – build 15670023

Updated the instructions with the new location of some files and services for the HTML5 client fling v6.pdf

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Horizon Session Recording

The Horizon Session Recording tool allows for (on-demand) recording of Horizon sessions.

Changelog

Version 2.2.5

  • Added support for > Horizon 8.1

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vSphere Mobile Client

Personally I don’t have a use for it but I do like the idea of being able to manage my vSphere from a mobile device using the vSphere Mobile Client.

Changelog

Version 2.2.0 Update:

New features:

  • Add filtering by severity options for Alarm and Events
  • Add windows key button in the virtual console keyboard for key combos

Improvements:

  • Improve VM console stability on device rotation
  • Add missing back button on the login pages
  • Update app logo icon and splash screens

Version 2.1.0 Update:

Improvements:

  • Compatibility with some ESXi versions using certain licenses has been improved. Operations should now work against those hosts.

Version 2.0.0 Update:

New features:

  • Introduction of VMware Cloud with VMware on AWS. Access your cloud vCenter servers from within the mobile app.
  • VM details page: navigation to related objects now possible

Improvements:

  • Virtual Machine details page now loads faster when it’s powered off
  • Fixed an issue where the app would show two spinners when navigating between views

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Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool

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Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool helps ease migration of Apps from one WS1 Access tenant to another (on-premises to SaaS or SaaS to SaaS) and use cases that require mirroring one tenant to another (for setting up UAT from PROD or vice versa) by providing capabilities listed below

Changelog

Version 1.0.0.24

  • Migrate App Entitlements (groups only)
  • New Logo and UI branding
  • Bug fixes

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Optimize you must, use you should OSOT!

Changelog

April 5, b2003

  • Resolved bug where Windows Store Apps were being removed even though they were being selected to be kept. This included changing the filter condition for Remove All Windows built-in apps.

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SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS

The SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS tool enables you to save and restore your VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) networking and security configuration.

Changelog

Version 1.4

  • New feature – on-prem NSX-T DFW configuration export, import into VMC on AWS
  • New feature – on-prem vCenter folder structure export, import into VMC on AWS
  • New feature – Indented JSON output for easier reading
  • Bugfix – Bumped minimum Python version to the actual requirement of 3.6
  • Bugfix – Fixed issue where the exception block of a try/except on GET calls errored

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VMware Event Broker Appliance

The VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling enables customers to unlock the hidden potential of events in their SDDC to easily event-driven automation based on vCenter Server Events and take vCenter Server Events to the next level! Extending vSphere by easily triggering custom or prebuilt actions to deliver powerful integrations within your datacenter across public cloud has never been more easier before.

Changelog

https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2021/04/vmware-event-broker-appliance-veba-v0-6-is-now-available.html

The VMware Labs flings monthly for March 2021 – New Website

A day late but never late than never, this is your monthly overview with all the latest and greatest VMware flings. The flings site received a new fresh look head out to https://flings.vmware.com to have a look yourself. I am not sure if the (are they new?) tags for updated or new flings are okay yet as one has been marked updated but it seems to be new while one new one I could find a blog post for from last month but I missed it for my overview, not sure what happened there. Overall I see four new flings and ten received an update.

New Releases

Configuration Wizard for Nuance PowerMic

vRealize Automation Code Stream CLI

Hillview: Distributed Data Visualization

SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS

Updates

Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer

Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker

Vmss2core

vRealize Build Tools

Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools

Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

App Volumes Packaging Utility

DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB

VMware OS Optimization Tool

New Releases

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Configuration Wizard for Nuance PowerMic

Nuance PowerMics are the leading dictation device used in Healthcare today.
This handy standalone Fling will assist in determining the optimal PowerMic configuration for a specific customer environment.

To determine the configuration that works best for you, we need to know a few details about the customer environment:

  • Endpoint type
  • Endpoint vendor
  • Endpoint operating system
  • Single/nested mode
  • Horizon protocol

The PowerMic Configuration Wizard will then provide the specific settings for optimal PowerMic performance and accuracy in the customers environment.

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vRealize Automation Code Stream CLI

vRealize Automation Code Stream CLI is a command line tool written in Go to interact with the vRealize Automation Code Stream APIs. This Fling is written to help automate Code Stream and provide a simple way to migrate content between Code Stream instances and projects.

  • Import and Export Code Stream artefacts such as Pipelines, Variables, Endpoints
  • Perform CRUD operations on Code Stream artefacts such as Pipelines, Variables, Endpoints
  • Trigger Executions of Pipelines

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Hillview: Distributed Data Visualization

Hillview is a simple cloud-based spreadsheet program for browsing large data collections. The data manipulated is read-only. Users can sort, find, filter, transform, query, zoom-in/out, and chart data. Operations are performed using direct manipulation in the GUI. Hillview is designed to work on very large data sets (billions of rows). Hillview can import data from a variety of sources: CSV files, ORC files, Parquet files, databases, parallel databases; new connectors can be added with relatively little effort. Hillview takes advantage of all the cores of the worker machines for fast visualizations.

Hillview is a distributed system, composed of two pieces:

  • A distributed set of one or many workers, which should be installed close to the data (e.g., on the machines that host the data).
  • A front-end service that runs a web server and aggregates data from all workers.

The source code of Hillview is available as an open-source project with an Apache-2 license from Hillview’s github repository. For any questions, feature requests or bug reports please file an issue on github.

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SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS

The SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS tool enables you to save and restore your VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) networking and security configuration.

There are many situations when customers want to migrate from an existing SDDC to a different one. While HCX addresses the data migration challenge, this tool offers customers the ability to copy the configuration from a source to a destination SDDC.

A few example migration scenarios are:

  • SDDC to SDDC migration from bare-metal (i3) to a different bare-metal type (i3en)
  • SDDC to SDDC migration from VMware-based org to an AWS-based org
  • SDDC to SDDC migration from region (i.e. London) to a different region (i.e. Dublin).

Other use cases are:

  • Backups – save the entire SDDC configuration
  • Lab purposes – customers or partners might want to deploy SDDCs with a pre-populated configuration.
  • DR purposes – deploy a pre-populated configuration in conjunction with VMware Site Recovery or VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery

Detailed instructions can be found on the Instructions tab, in the README.md included in the Zip file or on Patrick’s blog (http://www.patrickkremer.com/sddc-import-export/).

Details about the use cases and origins of the project can be found on Nico’s blog (https://nicovibert.com/2021/02/08/fling-sddc-import-export-for-vmware-cloud-on-aws/).

Updates

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Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer

The Workspace ONE mobileconfig Importer gives you the ability to import existing mobileconfig files directly into a Workspace ONE UEM environment as a Custom Settings profile, import app preference plist files in order to created managed preference profiles, and to create new Custom Settings profiles from scratch. When importing existing configuration profiles, the tool will attempt to separate each PayloadContent dictionary into a separate payload for the Workspace ONE profile.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Support for Big Sur
  • Updated icon

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Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

Quite a few updates for this fling already!

The Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool allows a seamless migration of Applications and Device configurations between different Workspace One UEM environments. With the push of a button, workloads move from UAT to Production, instead of having to manually enter the information or upload files manually. Therefore, decreasing the time to move data between Dev/UAT environments to Production.

Changelog

Version 2.1.0

  • Fixed app upload issues for Workspace One UEM 1910+
  • Fixed profile search issue for Workspace One UEM 1910+
  • Added profile update support
  • Added template folder structure creation
  • Updated Mac app to support notarization for Catalina

Version 2.0.1

  • Fixed Baseline Migration issue
  • Fixed Profile Errors not displaying in the UI

Version 2.0.0

  • Baseline Migration Support
  • MacOS application
  • UI refactoring to make bulk migrations easier
  • Added support for script detection with Win32 applications

Version 1.0.1

  • Fixed issue with expired credentials.

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vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker

The vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker is a tool that verifies all installed storage adapters against the vSAN supported storage controller list. The tool will verify if the model, driver and firmware version of the storage adapter are supported.

Changelog

Version 2.2

  • Support multi-platforms for Windows, Linux and MacOS
  • Bug fixed

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Vmss2core

Vmss2core is a tool to convert VMware checkpoint state files into formats that third party debugger tools understand. It can handle both suspend (.vmss) and snapshot (.vmsn) checkpoint state files (hereafter referred to as a ‘vmss file’) as well as both monolithic and non-monolithic (separate .vmem file) encapsulation of checkpoint state data.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1

  • Fixed running out of memory issues
  • Added support for more versions of Windows 10/Windows 2016

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vRealize Build Tools

vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.

