Category: Horizon

The VMware Labs flings monthly for March 2020

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We are living in some crazy times, we have been locked down here already for several weeks and in my area things are improving, just like my dad who is recovering from Corona. The virus didn’t stop the VMware engineers from working on flings though. This includes the new VMware Appliance for Folding@Home if you want to help in the battle against Corona or other illnesses. Other new releases are Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer and Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility while the following received an update: vSphere Software Asset Management Tool, Desktop Watermark,  vCenter Event Broker Appliance,, Ubuntu OVA for Horizon, Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter, vSphere Mobile Client, Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV and last but not least Horizon View Events Database Export Utility.

New Releases

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VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

I already spoiler the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home but this appliance gives you the opportunity to add your computer power in the search for a solution against Corona or other diseases.

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.

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

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Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer

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

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Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility

In case the manual deployment is too much work or the PowerCLI based is too difficult engineers have now created Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility for Mac or Windows to install the uag.

Unified Access Gateway (UAG) Deployment Utility assists the deployment of UAG appliances by running the utility on Windows or macOS machines. This utility provides better user interface, which is self explanatory about the next steps and better error handling through useful messages & tool tips which will make it easier for an admin to deploy single or multiple appliances.

Updated Flings

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vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

Changelog

March 2020

  • Minor wording update to the generated software asset management report.

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Desktop Watermark

Changelog

v1.1 – Build 20200302-signed

  • Added a new attribute %DATETIME% to show hour and minute info on screen.

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vCenter Event Broker Appliance

Changelog

Too damn much so better head over to William Lam’s blogpost.

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Ubuntu OVA for Horizon

Changelog

v1.2

  • Special thanks to Robert Guske for testing & feedback
  • Support for Horizon 7.11 and later
  • Support for vSphere 6.7+
  • Updated OVA base image to Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
  • Updated Virtual Hardware to v14
  • Added option to configure static networking
  • Added support for USB 3.0 and USB Redirection (via linux-agent-installer.sh)
  • Added KDE Desktop Environment Option
  • Added Gnome Desktop Environment Option (recommended)
  • Developer Desktop Package option
  • Added Keyboard Layout Option
  • Added option to enable SSH
  • Removed runlevel 5 setting
  • Fixed MOTD prompt code
  • Disabled auto software updates
  • Removed greeter modifications to support SSO
  • Numerous improvements to script
  • Script renamed to ‘optimize.sh’

[sta_anchor id=”wsoneuemscimadapter” /]

Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter

Changelog

20.03 Release Notes:
Please Note: If you have already setup WS1 SCIM Adapter, it is possible that moving to 20.03 will create new accounts. Please consider resetting Directory Services configuation for the OG you are connecting to.

New Features:

  • Windows 10 OOBE Enrollment now supported
  • Bitnami Node.js 12.16.1-0 now supported with embedded install
  • Various Enterprise and Custom SCIM Schema attributes now supported (see below table)

Bugs Fixed:

  • Resources with special characters in immutableId do not update

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vSphere Mobile Client

Changelog

Version 1.10.2

Improvements/Fixes

  • Better support for older devices
  • Fix some issues related to the back button
  • Fix for the annotation not defined issue

Version 1.10.1

  • Fixed “TypeError : Cannot read property of ‘annotation’ of undefined”
  • Errors causing white screen should now have more information about the cause

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Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Changelog

Version 3.2.1 Update

  • Updated to new version
  • Replaced user guide the new version

[sta_anchor id=”horizoneventexportutil” /]

Horizon View Events Database Export Utility

Changelog

Version 2.2

Fixed the following issues:

  • Able to return data for All Pools
  • Able to return data on just user logon and logoff events
  • Both of these actions would cause a crash or error in previous versions

[HorizonAPI] Creating Entitlements

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So last week I created a blog about gathering Horizon entitlements using the api’s. At the end I promised that my next blog post would be about creating entitlements and guess what: that’s this post 🙂

First a short explanation about what UserEntitlements actually are in Horizon. When you pull the entitlement info the base property has the needed information.

