For a long time I have been wanting to have some kind of portable lab but I had a few requirements that where limiting me:
has kvm (for troubleshooting as things always break for me)
low power consumption
Does’t require a dedicated suitcase for transportation
Not so long ago I got a newer laptop from ControlUp to replace my (not that old) annoying heat and noise generating Dell Lattitude 5401. I never could get this thing even a bit quiet without hurting performance. While I found it annoying to work daily on I thought it might be a good match to turn this laptop in a portable lab.
The Host
One of the advantages was that the laptop did have an intel nic built in so I decided to see if I could get ESXi installed on it. After some tinkering I found out that the only thing required for this was to change the disk mode in the bios from raid to ahci. (Why dell? why? the thing has only one nvme…) and after that change ESXi installed without issues.
Now with the 16GB that my machine had I could run ESXi but it was far from enough for what I was going to need and neither was the storage at 512GB. I did have an intel nvme 1TB 660P nvme in one of my servers that I honestly wasn’t even using so that was swapped in quickly. I also had a Gigabite Brix box with 64GB that I had planned to run 24/7 but with the rising energy costs I never did that and it was mostly gathering dust as my regular homelab has more than enough cpu/memory. These where 2 Lexar Modules and after another quick swap you might have seen this picture on twitter.
So I had my host with build-in KVM & UPS, now I also needed connectivity. When using it at home it has it’s own dedicated vlan but on the go I needed some kind of router that can use the same vlan. I did not wat to go for a virtual router as I do not want to potentially connect an ESXi host to a for me unknown network. Again I had a few requirements:
USB powered (Requiring a single socket is already enough)
Small
2 ports (wan and lan side)
gbit
wifi (so my regular laptop can connect)
Bonus : usb tethering for my phone in case all other connection options fail
In the end I decided to order the GL.iNet GL-AR300M16. While there might have been cheaper options there aren’t that many that have multi rj45 ports and also have openwrt as that is a very flexible OS for routers like these. The only thing I have had to change oimn the router was the ip addresses that it uses + I had to disablke dhcp as I wanted the domain controller to do that. It switches very easily between wired and tethering so it’s checkeng all the boxes that I needed.
Storage
Yes I know I said this machine is a mobile lab but I did want to have an option to connect shared storage in case I want to do maintenance etc. I did not want to use the built-in nic for this so I went looking for a usb to rj45 adapter that supports 2,5gbps as I have a Qnap TS-464 with 2,5gbps connectivity. The first step was to check the usb nic fling for what adapters will work. Now this list doesn’t include the speed but a quick look at amazon showed me that the RealTek 8156 will work and the images (not the text!) in this amazon CY USB-C to 2,5GBPS adapter showed that it should work. So another quick amazon order later I was able to prove it worked and I had connectivity to my NAS.
The Setup
The host
On Host level I didn’t need to make too much changes besides network configuration. The only things done so far was to install the USB NIC Fling, configure NTP, add storage and last but not least enable TPS! For a LAB this small any gain in memory availability is essential so TPS is really needed.
vCenter
I went with the smalles vCenter option available and for now it’s running ok with 2cpu’s and 14GB of ram.
The domain
The first VM to be deployed was my domain controller as that’s needed for just about everything I do. I went for a domain called LoaL.lab wich is an abbreviation for Lab On A Laptop. As always I name my vm’s with the environment name in it so the first VM to be deployed was LoaLDC which was quickly transformed into a domain controller, dns and dhcp server.
VM’s
The goal for this portable lab was to have something that can showcase ControlUp Integrated with vSphere, Horizon, App Volumes & DEM so I ended up with these VM’s. As you can see the connection server more or less is the bitch of this setup and has multiple functions:
Name
Function
CPU
Memory
LoaLVC
vCenter (Tiny)
2
14
LoalDC
Domain Controller
2
6
LoaLCS
VMware Horizon Connection Server, SQL Server, File server
2
12
LoaLAPP
App Volumes Server
2
6
LoalCU
ControlUp Monitor
2
6
LoalRec
VMware Horizon Session Recorder (needed for demo)
2
4
LoalW10
Static management VM, also available via Horizon
2
8
Desktop Pools & RDS Farms
So besides the manual desktop pool for the mgmt VM I also have an Instant Clone Pool and and RDS Farm. For both I have an App Volume available with notepad ++ and one of the test users also has a writable volume. All iof this still works while I have made the desktops and rds machines as small as possible: 1 cpu and 1gb of ram! Don’t expect that you are able to do a lot but I can login and start notepad++ and that’s enough here. In the VDI pool there are 2 machines while there is a single RDS host deployed. Both Golden Images where optimized to dead with just about everything selected in the VMware OS Optimization Tool.