Changelog

Version 2.12.5 Update

  • [vRBT] Package installer – Add support for installation on a standalone vRO (not embedded) version 8.x with basic authentication
  • [vRA] Added catalog entitlements and examples to the vra-ng archetype
  • [vRO] Support / in Workflow name or path, by substituting it with dash (-) character.
  • [vRBT] Added http / socket timeouts support in the installer
  • [ABX] Support for ABX actions
  • [vRO] Support of placeholders in workflow description
  • [vRA] Import vRA8 custom resources before blueprints
  • [vROPS] Fixed policy import / export problem with vROPs 8.2, maintaining backward compatibility
  • [MVN] Fixed ussue with installer timeouts
  • [TS] vRO pkg – Adds support for slash in workflow path or name
  • [vRBT] Package installer – updated documentation, added checking of workflow input, writing of workflow error message to file, setting of installer exit code when executing of a workflow
  • [TS] Allow additional trigger events for policies trigered by the vcd mqtt plugin
  • [MVN] Fix Missing vRA Tenant After Successful package import
  • [MVN] Fix vROPS import fails on certain assets

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Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools

The Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools mainly acts as a wrapper around the lmvutil for Horizon Cloud Pod Archtitecture.

Changelog

Version 1.1

Based on the customer requests, have added few more command line options for CSV reports generation and AD LDS data cleanup.

What’s New:

Adds support to cleanup stale global local entitlement assignments from ADAM DB.

  • Global AD LDS Command:
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –resolve-localpool-ga
  • Scans the cloud pod database and resolves the stale entries of local pool global assignments.
    Note: This resolves deleted local pool conflicts of current pod only. If dashboard session data load error or session search fails in a different pod, a scan and resolve has to be executed in that pod.
  • List of new commands added to Local AD LDS:
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-machine
  • All machine data exported as CSV file. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-machine -pool=”DesktopPool1,DesktopPool2″
  • All machine data exported as CSV file. Use -pool= to filter machines by desktop pool name. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
  • Spaces are not allowed in -pool= optional argument.
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-session
  • All local sessions data exported as CSV file. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-session -pool=”PoolName1,PoolName2″ -farm=”FarmName1,FarmName2″
  • All local session data exported as CSV file. Use -pool= to filter sessions by desktop pool name. -farm= filter sessions by RDS farm name. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
  • Spaces are not allowed in -pool= and -farm= optional argument.
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –check-apps-integrity
  • Scans and lists the stale application icons in local ADLDS instance.
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –check-apps-integrity -input=”AbsoluteFilePath1″,”AbsoluteFilePath2″
  • Reads the list of adam LDIF files in “-input=” for parsing and exports the stale application icons data to a file.
    adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-named-lic-users
  • Exports the utilized and un-utilized named license users list information.

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Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.

Changelog

Version 1.2.1

  • Fixed bug that caused crash with certain System Extension configurations

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App Volumes Packaging Utility

This App Volumes Packaging Utility helps to package applications. With this fling, packagers can add the necessary metadata to MSIX app attach VHDs so they can be used alongside existing AV format packages. The MSIX format VHDs will require App Volumes 4, version 2006 or later and Windows 10, version 2004 or later.

Changelog

Version 1.2 Update

  • Fixed bugs found in internal testing.

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DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB

The DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide (‘STIG’) ESXi VIB is a Fling that provides a custom VMware-signed ESXi vSphere Installation Bundle (‘VIB’) to assist in remediating Defense Information Systems Agency STIG controls for ESXi. This VIB has been developed to help customers rapidly implement the more challenging aspects of the vSphere STIG. These include the fact that installation is time consuming and must be done manually on the ESXi hosts. In certain cases, it may require complex scripting, or even development of an in-house VIB that would not be officially digitally signed by VMware (and therefore would not be deployed as a normal patch would). The need for a VMware-signed VIB is due to the system level files that are to be replaced. These files cannot be modified at a community supported acceptance level. The use of the VMware-signed STIG VIB provides customers the following benefits:

  • The ability to use vSphere Update Manager (‘VUM’) to quickly deploy the VIB to ESXi hosts (you cannot do this with a customer created VIB)
  • The ability to use VUM to quickly check if all ESXi hosts have the STIG VIB installed and therefore are also in compliance
  • No need to manually replace and copy files directly on each ESXi host in your environment
  • No need to create complex shell scripts that run each time ESXi boots to re-apply settings

Changelog

Update March 2021

  • New ESXi 7.0 STIG VIB release
  • Updated sshd_config file to meet the ESXi 7.0 Draft STIG which is also now the default config in 7.0 U2 with the exception of permitting root user logins.
  • Removed /etc/vmware/welcome file from VIB since it can be configured via the UI or PowerCLI now with issue.
  • Draft ESXi content can be found here: https://github.com/vmware/dod-compliance-and-automation/tree/master/vsphere/7.0/docs
  • See the updated Overview and Installation guide included in the download.

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VMware OS Optimization Tool

No comments needed, just use the OS Optimization Tool when creating your golden images!

Changelog

March 2021, b2002

  • Fixed issue where the theme file was being updated by a Generalize task and the previously selected optimizations including wallpaper color were being lost.
  • The administrator username used during Generalize was not getting passed through properly to the unattend answer file. This resulted in a mismatch when using some languages versions of Windows.
  • Removed legacy code GPO Policy corruption
  • Removed CMD.exe box that displayed at logon.
  • Windows Store Apps were not being removed properly on Windows 10 version 20H2. Fixed the optimizations to cope with the differences introduced in this version.

Optimizations

Changed step Block all consumer Microsoft account user authentication to be unselected by default. When disabled this was causing failures to login to Edge and Windows store.

Changed the step Turn off Thumbnail Previews in File Explorer to be unselected by default. This was causing no thumbnails to show for store apps in search results.

Windows Update

On Non-Enterprise editions of Windows 10, KB4023057 installs a new application called Microsoft Update Health Tools: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb4023057-update-for-windows-10-update-service-components-fccad0ca-dc10-2e46-9ed1-7e392450fb3a. Added logic to ensure that the Windows Update Medic Service is disabled including after re-enabling and disabling Windows Updates using the Update tab.

Templates

Windows 8 and 8.1 templates have been removed from the list of built-in templates. To optimize these versions of Windows, use the separate download for version b1130.

Removed old Windows 10 templates from the Public Templates repository:

  • Windows 10 1809-2004-Server 2019
  • Windows 10 1507-1803-Server 2016

January 2021, b2001 Bug Fixes

  • All optimization entries have been added back into the main user template. This allows manual tuning and selection of all optimizations.
  • Fixed two hardware acceleration selections were not previously controlled by the Common Option for Visual Effect to disable hardware acceleration.

Optimize

  • During an Optimize, the optimization selections are automatically exported to a default json file (%ProgramData%\VMware\OSOT\OptimizedTemplateData.json).

Analyze

  • When an Analyze is run, if the default json file exists (meaning that this image has already been optimized), this is imported and used to select the optimizations and the Common Options selections with the previous choices.
  • If the default selections are required, on subsequent runs of the OS Optimization Tool, delete the default json file, relaunch the tool and run Analyze.

Command Line

  • The OptimizedTemplateData.json file can also be used from the command line with the -applyoptimization parameter.

Optimizations

  • Changed entries for Hyper-V services to not be selected by default. These services are required for VMs deployed onto Azure. Windows installation sets these to manual (trigger) so these so not cause any overhead on vSphere, when left with the default setting.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for February 2021 – Reach alert!

It’s been a busy month on the flings front, no less than 17(!!) new releases and updated flings. This is how my browser tabs look:

If I have therm all correct there are 6 new releases and 10 updates (2 1 of which update without a changelog so a boo for that!) so this post is going to be a long one!

New Releases

Community NVMe Driver for ESXi

VMware Cloud Foundation Powernova

Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool

Sample Data Platform Deployment on Virtualized Cloud Infrastructure

Community Networking Driver for ESXi

Code Stream Concourse Integrator

Updates

ESXi Compatibility Checker

VMware Machine Learning Platform

Virtualized High Performance Computing Toolkit

Horizon Peripherals Intelligence

Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Horizon Helpdesk Utility

HCIBench

Horizon Reach

Workspace ONE Discovery

App Volumes Migration Utility

New Releases

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Community NVMe Driver for ESXi

This Fling is a collection of ESXi Native Drivers which enables ESXi to recognize and consume various NVMe-based storage devices. These devices are not officially on the VMware HCL and have been developed to enable and support the VMware Community.

Currently, this Fling provides an emulated NVMe driver for the Apple 2018 Intel Mac Mini 8,1 and the Apple 2019 Intel Mac Pro 7,1 allowing customers to use the local NVMe SSD with ESXi. This driver is packaged up as an Offline Bundle and is only activated when it detects ESXi has been installed on either an Apple Mac Mini or Apple Mac Pro.

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VMware Cloud Foundation Powernova

VMware Cloud Foundation Powernova is a Fling built on top of VCF that provides the users the ability to perform Power Operations (Power ON, Power OFF) seamlessly across the entire inventory. It has a sleek UI to visualize the entire VCF inventory (which is the first of its kind for VCF) across the domains of VCF.