So in short an entitlement is a link between the userorgroup object id and a resource object id. The resource object can be: Application, Desktop, Global Application Entitlement, Global Desktop Entitlement and URLRedirection.

Let’s first grab the id’s that we need, I use 2 queries for that bur first I put the names of the group and the desktop in variables:

$groupname = "example_group"
$poolname = "pod01_pool01"

Than I create two objects called $group and $pool using queries.

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='base.name'; 'value' = "$groupname"}
$group= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'DesktopSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='desktopSummaryData.displayName'; 'value' = "$Poolname"}
$pool= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

Next we create the object to link them together.

$userentitlement= new-object VMware.Hv.UserEntitlementBase
$userentitlement.UserOrGroup = $group.id
$userentitlement.Resource = $pool.id

And we create the actual entitlement, since the output we get from this is the id of the entitlement object I store this in a variable to show you the entitlement in the next step.

and to show the entitlement

($hvservice.UserEntitlement.UserEntitlement_Get($newentitlement)).base

If you want to create entitlements for other resource you’ll need to use the either of the following to build your query:

Name Data object property to filter on
Application ApplicationInfo data.displayName
Desktop DesktopSummaryView DesktopSummaryData.displayName
Global Application Entitlement GlobalApplicationEntitlementInfo base.displayName
Global Desktop Entitlement GlobalEntitlementInfo base.displayName

There is no query for the URLRedirection so you’ll need to use URLRedirection.URLRedirection_List() to get the entire list and select the right one from that.

This is a complete example script that you could use to create a desktop entitlement:

Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.HorizonView
Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.Core

$cs = 'pod1cbr1.loft.lab'
$groupname = "example_group"
$poolname = "pod01_pool01"

$hvServer = Connect-HVServer -Server $cs 

$HVService= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='base.name'; 'value' = "$groupname"}
$group= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'DesktopSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='desktopSummaryData.displayName'; 'value' = "$Poolname"}
$pool= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

$userentitlement= new-object VMware.Hv.UserEntitlementBase
$userentitlement.UserOrGroup = $group.id
$userentitlement.Resource = $pool.id
$hvservice.UserEntitlement.UserEntitlement_Create($userentitlement)

The VMware Labs flings monthly for February 2020

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First of all my excuses for not posting more last month. It was a short but very busy month so I just couldn’t find the time for that. The people behind VMware flings have bee busy though with one new fling and seven updates ones. New is Pallas (for managing edge ESXi hosts) and the following received updates: Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer, USB Network Native Driver for ESXi, vSphere HTML5 Web Client, App Volumes Entitlement Sync, App Volumes Migration Utility, vRealize Build Tools, Power vRA Cloud.

New Releases

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pallas

Pallas helps an admin to manage edge ESXi hosts where it’s not possible to manage them using vCenter due to security reasons.

The goal of Pallas is to provide management ability for ESXi hosts that cannot be managed by vCenter due to firewall or network issues.

 

Case 1: You have several ESXi hosts which running in a private network, but you have requirement to management them in the public network.

 

Case 2: Your ESXi host don’t wire connections and must connected through WiFi or Mobile network. For example, you use ESXi running on the oil rig, train head and you want to remote manage the ESXi securely.

 

Case 3: In IOT world you have the virtualized Edge devices requirements (ESXi host on Edge Device) and need remote management the ESXi(like patch, create VM etc.)

 

This solution includes a dominate-agent VM to provide remote management ability on the ESXi. If the ESXi has no wire connection then a pluggable network device (USB WiFi card, 3G/4G/5G sim card or other device that can provide network access ability) is needed, the pluggable network device will be pass-through directly to the dominate-agent VM. A remote manager server that accept connections either in public cloud/hybrid or private datacenter.