So with 64GB of ram this is clearly the bottleneck for this system but how is it looking after it has been running for a few hours? I am receiving a warning about memory consumption but the current usage is 58GB but I don’t see any swapping or ballooning so that’s nice. I also like the Shared Common metric
Power Consumption
While it might be less relevant for a mobile lab I am interested in the power consumption and this is the graph for the current period. This data is coming from a Blitzwolf smart plug connected to my Homey. So the peak at boot time comes close to 80W but seems to stabalize after that.
The ControlUp setup
As a ControlUp employee one of this lab’s usecases was to display what we can do with ControlUp. This is a brand new CU environment that is mainly using Real-Time DX but for fun I have also deployed the Edge DX Agent to a few servers.
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!
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.)
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
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.
Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.
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
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.
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!
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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 😉
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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.
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
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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 🙁
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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
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
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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.
Update: OSOT didn’t receive an update, someone only edited the page according to Hilko.
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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
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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
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
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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.
Changelog
February, 16, 2021 – Version 1.2
Replaced icon
New logo 🙂
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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
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. ).
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
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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
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.
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
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.
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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:
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
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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.
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.
[sta_anchor id=”spt” /]
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.
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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 2.8.8 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.
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.
[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” /]
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.
The toolkit helps you in performing High Performance Computing
High Performance Computing (HPC) is the use of parallel-processing techniques to solve complex computational problems. HPC systems have the ability to deliver sustained performance through the concurrent use of distributed computing resources,and they are typically used for solving advanced scientific and engineering problems, such as computational fluid dynamics, bioinformatics, molecular dynamics, weather modeling and deep learning with neural networks.
Due to their extreme demand on performance, HPC workloads often have much more intensive resource requirements than those workloads found in the typical enterprise. For example, HPC commonly leverages hardware accelerators, such as GPU and FPGA for compute as well as RDMA interconnects, which require special vSphere configurations.
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.
Feature Highlights:
Configure PCIe devices in DirectPath I/O mode, such as GPGPU, FPGA and RDMA interconnects
Easy creation and destruction of virtual HPC clusters using cluster configuration files
Perform common vSphere tasks, such as cloning VMs, configuring vCPUs, memory, reservations, shares, Latency Sensitivity, Distributed Virtual Switch/Standard Virtual Switch, network adapters and network configurations
Update flings
[sta_anchor id=”vropsrestnotifyer” /]
vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper
vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper helps vRealize Operations Manager users improve and customize the REST notifications of alerts. It collects the most useful information about an alert, creates a new payload by user configuration, and sends it to third parties.
Changelog
Version 1.3.0
Added a configuration for preferred HTTP request type
Added severity mapping configuration
Enabled blacklisting with resourceName property
Arranged the endpoint configuration structure for different behavior based on alert trigger states
Added symptoms as a single string (like recommendations)
Minor fixes
[sta_anchor id=”vspheremobileclient” /]
vSphere Mobile Client
vSphere Mobile Client enables administrators to monitor and manage vSphere infrastructure directly from any mobile device. Whether you want to check on the current or historical resource consumption; you want to get notifications on long running tasks; or you want to check the currently running tasks – the vSphere Mobile Client is there to help.
Changelog
Version 1.6.0
Hosts can now be rebooted from the UI
Recent tasks can now be viewed in tasks view (running/in-progress)
Redesigned cards: VM card, host card, cluster card, task card
Quick actions can now be easily accessed with a tap on the card
VM cards display a screenshot which can be enlarged by taping on it
A feedback portlet has been added to the dashboard, you can know provide feedback from within the app
Performance charts are now available for hosts
Navigation menu items are now larger to faciliate taping on those
Supports mobile devices using Android version 4.4 (KitKat) or newer
Supports mobile devices using iOS version 10 or newer
No other mobile operating systems are currently supported
An existing VC (version 6.0 or newer) installation (VCSA or Windows).
Application is tested on the vCenter VCSA 6.5 GA release.