The UI is easy to use and elucidates the current Health and Power State of each node in the VCF inventory. Powernova lets the user work on the Power Operations on the components with domain specific inter dependencies automatically resolved.

Powernova also performs valid health checks on all nodes in the VCF inventory to ensure Power Operations are performed only on healthy nodes. Powernova takes minimal input (4 user defined inputs on their VCF system) and does all the magic for the users behind the scenes.

If any infrastructure maintenance activity, VCF migration activity, or power operations need to be performed only on specific domains in VCF, then Powernova is the one stop solution for all VCF users.

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Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool

Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool helps ease migration of Apps from one WS1 Access tenant to another (on-premises to SaaS or SaaS to SaaS) and use cases that require mirroring one tenant to another (for setting up UAT from PROD or vice versa) by providing capabilities listed below

Features
  • Copying of App Categories
  • Migrating Weblinks (3rd party IDP), icons as is
  • Creating a link to federated apps and copying the icons (to maintain the same user experience)
  • Copying App Assignment to a Category mapping

[sta_anchor id=”sdpdovci” /]

Sample Data Platform Deployment on Virtualized Cloud Infrastructure

Data is king and your users need a sample data platform quickly.

With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 with vRealize Automation deployment and stand a sample data platform based on vSphere Virtual Machines in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.

You can also choose whether to deploy a wavefront proxy and configure the components to send data to the wavefront proxy or use your own.

[sta_anchor id=”cndfe” /]

Community Networking Driver for ESXi

This Fling is a collection of ESXi Native Drivers which enables ESXi to recognize and consume various PCIe-based network adapters (See Requirements for details). These devices are not officially on the VMware HCL and have been developed to enable and support the VMware Community.

[sta_anchor id=”csci” /]

Code Stream Concourse Integrator

The Code Stream Concourse Integrator (CSCI) Fling provides integration between a vRealize Automation Code Stream and Concourse CI tools with which users can trigger Concourse CI pipelines from Code Stream pipelines without any additional tooling/scripting. This enables users to use the features from both the tools flexibly and seamlessly as per their needs. This solution is built using Code Stream’s extensibility feature named Custom Integration.

Updates

[sta_anchor id=”ecc” /]

ESXi Compatibility Checker

The ESXi Compatibility Checker helps the vSphere admin out in checking if their environment will work with later versions of ESXi. [non-sponsored advertisement]Also check Runecast, they can run a simulation for you as well.[/non-sponsored advertisement]

Changelog

Build 20210219

  • Fix for ESX / VC 7.0 U1 Versioning issues
  • A new logo 😉

[sta_anchor id=”vmlp” /]

VMware Machine Learning Platform

Our goal is to provide an end-to-end ML platform for Data Scientists to perform their job more effectively by running ML workloads on top of VMware infrastructure.

Using vMLP allows to:

Save the costs by enabling efficient use of shared GPUs for ML workfloads
Reduce the risks of broken Data Science workflows by leveraging well-tested and ready-to-use demos and project templates
Faster “go-to-market” for ML models by utilizing end-to-end oriented tooling including fast and easy model deployment and serving via standardized REST API

Changelog

Version 0.4.1

  • Jupyter: R Kernel
  • Jupyter: BitFusion 2.5.0 Demo
  • Jupyter: MADlib/RTS4MADlib on Greenplum Demo
  • Multiple bug fixes

[sta_anchor id=”vhpct” /]

Virtualized High Performance Computing Toolkit

This toolkit is intended to facilitate managing the lifecycle of these special configurations by leveraging vSphere APIs. It also includes features that help vSphere administrators perform some common vSphere tasks that are related to creating such high-performing environments, such as VM cloning, setting Latency Sensitivity, and sizing vCPUs, memory, etc.

Changelog

Nope 🙁

[sta_anchor id=”hpi” /]

Horizon Peripherals Intelligence

Horizon Peripherals Intelligence is an online self-serviced diagnosis service that can help increase the satisfaction when using peripheral devices with Horizon product by both the end users and the admin user. Currently, we support diagnosis for the following device categories – USB storage devices, USB printers, USB scanners, Cameras. We will continue to cover more device categories in the future

Changelog

Version 1.0

  • Add support for USB Audios, Speechmics, Signaturepads, Barcode scanners
  • Add support for L10n of web pages in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and English
  • Add support for window 7 and windows 2012R2
  • Add support for 32 bits OS
  • Add support for cmdline installation

[sta_anchor id=”woaafm” /]

Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.

Changelog

Version 1.2 

  • Added support for Big Sur
  • Updated icon

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Image optimize you must with osot!

Changelog

  • nope 🙁

Update: OSOT didn’t receive an update, someone only edited the page according to Hilko.

[sta_anchor id=”hhu” /]

Horizon Helpdesk Utility

Besides ControlUp the helpdesk fling  is the best tool to help your users.

Changelog

Version 1.5.0.24

  • Added support for Horizon 8.1

[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” /]

HCIBench

HCIBench stands for “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark”. It’s essentially an automation wrapper around the popular and proven open source benchmark tools: Vdbench and Fio that make it easier to automate testing across a HCI cluster. HCIBench aims to simplify and accelerate customer POC performance testing in a consistent and controlled way. The tool fully automates the end-to-end process of deploying test VMs, coordinating workload runs, aggregating test results, performance analysis and collecting necessary data for troubleshooting purposes.

Changelog

Version 2.5.3

  • Fixed graphite permission issue which blocked vdbench/fio grafana display
  • Updated drop cache script to make it compatible with upcoming vSphere
  • md5sum: 622625cc7a551bd7bf07ff4f19a57a17 HCIBench_2.5.3.ova

[sta_anchor id=”reach” /]

Horizon Reach

Again if you’re not a ControlUp customer Reach is the next best thing to manage you’re Horizon environment.

Changelog

Version 1.3.1.2

  • Added support for Horizon 8.1
  • Bugfixes

[sta_anchor id=”wsod” /]

Workspace ONE Discovery

VMware Workspace ONE UEM is used to manage Windows 10 endpoints, whether it be Certificate Management, Application Deployment or Profile Management. The Discovery Fling enables you to view these from the device point of view and review the Workspace ONE related services, which applications have been successfully deployed, use the granular view to see exactly what has been configured with Profiles, view User & Machine certificates and see which Microsoft Windows Updates have been applied.

Changelog

February, 16, 2021 – Version 1.2

  • Replaced icon
  • New logo 🙂

[sta_anchor id=”avmu” /]

App Volumes Migration Utility

App Volumes Migration Utility allows admins to migrate AppStacks managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new application package format of App Volumes 4. The format of these packages in App Volumes 4 have evolved to improve performance and help simplify application management.

Changelog

Version 1.0.7 Update

  • Migration fails if their are blacklisted registry entries containing embedded NULL chars.
  • File system migration fails if their are directories having a trailing DOT name ( ex- Microsoft. ).

The VMware Labs flings monthly for January 2021 – it’s OSOT time again!

January was a good month for me as I started the Python 100DaysOfCode challenge but the VMware engineers also did plenty of work. Seven flingss received an update and it looks like we have a single new release.

New Release

Desktop Container Tools

Updates

Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Power vRA Cloud

DRS Dump Insight

vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Workspace ONE Discovery

Python Client for VMC on AWS

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”dct” /]

Desktop Container Tools

Desktop Container Tools is a free tool that allows you to do basic management of vctl (a CLI tool shipped with VMware Fusion) container engine on macOS for running containers and Kubernetes clusters.

Features

  • Easy&Access

Handy management of vctl container engine through the user interface and Touch Bar. Configure your virtual machines for containers and Kubernetes cluster without CLI.

  • Multi-language Support

Currently support English & Simplified Chinese. More languages are underway.

  • Light & Free

It’s light and it’s free.

Updated Flings

[sta_anchor id=”daftkg” /]

Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

The Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is a sample appliance to help customers to learn and deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.

Changelog

Jan 05, 2021 – v1.2.1

  • Support for latest TKG 1.2.1 release
  • Support for TKG Workload Cluster upgrade workflow from K8s 1.18.10 to 1.19.3
  • Updated embedded Harbor to use self-sign TLS certificate (new feature of TKG 1.2.1)
  • Updated to latest version of Harbor (2.1.2)

Known Issue:

DNS resolution issue when installing TKG Extensions. Workaround is to add the following snippet to kapp-controller.yaml

volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /etc/hosts
name: etc
subPath: hosts
volumes:
- name: etc
hostPath:
path: /etc

[sta_anchor id=”pvrac” /]

Power vRA Cloud

PowervRA Cloud is a PowerShell module that abstracts the VMware vRealize Automation Cloud APIs to a set of easily used PowerShell functions. This tool provides a comprehensive command line environment for managing your VMware vRealize Automation Cloud environment.