 

The dominate agent VM will talk to ESXi through ESXi SDK for workload VM management. There is no direct connection between the workload vm and dominate agent by default.

 

The dominate agent VM will talk to Pallas Manger though MQTT protocol, it will not allow any inbound traffic.

 

Updated Flings

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Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer is a script that analyses vm’s and the hosts running them to see if they run in an optimized way. It does not look into the vm’s themselves, if that is needed vRealize Operations is recommended.

Changelog

Version 2.0.2

  • Modified Get-OptimalvCPU.ps1 to account for vCenters with no clusters
  • Modified Error Catches so they display the line number of the error

[sta_anchor id=”esxiusbnetdriver” /]

USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

The USB Network Native Driver for ESXi was specially made for homelabs that need USB ports for extra network connectivity.

Changelog

February 12, 2020 – v1.4

  • Add SuperMicro/Insyde Software Corp USB Devices in the supported list
  • Resolved 9K Jumbo frame issue on RTL8153 chipset devices
  • Resolved invalid speed reporting for some quick devices by using the default speed

ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-33242987-offline_bundle-15615590.zip
ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-33268102-offline_bundle-15620342.zip

[sta_anchor id=”html5webclient” /]

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

And the vSphere html5 client keeps improving and improving.

Changelog

Fling 5.0 – build 15670023

New Features

  • Code Capture new language: the recorded interaction can now be translated to Go.
  • PowerActions: integrating PowerCLI and the vSphere Client. The vSphere Client now provides the ability to execute PowerCLI commands and scripts, and store scripts in a library. Custom actions backed by PowerCLI scripts can be defined and executed on inventory objects.
  • PowerActions must be explicitly enabled on a vSphere Client Fling deployment. For setup instructions and a quick walkthrough, see the file PowerActions_documentation_Fling50.pdf .

Improvements

  • PowerActions: when executing a script from the context menu of an object, the context object is prepopulated, but the object selector control has to be expanded and collapsed in order for this to become visible.

Release Notes

  • The base operating system for the fling is changed to Photon OS.
    Upgrade from previous versions to 5.0 is not supported. A new appliance has to be deployed.

Server.bat Replaced, December 3

Fix a small error where ls.url was printed twice in the resulting webclient.properties which leads to errors when trying to login to the H5 web client.

[sta_anchor id=”appvolentsync” /]

App Volumes Entitlement Sync

The App Volumes Entitlement Sync helps the App Volumes admin in copying entitlements between various App Volumes environments like from test to production.

Changelog

Version 2.4

  • Fixed problem with sync button being disabled
  • Added check for App Volumes 2.x and App Volumes 4.x managers and will pop up message that they can’t be synced

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App Volumes Migration Utility

You might want to use the App Volumes Migration Utility if you are upgrading from App Volumes 2.* to App Volumes 4.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1

  • Fix for Migrated Appstack upload failure in AVM due to JSON parsing error.
  • Instructions doc updated to reflect the name change from “Upload Prepackaged Volume” to “Upload Template” in the AVM UI.

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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 2.4.18

  • Support vRA 8 support for blueprints, custom forms, subscriptions and flavor-mapping
  • vRO 8 support for existing content management and import
  • Support vRO 8 export of WFs in a folder structure derived from WF tags
  • Support for running WFs on vRO using maven command
  • Support persisting JS Actions IDs in source to allow for actions originating in vRO first to not create conflicts
  • TypeScript Projects (experimental) support improvements and bug fixes
  • General bugs fixing an documentation updates

[sta_anchor id=”powervracloud” /]

Power vRA Cloud

Power vRA Cloud makes the vRA API’s more accessible for people already used to PowerCLI or PowerShell.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Bug fixes and following new cmdlets
  • Add-vRA-Project-Administrator
  • Add-vRA-Project-Member
  • Get-vRA-DeploymentFilters
  • Get-vRA-DeploymentFilterTypes
  • Get-vRA-FabricNetworksFilter
  • Get-vRA-FabricImagesFilter
  • Remove-vRA-Project-Administrator
  • Remove-vRA-Project-Member
  • Update-vRA-Project-ZoneConfig