Hosts can now be rebooted from the UI
Recent tasks can now be viewed in tasks view (running/in-progress)
Redesigned cards: VM card, host card, cluster card, task card
Quick actions can now be easily accessed with a tap on the card
VM cards display a screenshot which can be enlarged by taping on it
A feedback portlet has been added to the dashboard, you can know provide feedback from within the app
Performance charts are now available for hosts
Navigation menu items are now larger to faciliate taping on those
[sta_anchor id=”wsonemigtool” /]
Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool
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 2.0.1
Fixed Baseline Migration issue
Fixed Profile Errors not displaying in the UI
[sta_anchor id=”vmcompoptimizer” /]
Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer
The Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script 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 “YES” if it is optimized and “NO” 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 2.0.1
Corrected Get-OptimalvCPU.ps1 where sometimes cluster information would show as System.Object[].
Version 2.0.0
Priority of the findings are captured
Details on the findings are included
Cluster information is captured to determine if Host HW is not consistent across the cluster
Report if a VM spanning pNUMA nodes actually has the pNUMA exposed to the guest OS
Report if advanced settings have been changed on the VM or host level to expose pNUMA to the guest OS
Reports if the number of vCPUs for a VM exceeds the physical cores of the host (using hyperthreads as vCPUs)
Ability to use the stand alone “Get-OptimalvCPU” function for more flexibility
[sta_anchor id=”vsanperfmon” /]
vSAN Performance Monitor
The vSAN performance monitor is a monitoring and visualization tool based on vSAN Performance metrics. It will collect vSAN Performance and other metrics periodically from the clusters configured. The data collected is visualized in a more efficient and user-friendly way. The vSAN performance monitor comes with preconfigured dashboards which will help customers evaluate the performance of vSAN clusters, identify and diagnose problems, and understand current and future bottlenecks. The dashboards are heavily inspired by vSAN Observer.
Changelog
Version 1.2
Fixed issues with the fling while CA certificates
Minor tweaks to the data collection agent
Removed anonymous statistics collection by influxdb
[sta_anchor id=”vrbuildtools” /]
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 1.7.1
Further enhanced the TypeScript projects support (still experimental)
The Kubernetes eXtensible Desktop Client (KXDC) is a simple and multi-platform desktop client for Kubernetes (K8S). In the same way the kubectl command requires only a valid kubeconfig file to run commands against a K8S cluster, KXDC requires you just to configure one or more valid kubeconfig files to interact with one or more K8S clusters.
Main features:
Support for multiple kubeconfig files.
UI-driven interaction with the most frequently used K8S entities.
One-click terminal with the proper KUBECONFIG env variable set.
Generation of custom kubeconfig files for a given namespace.
Highlight sustainability and security-related data.
Updated flings
[sta_anchor id=”appvolentsync” /]
App Volumes Entitlement Sync
The App Volumes Entitlement Sync fling will read, sync and compare entitlements between various App Volumes instances.
Changelog
Version 2.2
Ignore Extra AppStacks on Primary or Secondary Server – these would cause compare to crash
Export Primary or Secondary Server Entitlements to XML
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vSphere HTML5 Web Client
Do you want to have the latest version of the html5 client? Than you need the vSphere HTML5 Web Client fling!
Changelog
Fling 4.3.0 – Build 14483008 New Features
Ability to customize the header color per vCenter to differentiate vCenter servers. Go to Administration -> System Configuration and select the vCenter for which you want to change the header color. If you have more than one vCenter server in linked mode, you can change the color for each of the vCenter servers
Bug fixes
Upload OVF files to Content Library
Release Notes
vSphere Perspective Management has been removed
[sta_anchor id=”dodstig” /]
DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB
Updated sshd_config file. Removed protocol 2 setting as it is deprecated. Added “FipsMode yes” setting. Updated Ciphers and MACs for newer version of OpenSSH
Removed /etc/issue and /etc/pam.d/passwd files from VIB as those settings can be set via advanced settings now
Note – This VIB is based on draft STIG content! It is recommended to use this over the previous 6.5-7 STIG VIB
[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]
VMware OS Optimization Tool
The VMware OS Optimization Tool or OSOT in short is one of the best tools around to optimize your VDI image before publishing a desktop or rds host.
Changelog
September, 2019, b1110
New Common Options button – Allows you to quickly choose and set preferences to control common functionality. These would normally involve configuring multiple individual settings but can now be done with a single selection through this new interface
Split Windows 10 into two templates to better handle the differences between the versions; one for 1507-1803 and one for 1809-1909
Improved and new optimizations for Windows 10, especially for 1809 to 1909.