Changelog

Version 1.3

  • 4 x New Cmdlets for VMC
  • 5 x New Cmdlets for AWS
  • Powershell 7 on Windows Support
  • Bugfixes

[sta_anchor id=”drsdi” /]

DRS Dump Insight

DRS Dump Insight is a portal that vSPhere administrators can use to analyze why DRS performed actions.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Added support for 7.0 and 7.0U1 dumps.
  • Toggle added for selective analysis of all full dumps.
  • Bug fixes and backend improvements

[sta_anchor id=”vsamt” /]

vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

The vSphere Software Asset Management (vSAM) is a tool that collects and summarizes vSphere product deployment information. It calls on vSphere APIs for deployment data and produces a PDF report that the customer can consult as a part of their infrastructure review and planning process. This lightweight Java application runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS.

Changelog

Version 1.3 Update

  • Show Tanzu products in the report.
  • Bug fixes.

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Building a new golden image? Use the OS Optimizer tool to let it perform better but please test test test if all your apps are working.

Changelog

January 2021, b2001 Bug Fixes

  • All optimization entries have been added back into the main user template. This allows manual tuning and selection of all optimizations.
  • Fixed two hardware acceleration selections were not previously controlled by the Common Option for Visual Effect to disable hardware acceleration.

Optimize

  • During an Optimize, the optimization selections are automatically exported to a default json file (%ProgramData%\VMware\OSOT\OptimizedTemplateData.json).

Analyze

  • When an Analyze is run, if the default json file exists (meaning that this image has already been optimized), this is imported and used to select the optimizations and the Common Options selections with the previous choices.
  • If the default selections are required, on subsequent runs of the OS Optimization Tool, delete the default json file, relaunch the tool and run Analyze.

Command Line

  • The OptimizedTemplateData.json file can also be used from the command line with the -applyoptimization parameter.

Optimizations

  • Changed entries for Hyper-V services to not be selected by default. These services are required for VMs deployed onto Azure. Windows installation sets these to manual (trigger) so these so not cause any overhead on vSphere, when left with the default setting.

[sta_anchor id=”wsoned” /]

Workspace ONE Discovery

VMware Workspace ONE UEM is used to manage Windows 10 endpoints, whether it be Certificate Management, Application Deployment or Profile Management. The Discovery Fling enables you to view these from the device point of view and review the Workspace ONE related services, which applications have been successfully deployed, use the granular view to see exactly what has been configured with Profiles, view User & Machine certificates and see which Microsoft Windows Updates have been applied.

Changelog

January 14, 2021 – Version 1.1

  • Updated application icon (ICO)
  • Monitoring the VMware Horizon Client, VMware Digital Experience Telemetry and VMware Hub Health services

[sta_anchor id=”pcfvrmcoaws” /]

Python Client for VMC on AWS

Python Client for VMware Cloud on AWS is an open-source Python-based tool. Written in Python, the tool enables VMware Cloud on AWS users to automate the consumption of their VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.

Changelog

Version 1.2

  • Added a Dockerfile to build a Docker image to run PyVMC
  • Added Egress counters visibility
  • Added routing table visibility
  • Added L2VPN support
  • Added Nested Group support

The VMware Labs flings monthly for December 2021: Happy New Year

Let’s start with wishing all of you a happy New Year!

<Insert random stolen 2021 fireworks picture>

Just like me with my bog it’s been quiet on the flings front. No new ones but 4 received updates.

HCIBench

VMware Event Broker Appliance

Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference

App Volumes Packaging Utility

Updates

[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” /]

HCIBench

HCIBench is one of many performance benchmarking tools, make sure to use it wisely with real life data sizes.

Changelog

Version 2.5.2

  • fixed testing issue for hybrid cluster
  • fixed testing issue for the version prior to vSphere 6.7
  • fixed easy-run issue with self-defined ip range
  • replaced icon
  • upgrade httpd to 2.4.46

[sta_anchor id=”veba” /]

VMware Event Broker Appliance

All kinds of changes to the VMware Event Broker Appliance fling, not only a new logo. You can check them out on William Lams blog here.

[sta_anchor id=”samli” /]

Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference

Project Supernova is to build a common machine learning inference service framework by enabling machine learning inference accelerators across edge endpoint devices, edge systems and cloud, with or without hardware accelerators.

Changelog

Version 1.2 Update 

  • Support Xilinx Cloud FPGA

[sta_anchor id=”avpu” /]

App Volumes Packaging Utility

The App Volumes Packaging Utility helps to package applications. With this fling, packagers can add the necessary metadata to MSIX app attach VHDs so they can be used alongside existing AV format packages. The MSIX format VHDs will require App Volumes 4, version 2006 or later and Windows 10, version 2004 or later.

Changelog

Version 1.1 Update

  • Rebase with the latest code

The VMware Labs flings monthly for November 2020: time for a new OSOT

In November only one new fling was released while seven other received update. One that received an update was the Horizon Session Recording fling that I blogged about at the time of release. Also it looks like the VSAN team is letting all its tools loose on the community because yet another tool for VSAN has been released (Storage Simulator Using Cellular Automata). The OS Optimization tool received some nice command-line features to improve your automated Golden images builds.

New Release

Storage Simulator Using Cellular Automata

Updates

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference

vRealize Build Tools

Horizon Session Recording

Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning

VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

ESXi Arm Edition

New Release

[sta_anchor id=”ssuca” /]

Storage Simulator Using Cellular Automata

Storage Simulator Using Cellular Automata is loosely based on the principles of cellular automata (CA) to model the performance characteristics of data path in a vSAN cluster. In general, CA can used to model and study any complex system with number of elements operating in parallel having short range relationships that as whole exhibit emergent behavior. When simulating a storage stack, we are modelling transmission of data blocks across a network of hardware resources communicating with each other through various interconnects. These includes processors, caches, DRAM, SSDs HDDs, PCIe links, ethernet links etc.

When modelling an IO request such as read/write, vSAN software stack applies various functions as the data block moves through this network. These functions include, data replication, parity calculation, checksum, encryption, compression etc. Some of these can lead to IO amplification.

This Fling implements a standalone vSAN simulation utility to aid developers in getting ideal speed-of-light (SOL) performance of a given cluster. This can be used as a starting point to rapidly iterate various ideas/features by making small changes to simulator and quantifying its potential performance impact. It can also be used by customers/partners to identify potential bottlenecks of their deployment under various type of workloads.

Updates

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Always good to see the OSOT getting some new features, bug fixes but laso some nice new command line features and also very important extra knobs to use for Office.

Changelog

November, 2020, b2000

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved the issue that stopped automatic logon in Server and WVD edition after Sysprep process.
  • Resolved a reboot prompt problem which displayed in process of generalizing on Win10 1607 LTSB.
  • Resolved the issue of failing to disable anti-virus feature on Windows 10 2004.
  • Fixed issue where re-enabling Windows Update would pull down feature updates by default.

Common Options

  • Common options selections are now remembered between different runs of the OSOT.
  • For all tabs, user now can apply different Common Options settings multiple times on optimized system.
  • Under Update tab, introduce a new option to switch on/off update feature of Office 365, 2016, 2019
  • Under Store Apps tab, disable checkbox for removed built-in apps

Update

  • New option to defer or directly trigger feature updates
  • New option to defer or directly trigger quality updates
  • New option to skip Office Click-to-Run updates
  • Added commands to stop and disable the App Volumes services when re-enabling Windows Update. These are then set back to automatic when Windows Update is disabled again.

Optimizations

  • Added the ability to export and import selected optimization items on the Optimize page (Export Selections and Import Selections).

Changes:

  • Default for “Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service” is now unselected by default to resolve missed language bar issue.
  • Default for “Connected Devices Platform Service” is now unselected by default.

New:

  • Turn off account privacy notifications in Office 365 and Office 2019

[sta_anchor id=”samli” /]

Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference

Project Supernova is to build a common machine learning inference service framework by enabling machine learning inference accelerators across edge endpoint devices, edge systems and cloud, with or without hardware accelerators.

Changelog

Version 1.1 Update

Support Bitfusion
K8S and docker-compose deployment

[sta_anchor id=”vbt” /]

vRealize Build Tools

vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.

Changelog

Version 2.10.0 Update

  • [MVN] Improvements in package installer
  • [vROps] Regex support in YAML definitions for vROps content
  • [vRLI] Regex support in YAML definitions for vRLI content
  • [POL] Added Polyglot and ABX support:
    • NodeJS, Python and PowerShell code support
  • new archetype: com.vmware.pscoe.polyglot.archetypes:package-polyglot-archetype
    • two new project types: com.vmware.pscoe.polyglot:polyglot-project; com.vmware.pscoe.serverless:serverless-project
    • tooling for compiling, bundling and packaging: polyglotpkg
  • [TS] Added support for description field for workflow inputs and outputs in the Workflow decorator
  • [vRA-NG] Fixed NPE error during custom resources import

[sta_anchor id=”hsr” /]

Horizon Session Recording

No need to explain the Horizon Session Recording anymore, just hit the link that I have posted at the beginning of this post.