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for January 2020

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Here we go again with the new and updated flings for January 2020. It’s been a busy month for me including a visit to Israel but more on that in a future blog post. There have been three new releases in January with the App Volumes Migration Utility, vSphere Software Asset Management and Power vRA Cloud. No less than six received updates: DRS Dump Insight, Horizon Reach, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility, vCenter Event Broker Appliance, vSphere Mobile Client and the one and only VMware OS Optimization Tool.

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”appvolmigutil” /]

App Volumes Migration Utility

The App Volumes Migration Utility has been build to migrate App Volumes 2.18 app stacks to the brand new App Volumes 4 format.

App Volumes Migration Utility allows to migrate appstacks, which are managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new appstack format of VMware App Volumes 4.0. The format of appstacks in VMware App Volumes 4.0 have changed in order to provide improved login to desktops among many other features. This utility addresses the migration of appstacks so that applications don’t have to be provisioned again after upgrading to VMware App Volumes 4.0.

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vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

The vSphere Software Asset Management Tool gives the user insight into license usage of and vSphere environment version 5.5 and up.

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

Features

  • Support both vCenter Server cluster and Standalone ESXi host with a version of vSphere 5.5, 6.X or newer.
  • Generate comprehensive report from various aspects:
    • High-level product deployment summary
    • Product deployment report by targets (standalone ESXi or VC cluster)
    • High level license key usage report
    • License key usage by targets
  • Provide Software Asset Management suggestions on:
    • Evaluation license warning
    • License term
      • Pre-expiration 90 days warning
      • Expiration alert
    • License capacity
      • Potential capacity waste warning based on customized threshold
      • Potential capacity shortage warning based on customized threshold
      • Capacity over-use alert
    • Product support
      • End of General Support info
      • General Support pre-expiration 90 days warning
      • Unsupported product alert
    • Protect customer sensitive information by:
      • Collecting minimal set of information relative with Software Asset Management
      • Masking sensitive info in the report
      • Supporting encryption of raw data file
  • Support merging multi reports into one report
  • Support English and Chinese report
  • Support customization of report

[sta_anchor id=”powervracloud” /]

Power vRA Cloud

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

This module is not supported by VMware and comes with no warranties expressed or implied. Please test and validate its functionality before using this product in a production environment.

Updated Flings

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DRS Dump Insight

The DRS Dump Insight flings gives an explanation why in the bloody hell a VM was moved from one host to the other.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Users can now upload multiple dumps as a folder.
  • Creates a vMotion timeline based on the dumps uploaded, users can navigate through multiple dump analysis.
  • Users can export multiple dump analysis as a PDF at once.
  • Added support to 65u2, 65u3 and 67u3 dumps.
  • Bug fixes and backend improvements

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Horizon Reach

I have said this before but Horizon Reach is awesome and gives you an proper overview over all pod’s in an Horizon Cloud Pod setup.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1 brings vCenter performance data along with a myriad of bugfixes!

New Features

  • Gauges, gauges everywhere.
  • Search field! for those huge customers who hate to dig.
  • vCenter performance statistics will now be captured for Pods running version 7.8 or better.
  • vCenter RAM, CPU, sesions and Datastore Usage have all been added to the historical data views.
  • Datastore usage is now calculated only for datastores used by pools or farms.
  • New layouts for Pools, Farms, Pods, Vcenters etc..
  • RDSH Servers load is now correctly measured and a new view is available.
  • Page headers look much better.
  • vCenters now have the pod name listed.
  • Added support for nested groups and some additional LDAP logging on startup.
  • Added the ability to modify a connection rather than just add and delete.
  • Side nav will now collapse if screen space is low.
  • Don’t use internet explorer, friends don’t let friends do that, I’ve added a warning too.
  • Further logging enabled for LDAP integration including a self test on service start.
  • LDAP now supports nested groups.
  • Events view has been deprecated due to a thread exhaustion issue on the server side.