Updated and changed template settings for newer Windows 10 versions to cope with changes in the OS, registry keys and functionality:
Move items from mandatory user and current user to default user
Add 34 new items for group policies related to OneDrive, Microsoft Edge, privacy, Windows Update, Notification, Diagnostics
Add 6 items in group of Disable Services
Add 1 item in group of Disable Scheduled Tasks
Add 1 item in group of Apply HKEY_USERS\temp Settings to Registry
Add 2 items in group of Apply HKLM Settings
Removing Windows built-in apps is now simplified. Removes all built-in apps except the Windows Store.
Numerous bug and error fixes:
Reset view after saving customized template
Unavailable links in reference tab
Windows Store is unavailable after optimizing
Start menu may delay after optimizing
VMware Tools stops running after optimizing
Analysis Summary Graph is cropped
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vSphere Mobile Client
Personally I think a phone screen is too small but this was one of the most asked questions the last few years: when can we manage vSphere from our phones? Well now you can with the vSphere Mobile Client fling.
Changelog
Version 1.5.0
New features
Direct connections to the ESXi hosts are now supported
Host can now be put in maintenance mode
Improvements
Going back from the details pages would not refresh the VM list
Improvements to how we indicate the user is in focused mode
Cluster card now shows issues, DRS, HA and number of vMotion events
Host card now shows issues, number of VMs, uptime and connection status
Bug Fixes
Removing a bookmark when in focused mode removes the item from the list too
Added support for script detection with Win32 applications
[sta_anchor id=”usbnicdriver” /]
USB Network Native Driver for ESXi
For the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi fling we need to thank WIlliam Lam I guess. For me it at least seems like he is the driving factor behind this fling.
Changelog
September 27, 2019 – v1.2
Added support for Aquantia Multi-Gig (1G/2.5G/5G) USB network adapter (see Requirements page for more details)
Added support for Auto Speed/Connection detection for RTL8153/RTL8152 chipsets
Policy Enforcer is used to check and remediate restriction policies on a Workspace ONE Managed Windows 10 machine. If a user were to try to override configured Policy CSP settings by attempting to edit the Windows Registry, Policy Enforcer will compare the current value with the MDM configured value and reset the registry if the values differ.
Policy Enforcer can be implemented by uploading the MSI installer to the WS1 UEM console and deploying as an internal app via Apps & Books.
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.
Using a supported storage controller and firmware is important in a vSAN deployment to ensure normal operations, optimal performance, and to reduce the chances of hardware/firmware issues. This tool can be useful to ensure that a storage device and its firmware went through certification testing supported by VMware and its partners.
Some scenarios where the tool can be useful:
Verify if new server and storage adapter are supported for a vSAN deployment
Verify if re-purposed server, storage adapter are supported for a vSAN deployment
For a full vSAN system check, please check vSAN health UI through vSphere web client after a vSAN deployment.
The vSphere PKS plugin gives the administrator a graphical interface within the vSphere HTML5 console.
Changelog
Version 1.0.1 – Build 168317
A PKS instance can be added to the plugin by providing the Ops Manager credentials
Support an alternate IP address (such as an NSX floating IP) to be used as the registration server and plugin server IP. It is assumed that the IP will be mapped to the appliance’s NIC via other means
Minor bug fixes
[sta_anchor id=”esxihostclient” /]
ESXi Embedded Host Client
The latest and greatest version of the ESXi embedded host client as found in production since ESXi6.0
Changelog
Version 1.33.1 build 12086396 (Fling 23) – January 31, 2019 OVF issues
Various fixes for ovf import issues
ISO files are now imported from OVAs
General
Fixed an issue with special characters in datastore names in some versions of ESXi
Fix swapped labels for transmit and receive in network chart
Network adapters are added to the vm in the correct order
Fixed issue with firewall notifications displaying incorrect information
provide notifications for expiring licenses
Support for Swedish input locale in the vm console
Display Fibre channel wwn and wwp as 64bit addresses
[sta_anchor id=”html5client” /]
vSphere HTML5 Web Client
This is the newest release of the HTML5 Web Client for vSphere. The downloadable version is 4.0.1 while the changelog is 4.0 so we’ll have to assume that 4.0.1 is a small bug fix. Starting from this version the fling ONLY supports vSphere 6.5 and newer!
Changelog
Fling 4.0 – Build 11785236
New Features
Support for VC 6.7
ESX Agent Manager UI
MxN Convergence in System Configuration
Import Certificate and Generate CSR
Code Capture: the record button can be toggled between hidden and shown.