Changelog

Version 2.2.0

Server Changes:

  • Added the ability to import server settings easily from another running server.
  • Added the ability to filter searches based on farm / pool.
  • Added the ability to lock and unlock sessions from the session view page.

Agent Changes:

1: Misc bugfixes.
2: PowerShell API to interact with the Recording agent, to perform such tasks as:

  • Start a session recording.
  • Stop a session recording.
  • Troubleshoot connectivity issues.
  • View machine configuration
  • Add a trusted certificate.

[sta_anchor id=”sdpvcfvtk” /]

Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning

With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 deployment and stand a sample data platform on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid guest cluster in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.

Changelog

Version Update 1.1

  • Bug fix for storage class for bitnami kafka

[sta_anchor id=”vaffh” /]

VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software. Upon deploying the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home, the user will be prompted to enter information to configure the Folding@Home software. Once the appliance is deployed, the Folding@Home client is running and ready for Working Units. The Fling is also pre-configured to allow remote management of the Folding@Home client. For more information on the Folding@Home Project and how we can be a Force for Good against diseases like the Coronavirus, visit the website www.foldingathome.org.

Nov 18, 2020 – v1.0.5

  • F@H software has been updated to latest 7.6.21

VMware-Appliance-FaH_1.0.5.ova
MD5: 31d1a0c3dd4c308694f24cae77baee95

[sta_anchor id=”esxiae” /]

ESXi Arm Edition

Hello ESXi-Arm Fling participants!

Over the past several years, you’ve seen us demonstrate our virtualization technology on the Arm platform across several use cases, everything from running mission critical workloads on a windmill, to running on the SmartNIC, to running on AWS Graviton in the cloud. We realized that the resilient platform created for the datacenter can be equally valuable in non-traditional environments. We’ve learned a lot from exploratory discussions with customers and Arm Silicon Partners.

Changelog

November 30, 2020 – v1.2

Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.

  • UI: Disable datastore browsing when no datastores are present
  • PSCI: Fix missing context_id argument for CPU_ON calls
  • GICv2: Always enable SGIs, as GIC-500
  • arm64: Support for big-endian guests
  • Remove requirements/restrictions on initrd for UEFI-less VMs

Build 17230755
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-17230755.aarch64.iso

ControlUp loves Horizon Session Recording!

Ok maybe it’s more me than ControlUp but the usual audience on this blogs knows that I work for ControlUp and that I love the VMware flings. Recently we received the question from several South-America based customers if we where able to start the Horizon Session Recordings using a Script Based Action. Technically we would have been able to but with the current version we would have to add the user to an ad group that was configured for this and than would be at the mercy of AD replication for the recording to actually start. Que Trentent Tye who reached out to the one and only Andrew Morgan (imho king of the VMware Horizon related flings) if it would be possible to add an API or PowerShell module to start the recordings. I guess Andrew’s reaction was that he saw the use case for this and within no-time he had a beta version ready for us that had a Powershell module. By the time you read this the new version has been added to the flings site that includes all of these goodies and you can find it here.

<I wanted to insert a picture of Andrew here wearing a crown but that was too much>

The Horizon Session Recording fling

First let’s look at what the Horizon Session Recording fling actually does.

VMware Horizon Session Recording allows administrators of a VMware Horizon environment to record their users activity in their Blast Extreme virtual desktop and application sessions. Recordings are uploaded from the agent devices to the central web service, for central storage and ease of viewing.

The Session Recordings are stored as MP4 files for watching via the web console or downloading to play in a local player.

So we have an agent> server application where the videos are stored on the server. During the setup I found that this was very easy but configuring a proper SSL certificate makes things a lot easier as you otherwise need to supply the thumbprint of the self-signed certificate during installation of the agent or in the registry.

The server interface is easy enough with the standard dashboard showing recent recordings while on the Recordings tab you can search for for specific recordings.

The agent is a plain installer that only asks for the server location and the SSL certificate thumbprint. The last one is only needed when the certificate itself is not trusted, if you used a VA signed certificate for the server there’s no need to enter the thumbprint.

Starting a recording

As said in the previous versions of the recorder it was required to configure an ad group and add users to that group to record their sessions. With this version we get a powershell module installed with the agent. It gets even better because if you copy the entire /api folder from the agent installation folder to another system you’re perfectly able to start recordings from there.

Starting a recording using powershell is a matter of importing the proper dll

import-module Horizon.SessionRecording.PowerShell.dll

And now the user can start the recording themselves if they have too many rights by using Start-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID %sessionid%. The session ID can be found as a metric in ControlUp or in the task manager if you add the column under users.

Start-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID 1

My user clearly didn’t have enough rights on the system so I got an error, actually not a bad thing so users can’t easily overload the server this way.

Update: Andrew confirmed this is by design to stop users from recording each other.

Starting the recording remote is a matter of adding the computername to the command

Start-HSRSessionRecording -ComputerName pod02-2001 -SessionID 1

Here you also see in the bottom right corner the message that the user receives when a recording is started.

And stopping is a matter of this command.

Stop-HSRSessionRecording -ComputerName pod02-2001 -SessionID 1

Other Cmdlets in the PS module

Integrating with ControlUp

To integrate the Horizon session recording with ControlUp I have created two basic Script Actions. both use three arguments, besides the required SessionId I add the username and machine name in the output so it’s obvious for whom the recording was started.

$sessionId=$args[0]
$username=$args[1]
$computer=$args[2]

try{
    $InstallDir = Get-ItemPropertyValue -path "hklm:\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware Blast\SessionRecordingAgent" -Name installdir
}
catch{
    write-host "Error determining the Horizon Session recording installation location. Please make sure the Horizon Sesison recording Agent is Installed."
}
try{
    import-module "$($InstallDir)\api\horizon.sessionrecording.powershell.dll"
}
catch{
    write-host "Error loading the Horizon Session Recording PowerShell Module. Make sure the latest vesrion of the Horizon Session Recording Agent is installed"
}
try{
    Start-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID $sessionId
}
Catch{
    write-host "Error starting the recording"
}

write-host "Started session recording for $username on $computer"
$sessionId=$args[0]
$username=$args[1]
$computer=$args[2]

try{
    $InstallDir = Get-ItemPropertyValue -path "hklm:\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware Blast\SessionRecordingAgent" -Name installdir
}
catch{
    write-host "Error determining the Horizon Session recording installation location. Please make sure the Horizon Sesison recording Agent is Installed."
}
try{
    import-module "$($InstallDir)\api\horizon.sessionrecording.powershell.dll"
}
catch{
    write-host "Error loading the Horizon Session Recording PowerShell Module. Make sure the latest vesrion of the Horizon Session Recording Agent is installed"
}
try{
    stop-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID $sessionId
}
Catch{
    write-host "Error stopping the recording"
}

write-host "Stopped session recording for $username on $computer"

Both these script will get better error handling and notifications in the future but you still see the old error in the background but with the notification that the recording was started.

And stopping the recording

And that shows how easy it is to control the Horizon Session Recording using a Script Based Action. If you combine this with a trigger, cpu usage for example you might be able to capture what is causing that spike, just remember to also create a trigger than stops it after the cpu goes down again.

Changelog

Version 2.2.0

Server Changes:

  • Added the ability to import server settings easily from another running server.
  • Added the ability to filter searches based on farm / pool.
  • Added the ability to lock and unlock sessions from the session view page.

Agent Changes:

1: Misc bugfixes.
2: PowerShell API to interact with the Recording agent, to perform such tasks as:

  • Start a session recording.
  • Stop a session recording.
  • Troubleshoot connectivity issues.
  • View machine configuration
  • Add a trusted certificate.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for October 2020

First of all I hope that everyone is staying safe en sound and keeping their social distance. Over here we’ve been back to a light lockdown again but at least most of the shops are still open. I just opened the flings site and the VMware engineers have been dam busy! This are the tabs I had after opening all of them.

If I count it right I have six new flings and another eight received updates, I can’t remember the last time we had so much activity on the flings front. The new flings include one of the most anticipated VMware products for the last years: ESXi on Arm!

New Releases

Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning

vSphere Pod Autoscaler

Workspace ONE Discovery

ESXi Arm Edition

Horizon Peripherals Intelligence

Storage Performance Tester

Updating Flings

vRealize Build Tools

VMCA Certificate Generator

USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

App Volumes Migration Utility

True SSO Diagnostic Utility

HCIBench

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”sdpvcfvtkp” /]

Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning

With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 deployment and stand a sample data platform on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid guest cluster in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.

Additionally, this Fling comes with a market data sample application (using real market data from dxFeed) that shows how all these data platform components work together.

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vSphere Pod Autoscaler

This Fling is useful for vSphere PodVM users who want to perform auto-scaling on vSphere PodVMs based on memory utilization.