Bug Fixes

  • Farm usage is now accurate, wow that was broken!
  • Many cast errors were found and dealt with.
  • Problem machines now correctly display the vCenter.
  • Fixed a health score bug in the page header.
  • Fixed a problem machines bug in pools and farms.
  • Fixed a bug in pod numbers calculation.
  • Improved the speed of database enumeration of sites and pods.
  • Fixed a bug in global application entitlements where the lack of shortcuts would cause the UI to freak out.
  • Fixed a bug in Datastore usage where it was reporting the wrong value.
  • Fixed a bug where Reach sessions may not be logged off correctly during polling.
  • Fixed a bug where applications were being requested for each farm multiple times.
  • Fixed a bug where pod health would be called twice for no reason.

[sta_anchor id=”xvcentermigutil” /]

Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

The Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility helps in moving vm’s between vCenter servers even if they are not connected.

Changelog

Version 3.1, January 22, 2020

  • Support for disk format conversion between Thick (Lazy Zeroed), Thick (Eager Zeroed) and Thin provisioning
  • Support for VM rename pattern for Clone operation
  • Fixed duplicated network selection when performing bulk migration
  • Fixed startup failure when a new home vCenter is specified as a command line argument

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vCenter Event Broker Appliance

Sadly there is no real changelog available but just a tweet for the vCenter Event Broker Appliance, a tool that helps the user to create their own events inside vCenter.

Changelog?

Features:

  • Setup no longer require Internet
  • NTP & Proxy Support

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vSphere Mobile Client

If you think your Smartphone screen is big enough to manage vSphere the vSphere Mobile Client will help you in that.

Changelog

Version 1.9.1

Features:

  • Added host shutdown quick action

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where the app would crash when using face ID authentication (iOS)
  • Fixed an issue in the VM card (reversed icons for Windows and Linux)

Version 1.9.0

New features:

  • Ability to save information around a vCenter server (address/username)
  • Use FaceId/Fingerprint recognition to login to a vCenter server

Bug fixes:

  • Do not make first letter uppercase on input fields on the login form
  • Better compatibility with auto-complete applications on the login form

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

VMware OS Optimization Tool

The one, the only and the real VMware OS Optimization Tool. Simply the best tool out there to optimize your windows image.

Changelog

January, 2020, b1140

Includes various bug fixes.

Optimize Results

  • A new button has been added to the results page that displays once an optimization job has completed. This Export button allows you to save the results page as an HTML file.

Generalize

  • New option and button that simplifies the task of running Sysprep using a standard answer file. You can edit the provided answer file before running Sysprep with it.

Finalize

  • New option and button to automate many common tasks that are typically run as a last step before you shut down Windows to use the VM in Horizon. These include the system clean up tasks (NGEN, DISM, Compact and disk clean up) that were previously provided in the Common Options dialog. This also includes clearing event logs, KMS information and releasing the IP address.

Common Options

  • System clean up tasks have been removed from the common options so will now not run during optimize but instead should be run as part of the Finalize process.
    New tab for Security options. This allows for the quick selection of common settings that might need to be left enabled depending on the security requirements. This offers control over Bitlocker, Firewall, Windows Defender, SmartScreen, HVCI.

Command Line

  • Added command line parameter to allow the tool to run without applying optimizations. This is part of the -o parameter called none that then allows you to run things like the system cleanup tasks (NGEM DISM, etc.) without also having to optimize at the same time.
  • VMwareOSOptimizationTool.exe -o none -t template -systemcleanup 0 1 2 3 WebCache
  • Changed default to not disable Webcache. In testing this was shown to break Edge and IE browsers ability to download and save files. The settings are still available in the Windows 10 templates if you want to disable Webcache.