Ability to remove Script Bundles in Autodeploy for 6.7 VC
Ability to remove Discovered hosts in Autodeploy for 6.7 VC
Export licensing data in CSV for all licensing views
VMware Horizon Session Recording allows administrators of a VMware Horizon environment record their users activity in their Blast Extreme virtual desktop and application sessions.
With Session Recording, the administrator can choose to record local or remote sessions, to a central recording Server where the administrator can watch the recordings back via a HTML 5 web console integrated into the server.
The Session Recordings are stored as MP4 files for watching via the web console or downloading to play in a local player.
The VMware Horizon Session Recording Fling comprises of two components:
A Central Recording Repository + Web Front End
The Agent to be installed in the virtual desktop or RDSH host template which facilitates the recording.
Today VMware Horizon Session Recording supports Windows Server 2016 as the Central Server along with Windows 7, 10, Server 2012 and Server 2016 on the agent.
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DRS Dump Insight H5 Plugin
If you like the the older DRS Dump Insight fling you will like the DRS Dump Insight H5 Plugin even more. No need anymore for pulling the data yourself, with the Plugin it will be available directly.
The DRS Dump Insight H5 Plugin helps answer simple questions like
“Can I get all the recommendations made by DRS?”
“Why did DRS make a certain recommendation?”
“Why is DRS not making any recommendations to balance my cluster?”
“How is my custom affinity/anti-affinity rule affecting load balancing in my cluster?”
“If I have a policy defined in my cluster, how different would DRS load balancing be?”
When diagnosing Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster issues in vSphere, we look at vCenter server logs from the support bundle, including DrmDump files to find any clues. Analyzing DrmDumps is a slow and tedious process, is usually done by VMware support or Engineering teams for advanced debugging of algorithm related issues. This is because analyzing the dumps requires building a replayer module, for which one needs access to the source code. Another challenge is that the final DrmDump data is not in plain text format; it requires someone with an understanding of the source code to be able to make good sense of it.
There is an existing DRS Dump Insight fling, which can replay DrmDumps and provide useful information for debugging. However, Dump Insight requires users to manually upload relevant DrmDump files from the time when the issue occurred. With the DRS Dump Insight H5 Plugin, customers do not need to upload any DrmDump files, and can access all the anal yzed information from their vSphere HTML5 web client itself.
Once a customer installs the HTML5 plugin, a new DRS Dump Insight tab will be available under the “cluster -> monitor” view.
All the DrmDump files that are available for the given cluster are listed in the opening screen. Customers can select the dump file of their choice for analysis.
They can also select multiple dump files to be analyzed together.
After analysis, the tool shows the analysis for each dump file in a separate tab view.
The Workspace ONE Configuration Tool helps you build special-purpose unattend.xml configuration files to be applied in the Dell factory as part of Factory Provisioning. This helps to domain join (domain, workgroup, AAD, AAD Premium) and enroll devices automatically on first-boot. This simplifies the creation of the unattend.xml configuration file for Windows 10.
Features
It’s a stand-alone .exe app that helps IT administrators configure general and Out-of-the-Box Experience Windows setups to automatically enroll users in Workspace ONE.
The User Interface is made simple with explicit instructions about each field for easy and quick use by IT admins.
The User Interface has dynamic and efficient validations in Clarity and Angular, preventing the user from building the unattend.xml until all the validations are correctly satisfied.
This makes the UI fool-proof and reduces the chances of generating an invalid xml file.
The tool is made as a .Net Core 2.0 web app with Angular 5 and Clarity, which eases the integration of v2.0 into the AirWatch Console.
Updated
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ESXi Compatibility Checker
With the ESXi Compatibility Checker a vSphere admin can automatically check and validate a current vSphere environment against the HCL.
Changelog
Build 10066133
Fixed bugs
[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” /]
HCIBench
While it probably is optimized for VSAN workloads the HCIBench is a benchmark tool that can be used with any HCI solution.
The policy builder is an hosted fling that helps the user to create custom MDM policies for Workspace UEM (former Airwatch)
Official summary:
This cloud hosted Fling helps users with custom Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy generation that use MDM capabilities available through Microsoft’s Windows 10 MDM Configuration Service Providers (CSPs).
Note: On login with My VMmware credentials, the tool provides an easy to use form based UI that allows the Windows 10 admin to simply enter the required values for the policies and auto generates corresponding syncML that can be copied to publish through Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management.
This tool greatly reduces the effort of hand rolling syncML and the possibility of code and formatting errors when creating or managing custom settings profiles through Workspace ONE UEM.