This python script is intended to implement the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler algorithm for podVM for the vSphere 7.0 with Kubernetes. The implementation follows the algorithm from the official Kubernetes documents: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/horizontal-pod-autoscale/

This script will automatically scale the number of PodVMs in the environment. The script will perform the following actions:

  1. The script will retrieve the memory utilization of PodVMs in the environment
  2. The script will then allow users to provide the memory threshold for PodVMs
  3. The script will then calculate the desired number of replicas based on the memory threshold and utilization
  4. The script will automatically scale the PodVMs to the desired number of replicas calculated in step #3

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Workspace ONE Discovery

VMware Workspace ONE UEM is used to manage Windows 10 endpoints, whether it be Certificate Management, Application Deployment or Profile Management. The Discovery Fling enables you to view these from the device point of view and review the Workspace ONE related services, which applications have been successfully deployed, use the granular view to see exactly what has been configured with Profiles, view User & Machine certificates and see which Microsoft Windows Updates have been applied.

Discovery provides you a view of the Managed device and can be used to help with troubleshooting.

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ESXi Arm Edition

Hello ESXi-Arm Fling participants!

Over the past several years, you’ve seen us demonstrate our virtualization technology on the Arm platform across several use cases, everything from running mission critical workloads on a windmill, to running on the SmartNIC, to running on AWS Graviton in the cloud. We realized that the resilient platform created for the datacenter can be equally valuable in non-traditional environments. We’ve learned a lot from exploratory discussions with customers and Arm Silicon Partners.

Now we’d like to give our customers a chance to evaluate this technology in their own environments. This evaluation program is for the enterprise architects who are considering the viability of virtualizing Arm workloads, for the test/dev team looking for a way to spin up Arm environments, and for the tinkerers who simply want to explore running ESXi-Arm in a small form factor Edge environment. We’re interested to understand what features you will find most valuable, and how you will want to deploy this technology.

As there has been an update for this fling already here’s the changelog:

Changelog

October 22, 2020 – v1.1

Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.

  • Fix for https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-edition/bugs/1098 (PSOD adding to VDS)
  • Support for Arm N1 SDP platform
  • Support for VMs on Neoverse N1 CPU
  • Pass-thru stability improvements to LS1046A and LX2160A platforms
  • Fix for vCenter/DRS incorrect CPU usage
  • Fix for VM crash when VM storage fills up
  • Stability fix for non-coherent DMA device support
  • Installer: tolerate RAM size within 4% of 4GB instead of 3.125 (for the otherwise unsupported RK3399 boards)
  • Serial port handling improvements (for unsupported/unknown boards, to be a bit more resilient of firmware configuration errors)
    • Documentation Updates:
      Moved and expanded iSCSI doc for Pi doc to main ESXi-Arm Fling doc
    • Added LS1046ARDB docs (including ref to it from main ESXi-Arm doc and Fling website)
    • Fixed Ampere server name and links (its HR330A/HR350A, not SR-something)
    • Added Arm N1SDP document (including ref to it from main ESXi-Arm doc)
    • Updated GuestOSes known to work with ESXi-Arm including new “Verified” section
    • Updated instruction to update EEPROM for Pi doc

Build 17068872
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-17068872.aarch64.iso

October 06, 2020 – v1.0 (Initial Release)

Build 16966451

VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-16966451.aarch64.iso

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Horizon Peripherals Intelligence

Horizon Peripherals Intelligence is an online self-serviced diagnosis service that can help increase the satisfaction when using peripheral devices with Horizon product by both the end users and the admin user. Currently, we support diagnosis for the following device categories – USB storage devices, USB printers, USB scanners, Cameras. We will continue to cover more device categories in the future.

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Storage Performance Tester

Storage Performance Tester is a one-click storage performance test tool, which is able to collect IOPS, latency and CPU cycles per I/O for ESXi storage stack. This tool automates all the testing steps including the customized VMs deployment, I/O workload running, and storage performance analysis. It displays the performance metrics through multiple visualized graphical charts. The only thing that users need to do is enter one command and wait for the performance report of your server.

This tool is designed to be a developer-friendly tool help troubleshoot and identify storage performance issues. It could be used to validate the maximum performance of new storage hardwares/drivers and setups of vSphere/vSAN. For more details please check the guild located in the instructions

Updated Flings

[sta_anchor id=”vmcacg” /]

VMCA Certificate Generator

The VMCA Certificate Generator is useful to create your own certificates using the VMCA in vCenter if you don’t have access to a purpose build system in your network.

Changelog

Version 1.0 Update

  • Added the open source license file.

[sta_anchor id=”vrbt” /]

vRealize Build Tools

vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.

Changelog

Version 2.8.8 Update

  • [MVN] Support SHA1 checksum generation for JS,TS,XML,vRA,vRANG project types.
  • [MVN] Include the pom.xml description content as description of the built vRO package artifact
  • [TS-AutoGen] Define a property for storing the version of the API for which this project is generated.
  • [TS-AutoGen] Store the API version as part of the vRO package description.
  • [vRA-NG] Adds support for import/export of custom resources and resource actions.
  • [TS] Typescript projects for vRO, now support syntax for specifying a description for a configuration element attribute.
  • [vRA-NG] Adds support for using project name when managing vRA-NG content.
  • [vROps] Adds support for vROps 8.1
  • [vROps] Change default authentication provider to Token-based Authentication
  • [TS] Extend vropkg tool to support Polyglot bundle
  • [TS] Support for skipping unmapped dependencies, e.g. –skipUnmappedDeps
  • [TS] Bumped up Typescript version to 3.8.3
  • [TS] Added support for tsconfig file override using the project option of the tsc executable.
  • [MVN] Updated vRBT infrastructure project with latest dependencies and improved installation robustness
  • [vROps] Fixes a problem with resource kind during alert definition import
  • [TS] Use fixed node package versions
  • [vROps] Support for policy assignment to custom groups
  • [vRA] Fixes a problem with vra-ng authentication always setting System Domain and users not being able to authenticate with different domain
  • [vROps] Removed sshHost from Installer. Use host instead.
  • [TS] Make dependency:go-offline execution conditional
  • [TS] All version of Node are supported from 10.x and above
  • [TS] npm repository is no longer needed [TS] Support for RequireJS imports/exports
  • [TS] Support for yaml configurations
  • [TS] Improved workflows and policy templates transpilation
  • [TS] Improved diagnostic messages
  • [TS] Improved handling of cycle references
  • [TS] Extended workflow support
  • [TS] Support for ES2017.String

[sta_anchor id=”unndfe” /]

USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

USB has become one the most widely adopted connection type in the world & USB network adapters are also popular among Edge computing platforms. In some platforms, there is either limited or no PCI/PCIe slots for I/O expansion & in some cases, an Ethernet port is not even available. Another advantage of a USB-based network adapter is that it can be hot-plugged into an system without a reboot which means no impact to the workload, same is true for hot-remove.

This Fling supports the most popular USB network adapter chipsets found in the market. The ASIX USB 2.0 gigabit network ASIX88178a, ASIX USB 3.0 gigabit network ASIX88179, Realtek USB 3.0 gigabit network RTL8152/RTL8153 and Aquantia AQC111U. These are relatively inexpensive devices that many of our existing vSphere customers are already using and are familiar with.

Changelog

October 26, 2020 – v1.7

  • Added support for ESXi 7.0 Update 1
  • USB NIC Bindings are now automatically persistent
  • 5GbE USB NICs now properly show Full vs Half Duplex

Note: This is ONLY for ESXi 7.0 Update 1, for ESXi 7.0/6.7/6.5, please ensure you are using the correct version of driver.

ESXi701-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-40599856-component-17078334.zip

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Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

The Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes grid includes all the things needed tolearn about and run a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.

Changelog

Oct 28, 2020 – v1.2.0

  • Support for latest TKG 1.2.0 release
  • Support for TKG Workload Cluster upgrade workflow from K8s 1.18.8 to 1.19.1
  • Updated to latest version of Harbor (1.10.5), Docker Compose (1.27.4), Kubectl (1.18.10), Octant (0.16.1), TMC (6867ad54), TKG Crashd (0.3.1) CLI in appliance

TKG-Demo-Appliance-1.2.0.ova
MD5: 0f0c60358a867b432698144820f8e8b0

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Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.

Changelog

Version 1.1 Update

  • 10/27/2020 – Fixed bug that prevented Privacy Preferences from loading when default shell was set to zsh.

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App Volumes Migration Utility

App Volumes Migration Utility allows admins to migrate AppStacks managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new application package format of App Volumes 4. The format of these packages in App Volumes 4 have evolved to improve performance and help simplify application management.

Changelog

1.0.6 Version Update

  • Create meta_json.zip in migrated appstacks.

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HCIBench

HCIBench is THE tool to test the performance of your VSAN cluster. Always use your own metrics based on the actual requirements for your environment.