Guides

  • Updated OSOT user guide: VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide.
  • Updated Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop guide coming soon.

[HorizonAPI] Configuring the Horizon event database in code

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Last week Mark Brookfield asked the question if it is possible to configure the event database in code. My answer was that I thought it should be possible until Stephen Jesse pointed me to the the vmware.hv.helper where there is the set-hveventdatabase cmdlet for this. When looking at the code I noticed something familiar:

.NOTES
Author                      : Wouter Kursten
Author email                : wouter@retouw.nl
Version                     : 1.0

===Tested Against Environment====
Horizon View Server Version : 7.4
PowerCLI Version            : PowerCLI 10
PowerShell Version          : 5.0

So that’s why I knew it was possible! A good reason to create a quick blogpost though. Mark made a nice script for himself with variables and all those fancy things but I just want to quickly show how you can do it.

$hvedbpw=read-host -AsSecureString
$temppw=[System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($hvedbpw)
$PlainevdbPassword=[System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($temppw)
$dbupassword=New-Object VMware.Hv.SecureString
$enc=[system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$dbupassword.Utf8String=$enc.GetBytes($PlainevdbPassword)
$eventservice=new-object vmware.hv.eventdatabaseservice
$eventservicehelper=$eventservice.getEventDatabaseInfoHelper()
$eventsettings=new-object VMware.Hv.EventDatabaseEventSettings
$eventdatabase=new-object VMware.Hv.EventDatabaseSettings
$eventsettings.ShowEventsForTime="TWO_WEEKS"
$eventsettings.ClassifyEventsAsNewForDays=2
$eventdatabase.Server="labsql01.magneet.lab"
$eventdatabase.type="SQLSERVER"
$eventdatabase.port=1433
$eventdatabase.name="pod1_events"
$eventdatabase.username="sa_view"
$eventdatabase.password=$dbupassword
$eventservicehelper.setDatabase($eventdatabase)
$eventservicehelper.setsettings($eventsettings)
$eventservice.update($hvservice,$eventservicehelper)

The first three line make it possible to not use a plaintext password. If you don’t care about that you can remove those and declare something for $plainevdbpassword.

For the $eventsettings.ShowEventsForTime for time there are several options (same as in the gui) these are:

ONE_WEEK,TWO_WEEKS,THREE_WEEKS,ONE_MONTH,TWO_MONTHS,THREE_MONTHS,SIX_MONTHS
Yes, they are all in capitals!

To show how this works I will first clear the current database.

$hvservice.EventDatabase.EventDatabase_Clear()
$hvservice.EventDatabase.EventDatabase_Get()

Yes this is one of those exceptions where a service_get doesn’t need an id.

Now I run the script with a new _get to show the results.

If you are interested in the details:

[HorizonAPI] Working with UAG’s

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Something that was added in the last few versions of the Horizon API is the option to handle UAG’s. Since I had to add an uag to my lab for another project I decided to find out what api calls are possible. First I’ll check what services there are.

$hvservice | Select-Object gateway*

I will ignore the GatewayAccessUserOrGroup since that was already in there so we are left with Gateway and GatewayHealth. Let’s see what methods are available under Gateway.

$hvservice.Gateway | gm

I Gateway_Get and Gateway_List will show the same information as always but with _Get you will need a gateway ID and it only shows the information about one gateway. WIth _List you will get the information about all registered gateways.

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_List()
$gw=$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_List() | select-object -First 1
$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Get($gw.id)

Let’s see what’s in that GeneralData (Spoiler: not a lot!)

$gwdata=$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Get($gw.id)
$gwdata.GeneralData

To remove a gateway we use Gateway_Unregister with the gatewayid

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Unregister($gw.id)

Now i need to register the Gateway again let’s see what we need for that.

