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.