[sta_anchor id=”sddccert” /]
SDDC Certificate Tool
The SDDC Certificate Tool is an automated process that replaces all certificates in a SDDC for you. This normally can be a lengthy process but should be a breeze with this fling.
Official summary:
Replacing SSL certificates across VMware products is a manual and time-consuming process. The SDDC Certificate Tool automates this workflow and makes it easy to keep certificates across your SDDC up to date. It will replace all certificates in the supported products and reestablish trust between the components.
Not my cup of tea but this fling is supposed to be an example where you can talk against vRealize Automation.
Official summary:
vAssist.ai, a Natural Language Processing (NLP) platform, enables bot developers to train machine learning models for intent classification and entity extraction. This platform is available as a SaaS model which exposes easy-to-use REST APIs to train and parse natural language inputs. It also provides a multi-tenant user interface dashboard which can be used to annotate and visualize training data expressions and train machine learning models in the cloud.
VMware customers who are serious about building conversational interfaces can benefit from this platform. With this Fling we trained a sample model for vRealize Automation. Users can chat with the test bot to query available catalog services and initiate a provisioning request in a natural, conversational way. Please note that we are using a sample internal environment for vRealize Automation.
Features
NLU Engine for Intent and entity extraction
Customizable NLU pipeline
Rule based and ML based Conversation Engine
Privacy of the data
Scalable and Fault Tolerant
REST APIs exposed for integration with multiple channels and platforms
The Workspace ONE UEM Samsung E-FOTA Tool is designed to add to the existing abilities of AirWatch’s Samsung E-FOTA implementation. These new abilities include scheduling a firmware/OS update in a targeted window. This feature is dependent on the existing abilities within AirWatch which enroll the MDM into Samsung E-FOTA and push profiles to enroll the device into Samsung E-FOTA. Users should use this tool along with the information gathered from the Workspace ONE UEM console. The information can then be used to make an API command to schedule the firmware/OS update to your Samsung devices.
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Horizon Helpdesk Utility
Like I said yesterday the Horizon Helpdesk Utility is how the original Horizon View Helpdesk Tool should have been. Please read yesterdays;s post for more information and screenshots.
The Horizon Helpdesk Utility is designed to be a tool used by real help desk agents. The Horizon Helpdesk Utility takes all of the functionality of the current HTML5 based Helpdesk in VMware Horizon and adds true desktop integration features, including:
Greater speed in queries
Reduced steps to find a session
Multiple monitoring windows
Keystrokes for fast access
Native remote control functionality
Real-time updates
Built-in session experience score based on session performance and variables
Updated flings
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VMware OS Optimization Tool
Changelog
July 30, 2018, b1100
Issue fix: With group selection operation, unselected optimization items are applied.
Support for vSphere Resource Pool and VM folder for placement under advanced options
Support for VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) by specifying resource pool and folder options
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Blockchain on Kubernetes
Changelog
July 16 2018, BoK 2.1
Support deployment of Hyperledger Fabric 1.1.0.
Allow users to customize the Fabric organizations and peers in bok.yaml.
Add ingress controller for serving traffic to Fabric peers nodes and explorer node.
Make improvement on stability and usability.
Verified against Kubernetes 1.10.3 and Pivotal Container Service (PKS) 1.1.0.
Updated the PCF Fabric Tile which supports creating Kubernetes cluster via PKS Tile and deploy Hyperledger Fabric in the Kubernetes cluster.
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HCIBench
Changelog
Version 1.6.7.1
Fixed vSAN Performance Diagnostic API call
Fixed network validation message not clear issue
Fixed setting re-use VMs as default bug in 1.6.7
Version 1.6.7
Enabled https instead of http
Added storage policy field, user can specify storage policy for the data disks. For this version, storage policy can’t be assigned to existing client VMs
Enhanced deployment methodology
Enhanced vSAN Observer to avoid blow up the memory
Enhanced vSAN Performance Diagnostic API call with HCIBench workload configuration included
Added timestamp to the testing status
Bug fixes
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ESXi Embedded Host Client
Changelog
Version 1.31.0 build 9277095 (Fling 21) – July 20, 2018
General
Resolve several issues related to dropdown selection
Update NTP UX
Update AngularJS to 1.6.10
Other minor bug fixes
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vSphere HTML5 Web Client
Changelog
Fling 3.40 – Build 9292689 New Features
Host profiles
Check compliance
Pre-check and remediate host (known issue exists – see known issues)
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