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Register

So we need an object of the type VMware.Hv.GatewaySpec. Let’s define that and see what it looks like.

$gwspec=New-Object VMware.Hv.GatewaySpec
$gwspec

So we only need the GatewayName, please use the exact name that was used to configure the UAG otherwise it can be added but it won’t be showing any data.

$gwspec.GatewayName="pod1uag1"

Now to register the UAG

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Register($gwspec)

So with this we did everything we could with the Gateway service. Next is the GatewayHealth service.

$hvservice.GatewayHealth | Get-Member

as usual there’s only a get and a list so let’s see what data is in there.

$hvservice.GatewayHealth.GatewayHealth_List()
($hvservice.GatewayHealth.GatewayHealth_List()).ConnectionData

Sadly nothing more than the admin interface gives us but enough to build an health check like I did for the vCheck already (that can be found here)

For the type there are several options and those can be found in the API Explorer.

VALUE DESCRIPTION
“AP” AP type is for UAG.
“F5” F5 type is for F5 server.
“SG” SG type is for Security Server.
“SG-cohosted” SG-cohosted type is for Cohosted CS as gateway.
“Unknown” Unknown type is for unrecognized gateway type.

I was told by a VMware employee that SG-cohosted is fancy wording for a connection server.

And that’s everything we can do with UAG’s using the Horizon API’s!

[HorizonAPI] Changing the amount of desktops or RDS hosts in a pool/farm

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Sometimes there is a need to change the amount of desktops/rds hosts in a pool/farm. Since doing this in the GUI sucks (although that seems to have gotten slightly better with 7.11) I prefer to do it using the API’s. Let’s start with a Desktop pool.

The easiest way to change pool settings is to use the helper function of a service. After connecting to the connection server we first need to query for the ID of the desktoppool that we need to change.

[VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService]$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
[VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition]$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'DesktopSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='desktopSummaryData.name'; 'value' = "Pod01_Pool01"}
[array]$queryResults= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVservice, $defn)).results
$hvpoolid=$queryResults.id

To actually change the pool it’s the best to use the helper function of a service so we first put the desktopservice into an object

$desktopservice=new-object vmware.hv.DesktopService

The next step is to read the current settings into another object.

$desktophelper=$desktopservice.read($HVservice, $HVPoolID)

If you want to see what’s in here we’ll just do this

$desktophelper | get-member

With the get helper method’s it’s possible to get things while you can change them with their set counterpart. Don’t forget to use brackets when you want to go deeper.

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper() | get-member

And we can go on and on with this but I happen to already have found where the amount of desktops is listed.

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper().getVmNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper() | get-member

Let’s take a look at the getMaxNumberOfMachines method.

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper().getVmNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper().getMaxNumberOfMachines()

And we can actually use this with setMaxNumberOfMachines

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper().getVmNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper().setMaxNumberOfMachines(10)

But nothing has changed yet (and yes I am lazy so I will show it using the vmware.hv.helper module.

(get-hvpool -PoolName pod01_pool01).automateddesktopdata.VmNamingSettings.PatternNamingSettings

To apply the change to 10 vm’s we need to apply the helper using the update method

$desktopservice.update($hvservice, $desktophelper)

And when we check this with get-hvpool.

And we can do almost the same for RDS farms just a few details that are different in the naming of various objects.

[VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService]$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
[VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition]$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'FarmSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='data.name'; 'value' = "pod1_rds_IC"}
[array]$queryResults= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVservice, $defn)).results
$hvfarmid=($queryResults).id
(Get-HVFarm -FarmName pod1_rds_ic).automatedfarmdata.RdsServerNamingSettings.PatternNamingSettings
[VMware.Hv.FarmService]$farmservice=new-object vmware.hv.FarmService
$farmhelper=$farmservice.read($HVservice, $HVFarmID)
$farmhelper.getAutomatedFarmDataHelper().getRdsServerNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper().setMaxNumberOfRDSServers(3)
$farmservice.update($HVservice, $farmhelper)

 

[Horizon API] Discovering pods and sites

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When working with a Cloud Pod Architecture with the Horizon API’s we always have to make our scripts so that we connect to each pod separately. What if there is a way to discover the other available pods in a site or other site’s and connect to those? I already spent a couple of posts on working with pods and site’s. In this post I will be mainly using the get and list commands to get the information we need. First of all it’s the easiest to have the credentials saved somewhere because we will be disconnecting and connecting from and to pods. More on that can be found in this post.

To start we need to find what pod we’re currently connected to, with the following command we can list all pods:

$hvservice.Pod.Pod_List()

You see I have two pods: Cluster-Pod2CBR1 and Cluster-POD1CBR1, both have a property called localpod that provides the locality information we need. What we can’t see is if both pods belong to the same site. This can be done by comparing the VMware.Hv.Siteid object but I would prefer to do that from the site side because we might have several pods inside a site and it might become messy that way. The better was is to use that siteid to get all the information from the site.

$localpod=$hvservice.Pod.Pod_List() | where-object {$_.LocalPod -eq $True}
$localpod

And use the site id to grab the localsite.

$localsite=$hvservice.Site.Site_Get($localpod.site)
$localsite
($localsite).pods

The pods object is an array with all the pods within that site, I have added my second pod to this site to show this. Now I am going to select a connection server from each pod, if you want to connect to all the pods regardless the sites you can use the results from pod_list() to create the same output that we get by using this:

$sitepods=foreach ($sitepod in ($localsite.pods)){$hvservice.Pod.Pod_Get($sitepod)}
$sitepods

we still don’t have the name for the connection servers but those are part of the endpoints. We do this by getting the first podendpoint from all the pods within the site.

$podendpoints=foreach ($sitepod in $sitepods){$hvservice.PodEndpoint.PodEndpoint_Get((($sitepod).endpoints | select-object -first 1))}
$podendpoints

Now we’re getting somewhere, we just can’t connect to the serveraddress directly so we need to strip the things from the url’s

$connectionservers=$Podendpoints.serveraddress.replace("https://","").replace(":8472/","")
$connectionservers

Now we have a list of a connection servers from each pod inside site 1. If we would have used the pod_list() as source we would have ended up with one connection server from all pods within the CPA. The only thing we need to do now is to disconnect and do a foreach with whatever we want to do against the connectionservers.

foreach ($connectionserver in $connectionservers){
    Write-Output "This is connectionserver $connectionserver"
    $hvserver=connect-hvserver -Server $connectionserver -cred $cred
    $hvserver.ExtensionData.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_List()
    disconnect-hvserver $hvserver -confirm:$false
}

My VMworld EU 2019 presentations

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It’s already the week after and I am looking back at a very good VMworld last week in Barcelona. In the end I was at a podium for none less than four times and wanted to share the decks or videos with you when available. For the vExpert daily there is no deck (duh) and for the EUC Beer and tapas community event there is no video. I also had to remove most of the slides because the fling hasn’t been published yet, you can expect a blogpost when it’s been published because it’s going to be awesome!

vExpert Daily: Video | Deck

vBrownbag: tools for Horizon Helpdesk: Video | Deck

EUC Beer and Tapas top 5 flings for Horizon: Video | Deck

VMware{Code}-Horizon API 101: Video | Deck

VMworld EU 2019 day 3 report

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I am writing dus from my own desk in my own house after an awesome VMworld 2019. Day three was the day where I presented at the VMware{Code} theater. There was a good audience that really want to start using the Horizon API’s to automate their environments. The rest of de day I spent for a bit in the Solutions Exchange but mainly in the community area. We talked a lot, played some fussball and at the end of the day we had some fun with Eric Nielsen’s workshop about working with Raspberry pi’s and sensors.