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
Supernova – Accelerating Machine Learning Inference
Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning
VMware Appliance for Folding@Home
New Release
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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
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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
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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
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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 2.10.0 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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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
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