And with a higher or lower game I finished the second week of my 100DaysofCode #Python challenge. Sometimes when I don’t see the solution for something it takes ma ages to get on the right path but when I see it I finish the project pdq! The debugging that I have been applying for years in my powershell code also seems to apply to python and google is a coders best friend 🙂 Besides the python course I actually didn’t do a whole lot of coding in Powershell, maybe a couple of hours spread over the week and my “big project” is finally finished and ready to be published.
Good things:
focus
when it works it works
Bad things:
when my I start thinking in the wrong direction it will keep going wrong
So the first seven days of coding for my 100 Days of Code Challenge have passed. I have already learned heaps from the Python course that I follow for the challenge but have also run into some walls where my thinking process brings me in the wrong direction. What I also notice is that I go a bit more advanced than the level the course currently is at because I google for some solution and try to understand that while there might be a more simple solution available that sometimes costs more lines of code. I do try to make sure that I understand what I use otherwise it doesn’t make sense to copy/paste some solution and seeing it work but having no idea on the why or how.
Not directly related to the code but the decision to do the course early in the morning works very well for me. It sharpens my senses for the rest of the day and when I sit behind my work laptop I am fully ready to go while normally I still had to get into the ‘production’ groove at that point. Sometimes I do need to finish the daily project after dinner but I don’t mind doing that. I always create the daily update page also at that moment so it’s a good combination also to refresh on what i have learned that day.
One thing that is related to code and what I have to get used to is that my coding during the day usually is 99% in PowerShell and I sometimes tend to confuse the 2 languages on how to do things at what point.
Good points:
I got a streak of 7 days
learned a lot
It’s fun
sharper for the rest of the day
less good things
confusing PS and Python code
I tend to over complicate things
I hate doing workflows on my pc, need to use my whiteboard
I tweeted a bit more and have also created a Page for my challenge, you can find the pages and the daily reports in the menu above. So why am I doing this? I have been liking the idea of the challenge for a while already but never knew how to create the proper structure that I would need for it. A couple of days ago I found the Udemy Python in 100 days course and immediately knew that it was what I needed.
For the rest I don’t have a immediate project goal for the 100 days but plenty of ideas to work at afterwards. To be clear: I ahve done some basic work with Python in the past but never got further than the basics.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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 VMwareHorizon 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>
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
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
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:
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!
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.
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:
The script will retrieve the memory utilization of PodVMs in the environment
The script will then allow users to provide the memory threshold for PodVMs
The script will then calculate the desired number of replicas based on the memory threshold and utilization
The script will automatically scale the PodVMs to the desired number of replicas calculated in step #3
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Today I saw the question on the VMware{Code} Slack Channel if anyone ever managed to disabled Desktop Pools using PowerCLI. I was like yeah I have done that and you might need to user the helperservice for that. I offered to create q fast and quick blog post about it so here we go.
First as always I connect to my Connection Server and use a query to retrieve the Pool that I am going to disable.
Now this has not been changed yet on the desktop pool itself, to do that we need to use desktopservice.update and I also show the result of the change.
Now let’s see what methods are available under the Datastore service
Let’s start with the easy 3 first aka the bottom ones
Datastore_ListDatastoresByHostOrCluster
The name says enough with Datastore_ListDatastoresByHostOrCluster you are able to list datastores using the HostOrClusterID.
I am cutting some corners here how to find this out but to get this HostOrClusterID we need to get the DatacenterId and to get that we’ll need the VirtualcenterId.
To get all virtualcenters in a pod you need to use virtualcenters_list() and what I do in this example is listing them first and than putting the first virtualcenter in an variable.
So we see most of the basic info in here that we might need including name, capacity and free space. Not sure why the numberofvm’s is empty as all of them have vm’s.
Datastore_ListDatastoresByDesktopOrFarm
Let’s see what we need for this one
So an object is needed of the type VMware.Hv.DatastoreSpec let’s define the object and see what’s in it.
As I am not 100% sure if all are required or not and what might break I’ll have a look at the API explorer article of this.
So it requires either a DesktopID OR a FarmID wile you can provide the hostorclusterId but that will be populated if you don’t provide one.
I am not going to build the query here to get a desktop pool so I’ll just use get-hvpool and get-hvfarm from the vmware.hv.helper powershell module.
Next I put the $pool.id in the spec and get the details
So this lists all the datastores that I have available in this cluster. I know this 100% sure as the ISO datastore is a read-only datastore that doesn’t have any desktops.
As I don’t have any datastore clusters in my lab I cannot show it but you’ll need the same hostorclusterid as we used for Datastore_ListDatastoresByHostOrCluster
Datastore_GetUsage
This method shows what desktop pools are using a particular datastore. When doing a dry run it shows that a DatastoreId is needed.
I will use one of the items that I still have stored in my $datastores variable
So this ia a rather boring datastore as it only has 1 pool configured to use it (and it doesn’t even have any vm’s from this pool on it) but you’ll see that there is another datastore configured for this pool as wel. I do have a more used datastore though on a local nvme drive.
$datastore=$datastores | where {$_.datastoredata.name -like "*nvme*"}
$hvservice.Datastore.Datastore_GetUsage($datastore.id)
As you can see it shows the desktop pools and even the single farm I have that use this datastore each with their own disk usage.
Datastore_GetDatastoreRequirements
The Datastore_GetDatastoreRequirements method does a calculation of what disk space might be needed for a desktop pool.
For years Fred Hofer has been organizing the vBreakfast for VMworld EMEA across the street of the Fira in a very nice place. A big thank you to Fred to do this every year!! Due to the mess this world currently is in we couldn’t do it in person this year and we moved virtual. Big thanks to Runecast for organizing the virtual space we could use but sadly we had to do it without the vWorldfamous Grumpy Waiter. I really like the way it was setup with separate tables and everything. The only issue was that it seemed to use whatever Microphone, speaker and webcam that where configured in Chrome and switching was almost impossible.
During this meeting we came up with the idea to organize a monthly virtual vBreakfast for EMEA. Kev Johnson offered to do it again on the site that Runecast used for this but I think it would be more flexible if we used something like zoom. Luckily I can use a paid license so it’s no problem to make this a 2 hour long come and go whenever you like session. The talk can be tech, it can be non-tech whatever you like!
When?
Every Last Friday of the month (yes we’ll move the december one!)
How late?
7.30am UK time to 9.30 (8.30 Amsterdam to 10.30, 9.30 Israel time to11.30, you get what I am saying)
How do I attend?
Drop me an email at vbreakfastemea at gmail.com and I will forward you the invite
But I don’t live in EMEA can I still attend?
Hell yeah, I don’t give a flying F..K where you are from, everyone is welcome and the more the better!
I don’t use VMware but Nutanix or Hyper-V or Citrix?
Didn’t I just say everyone is welcome? Yes I also don’t care what hypervisor or EUC platform you use!
I work for company XYZ and want to sponsor this!
I think the only way of sponsoring that could work is if you organize a real breakfast for everyone that signs up. If you are prepared to do that we won’t offer more in return than a mention and a thank you as this is an organized unstructured meeting to meetup with friends.
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