HCIBench stands for “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark”. It’s essentially an automation wrapper around the popular and proven open source benchmark tools: Vdbench and Fio that make it easier to automate testing across a HCI cluster. HCIBench aims to simplify and accelerate customer POC performance testing in a consistent and controlled way. The tool fully automates the end-to-end process of deploying test VMs, coordinating workload runs, aggregating test results, performance analysis and collecting necessary data for troubleshooting purposes.

HCIBench is not only a benchmark tool designed for vSAN, but also could be used to evaluate the performance of all kinds of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Storage in vSphere environment.

Changelog

Version 2.5.1 Update

  • Fixed non vSAN cluster testing issue
  • Fixed pre-validation storage policy issue
  • Added in-place upgrading capability, to do so, you can also upgrade HCIBench to the latest version by running the following command in HCIBench: tdnf install -y git && git clone https://github.com/cwei44/HCIBench.git && sh HCIBench/upgrade.sh
    MD5 Checksum: 1d14426f92b353e90469a8623ade2bc1 HCIBench_2.5.1.ova

Version 2.5.0 Update

  • Added support vSAN HCI Mesh testing, now you can test both local and remote vSAN datastores at the same time
  • Added support local storage including VMFS and vSAN-Direct testing
  • Added vSAN Debug Mode, allow user to collect vm-support bundle and vmkstats automatically when running testing against vSAN
  • Changed guest VMs name convention to {vm_prefix}-{datastore_id}-batch_num-sequence_num
  • Enhanced testing report format
  • Allow user to specify customized IP addresses for guest VMs
  • Allow user to configure CPU and Memory for guest VMs
  • Added best practice and network troubleshooting guide in the user manual
  • Bug fixes
  • MD5 Checksum: 817c2c788364f252e728d4253b3b96da HCIBench_2.5.0.ova

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True SSO Diagnostic Utility

The True SSO Diagnostic Utility allows for validation of the various components needed for True SSO.

Horizon View True SSO uses Microsoft Enterprise Certificate Servers to issue certificates that are used when the user logs on to the desktop. The Horizon View Enrollment Server (ES) is responsible for sending a certificate request to certificate servers, and for monitoring the PKI configuration settings in the Active Directory.

Changelog

Version 2.2

  • The tool has been updated to allow performance-testing of the enrollment-server.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for September 2020

[Disclaimer] any typo’s in this blog posts are Brian Madden’s fault since I am listening to his VMworld session with Carl Webster[/disclaimer]

Yes this blog post is really being created during this session. Hopefully you also where able to join VMworld because even though I hate the virtual events and am missing the live interaction with people I am still kinda liking the event. This month 4 new flings have been released while another 4 received updates.

New

vRealize Network Insight and HCX Integration

Python Utility for VMware Cloud Foundation Management

VMCA Certificate Generator

SQL30 – An ORM for SQLITE on ESX

Updates

Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference

VMware Machine Learning Platform

Horizon Session Recording

App Volumes Entitlement Sync

New Flings

[sta_anchor id=”vnihi” /]

vRealize Network Insight and HCX Integration

This integration script between vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) and VMware HCX, allows you to streamline the application migration process.

First, use the application discovery methods within vRNI to discover the application boundaries, including the VMs (or other workloads), to form application constructs within vRNI. This integration script then synchronizes the vRNI application constructs into HCX Mobility Groups, saving you the time that it would’ve taken to do this manually. After the sync, you can pick up the migration process and execute the migration.

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Python Utility for VMware Cloud Foundation Management

Python Utility for VMware Cloud Foundation Management is a lightweight python-based command line VCF administration tool. It offers an interactive shell interface to interact with the VMware Cloud Foundation (SDDC Manager) public API.

After the utility is installed vcfkite binary is available on machine which shall be used to launch interactive shell interface to interact with SDDC Manager(uses SDDC Manager Public API’s)

This utility is platform independent (tested on Linux CentOS/Windows W2K12) and would be distributed as a python’s wheel package which can be easily installed using python’s native pip3 command (For details information check the Instructions and Requirements sections).

The purpose of this utility is to make VMware Cloud Foundation API’s more accessible to users/customers and work towards the adoption of the VMware Cloud Foundation API & VMware Cloud Foundation in general.

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VMCA Certificate Generator

The VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) Certificate Generator gives you the ability to simply retrieve certificates signed by the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) running on vCenter / PSC.

This can be useful when you don’t have access to a company wide Certificate Authority (e.g. small-business or running in a lab), but you want to have valid certificates for your services.
The certificates can be used for other VMware products like vRealize Suite, NSX as well as 3rd party services.
Once you trust the VMCA root certificate (to be retrieved by the vCenter URL or over this tool), you trust all services with the new certificates.

The validity of the certificates is not changeable and depends on the vCenter version. With vCenter 7.0 you’ll get certificates valid for 2 years.

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SQL30 – An ORM for SQLITE on ESX

Persistence is an integral part of any real world software application. A widely used method of achieving (file based) persistence is through SQLITE database. Python natively provides support for interacting with SQLITE with the help of module “sqlite” (sqlite3 in python3). SQLAlchemy is a popular ORM used for interacting with sqlite database in Python. However, this and many other similar ORMs do not work on ESX Hypervisor as is. It is because these packages have dependency on other packages which are not supported / installable on ESX hypervisor further.

In this fling, we present SQL30, a ZERO weight ORM for SQLITE database written using only native python constructs. This python package has no dependency on any external python package and works as is on ESX version 6.5 and above.

SQL30 is useful as :

It helps developers achieve persistence in Python applications even on platforms such as ESX which have limited / trailing support for Python.
It improves productivity as developers can write (SQL based) database applications without having to learn SQL itself.

 

Updated Flings

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Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference

The Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference fling is made to enable Machine learning on the edge.

Changelog

Version 1.0 Update

Compared 0.0.1, this release supports:

  1. New HW accelerators – AMD GPU + Xilinx FPGA
  2. CPU Accelerations with OpenVINO
  3. Basic K8S deployment
  4. Versatile APIs
  5. vSphere Bitfusion support
  6. More use cases like facial mask

 

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VMware Machine Learning Platform

The VMware Machine Learning Platform helps Data Scientists perform their magic ML workloads on VMware infrastructure.

Changelog

Version 0.4.0 Update

  • Federated Data and Model Manager (FDMM)
  • Docs Service accessible at /vmlp-docs/
  • Better LDAP deployment configuration
  • Image “prepull” tool
  • Added BitFusion 2.0 support to Keras/Pytorch examples
  • Lots of bug fixes

Includes contributions from: Jiahao “Luke” Chen (Federated Data and Model Manager)

[sta_anchor id=”hsr” /]

Horizon Session Recording

The Horizon Session Recording fling can assist in troubleshooting the desktop by not having the user repeat their steps time over time.

Changelog

Version 2.1.50 Update

  • Fixed multiple deadlocks in the agent recording.
  • Added support for Horizon 8 (2006).

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App Volumes Entitlement Sync

The App Volumes Entitlement Sync is a great help when you have multiple App Volumes environments to make sure everyone gets the same apps everywhere.

Changelog

Version 4.3 Update

  • Fixes Typo in Secondary Site Server Label
  • No longer shows non-replicated applications as errors in the Fix Apps dialog–Much easier to read what will be fixed.

 

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for August 2020- Time for a new OSOT

The schedule builder for VMworld is open but we should have been at VMworld US around this time if only that stupid virus would have stayed away. In august there where three new fling releases and eight got one or more updates.

New

Software-Defined Data Center Skywalk

Federated Machine Learning on Kubernetes

VMware Container For Folding@Home

Updates

FlowGate

VMware Machine Learning Platform

Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter

VMware OS Optimization Tool

App Volumes Migration Utility

USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”skywalk” /]

Software-Defined Data Center Skywalk

Even with the description it’s not always clear what Software-Defined Data Center Skywalk does but apparently it helps in building vpn’s between VMC & on-prem datacenters.

The current API/UI workflow requires multiple operations in different VMC Software Defined Data Centers’ (SDDC) either using API’s or UI. We are solving the problem to auto register, discover, connect VPN’s between VMC SDDC’s on single click event. The Distributed Firewall DFW firewall policies are also mapped on user inputs from on-premises to VMC SDDC using this interface.

[sta_anchor id=”fmlk” /]

Federated Machine Learning on Kubernetes

Federated Machine Learning (FML) is one of the most promising machine learning technologies to solve data silos and strengthening data privacy and security, which is accepted by more and more financial organization. FATE is an opensource project hosted by Linux Foundation to provide a federated learning framework. FATE has been used to increase the performance of predictions in credit reporting, insurance and other financial areas, as well as surveillance and visual detection projects. It helps organizations to comply with strict privacy regulations and laws such as GDPR and CCPA.

This Fling provides a tool to quickly deploy and manage a FATE cluster by either Docker-compose or Kubernetes. Its features include:

Test and develop models in Jupyter using Federated Machine Learning technologies;
Build a FATE cluster with full life-cycle management of federated learning platform.
In the Fling, a command line tool talks to Kubenetes to initiate an entire FATE cluster. The Fling includes a sample configuration which can be used to quickly deploy and try out federated learning. The configuration can be customized based on actual requirements.

[sta_anchor id=”vcfh” /]

VMware Container For Folding@Home

VMware Container for Folding@ Home is a docker container for running folding at home client. This container is supported on both Docker standalone clients and on a Kubernetes Cluster. Optional command line toggle GPU support on or off as well as all other common FAH client command line in puts.

The Folding@Home container is configured to automatically join Team VMware ID 52737. Everyone is welcome to join! Check out http://vmwa.re/fah for team and individual statistics.

Updated flings

[sta_anchor id=”flowgate” /]

FlowGate

In enterprise data centers, IT infrastructure and facility are generally managed separately, which leads to information gaps. Collaboration between facility and IT infrastructure systems are limited or manual, and virtualization adds more complexity.

The goal of Flowgate is to make facility awareness in IT management system and make IT operations management and automation better on high availability, cost saving and improved sustainability, with more information on power, cooling, environment (e.g. humidity, temperature) and security.

Changelog

Version 1.1.2 Update

  • Add Chassis support in API
  • Add PDU phase data.
  • Upgrade Springboot from 1.4.7 to 2.3.7

[sta_anchor id=”vmlp” /]

VMware Machine Learning Platform

The goal of vmlp is to provide an end-to-end ML platform for Data Scientists to perform their job more effectively by running ML workloads on top of VMware infrastructure.

Changelog

Version 0.3.0

  • Federated ML based on FATE
  • Istio 1.4.9
  • Horovod 0.19.2
  • Upgraded major components (MLflow 1.10.0, Pandas 1.0.3 and others)
  • Important stability bug fixes
  • Added documentation

Includes contributions from: Jiahao “Luke” Chen (bug fixes and Federated ML/FATE integration),
Shan Lahiri (Getting Started Guide), Jason Hutson (relentlessly debugging Kubernetes on VMware
infra), Nick Ford (sorting out VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer/AVI Networks configuration and issues)

[sta_anchor id=”datkg” /]

Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

A Virtual Appliance that pre-bundles all required dependencies to help customers in learning and deploying standalone Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters running on either VMware Cloud on AWS and/or vSphere 6.7 Update 3 environment for Proof of Concept, Demo and Dev/Test purposes.

Changelog

Aug 10, 2020 – v1.1.3

  • Support for latest TKG 1.1.3 release
  • Support for TKG Workload Cluster upgrade workflow from K8s 1.17.9 to 1.18.6
  • TKG Crash Diagnostic utility (crash-diagnostics) included in appliance
  • Helm (3.2.4) included in appliance
  • Updated to latest version of Harbor (1.10.3), Docker Compose (1.26.2), Kubectl (1.18.6), Octant (0.14.1) and TMC (d11404fb) CLI in appliance
  • PowerCLI script to automate 100% of pre-req for running on TKG on VMware Cloud on AWS

TKG-Demo-Appliance-1.1.3.ova
MD5: 86ce0c263ebcb6d20addcb6e1767e55a

[sta_anchor id=”idvn” /]

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV is an automation-based deployment tool used for setting up the VMware vCloud NFV platform

Changelog

Version 3.3 Update

  • Updated RAID version from 3.2.1 vCloud NFV VCD to 3.3 vCloud NFV OSE (OpenStack Edition)

[sta_anchor id=”wousa” /]

Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter

Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter provides SCIM user/group management capabilities to Workspace ONE UEM. The middleware translates the System for Cross-Domain Identity Management, SCIM, to a CRUD REST framework that Workspace ONE UEM can interpret. This capability allows Workspace ONE UEM to synchronize cloud-based identity resources (users/groups/entitlements) without the need for an LDAP endpoint (service to service model). Examples include Azure AD, Okta, and Sailpoint.

Changelog

20.08 Release Notes & Update:

**Please Note:** If you have already setup WS1 SCIM Adapter, it is possible that moving to 20.08 will create new accounts. Please consider resetting Directory Services configuation for the OG you are connecting to.

New Features:

  • Deployments now exclusively supported on Docker. See install instructions for more details on how to orchestrate the deployment using the included Helm chart.

Bugs Fixed:

  • createGroup returns unexpected error due to missing payload return

Other Notes:

  • Bitnami deployment script introduced in 20.03 has been deprecated. Although it is still possible to deploy on Appliance form-factors, future development will be exclusively supported on Docker.

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VMware OS Optimization Tool

I have read in plenty of places that people managed to mess up their image with OSOT and that they’re never going to use it anymore and even worse accept unoptimized images in production. This is the wrong choice in my opinion. please use osot or other ways to optimize your image but think about what you need to optimize and test it!

Changelog

August, 2020, b1171 Version Update

Optimizations

Disable Passive Polling is no longer selected by default as this was shown to cause issues with some applications thinking they did not have internet connectivity. Note that this optimization entry was previously incorrectly named as Enable Passive Polling.
Added new setting to Use WDDM graphics display driver for Remote Desktop Connections.

UI Improvements

Brand new interface functionality to allow searching of the optimizations to find specific entries. This is available on both the Optimize and My Templates tabs and allows you to find and view settings based on what you type in.
Added a grid splitter to extend area of left tree view under My Templates.

Common Options

New controls to simplify keeping Cortana search and how the search box appears in the taskbar.

Generalize

New option to specify the Administrator account to use after running SysPrep. This defaults to the current user account. The account specified is also added to the Administrators and Remote Desktop Users groups.
New option to perform an automatic restart after the Generalize task has completed.

Bug Fixes

  • Common Options settings were reset after an optimization. These should now be retained.
  • Changed the way the default profile was used to ensure that this works when OSOT is run using the system account.
  • Windows Syspart Repair was being prevented from being disabled properly.
  • Windows Superfetch was being prevented from being disabled properly.
  • Windows Update was sometimes not disabled properly after running a generalize.
  • Updated templates were saved to the wrong location.

August, 2020, b1170 Update

Templates

New combined template for all versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 and 2019. Optimizations can have optional parameters to filter the version that a setting is applied to.

Optimizations

Turn off NCSI is no longer selected by default as this was shown to cause issues with some applications thinking they did not have internet connectivity.

New Optimizations added and some removed, For details see: https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/vmware-operating-system-optimization-tool-guide#Template_Updates

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed issues with re-enabling Windows Update functionality on Server 2016 and 2019.
  • Fixed issue that was preventing Windows Antimalware from being disabled properly.

Common Options

Changed interface and language on the Common Options page for Windows Update to remove confusion. This option can only be used to disable Windows Update as part of an optimization task. To re-enable Windows Update functionality, use the Update button on the main menu ribbon.

Guides

Updated OSOT user guide: VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide.

[sta_anchor id=”avmu” /]

App Volumes Migration Utility

App Volumes Migration Utility allows admins to migrate AppStacks managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new application package format of App Volumes 4. The format of these packages in App Volumes 4 have evolved to improve performance and help simplify application management.

Changelog

1.0.4 Version Update

  1. Fix for “AppVolumes Manager is invalid” error shown in the UI when connecting to App Volumes Manager 4 version 2006.
  2. Fix for the bug “failed to get old appID from YML entries” in the AppCapture.log during migration of appstacks.

[sta_anchor id=”unnde” /]

USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

USB has become one the most widely adopted connection type in the world & USB network adapters are also popular among Edge computing platforms. In some platforms, there is either limited or no PCI/PCIe slots for I/O expansion & in some cases, an Ethernet port is not even available. Another advantage of a USB-based network adapter is that it can be hot-plugged into an system without a reboot which means no impact to the workload, same is true for hot-remove.

This Fling supports the most popular USB network adapter chipsets found in the market. The ASIX USB 2.0 gigabit network ASIX88178a, ASIX USB 3.0 gigabit network ASIX88179, Realtek USB 3.0 gigabit network RTL8152/RTL8153 and Aquantia AQC111U. These are relatively inexpensive devices that many of our existing vSphere customers are already using and are familiar with.

Changelog

Aug 24, 2020 – v1.6Add

  • support for Aquantia and Trendnet AQC111U (0xe05a:0x20f4)
  • Add support for Realtek RTL8153 (0x045e:0x07c6)
  • Add support for Realtek RTL8156 (0x0bda:0x8156)
  • Support for persistent VMkernel to USB NIC MAC Address mappings
  • Simplified USB NIC persistency
  • Resolved link speed issue for RTL8153 chipsets

Note 1: There are known issues when using Jumbo Frame 9K for RTL* chipset, this is still being investigated. For now, only up to 4K is supported.

Note 2: This will be the last release which will include support for ESXi 6.5

ESXi700-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-39035884-component-16770668.zip
ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-39203948-offline_bundle-16780994.zip
ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-39176435-offline_bundle-16775917.zip