The VMware Labs flings monthly for September 2019

And yet another month gone, next week I will be in Kopenhagen for Nutanix .Next and the month after that I will be speaking at VMworld Barcelona. Will I see you at either of these two events? Last month one new fling was released:  Kubernetes eXtensible Desktop Client (KXDC) , seven received updates: App Volumes Entitlement Sync, vSphere HTML5 Web Client, DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB, VMware OS Optimization Tool, vSphere Mobile Client, Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool, USB Network Native Driver for ESXi and one was marked deprecated: VIB Author.

New releases

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Kubernetes eXtensible Desktop Client (KXDC)

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

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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

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DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB

The DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB fling helps in hardening your vSphere environment.

Changelog

Update September 2019

  • New ESXi 6.7 STIG VIB release
  • 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

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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

[sta_anchor id=”wsonemigtool” /]

Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

With the Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool it’s easy to move devies and applications between WS One UEM environments.

Changelog

Version 2.0.0

  • Baseline Migration Support
  • MacOS application
  • UI refactoring to make bulk migrations easier
  • Added support for script detection with Win32 applications

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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

ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-28903484-offline_bundle-14722970.zip
ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-28903792-offline_bundle-14722993.zip

New Horizon API explorer posted (new queries!)

While watching the VMworld US 2019 video of Sean Massey presenting about getting started with the Horizon API’s I decided to check if the API explorer has been updated. To my surprise it was and it is good to see that several queries have been added besides the method’s that I previously found.

The new queries that I found are:

  • DesktopAssignmentView
    • Description:
      • Desktop id + Desktop assignment data which will include desktop pool information, operation system, global entitlement.
  • DesktopHealthInfo
    • Description:
      • Desktop health Information. This data will be populated only for the desktops which support application remoting.
  • GlobalEntitlementSummaryView
    • Description:
      • Summary information about Global Entitlements.
  • MachineSummaryView
    • Description:
      • This View includes summary data of all entities related to this Machine

So the DesktopAssignmentView seems to give a lot of similar data to what the DesktopSummaryData query already gives. They both give global entitlement data plus user assignment data. The big difference is that it gives way more detailed information about the desktop pool itself like vGPU settings. The names should have been DesktopInfo in my opinion.

Desktophealthinfo is created for the new Windows 10 App remoting and the monitoring for that. The globalentitlementsummaryview and machinesummaryview are linked to GlobalEntitlementInfo and MachineDetailsView from which they give a subset of data.

I hope to have a new blog post soon with more detailed information of what the new method’s and queries will bring but I wanted to update you with the fact that the api explorer has been updated as soon as possible.

Updates to the Horizon API’s in PowerCLI 11.4

So today PowerCLI 11.4 was released with the following updates:

  • Add support for Horizon View 7.9
  • Added new cmdlets to the Storage module
  • Updated Storage module cmdlets
  • Updated HCX module cmdlets

As usual we need to wait for API explorer to be updated before we get the exact changes to the api’s but I already grabbed s short list by comparing the methods. Later I will create a more elaborate blog post about the changes if I have an overview. What I do see are some new additions that might be added to the vCheck for Horizon.

Also: even though the updates are for Horizon 7.9 there’s a good chance that a lot of this also works for previous versions, the examples below where done with 7.8.

  • Datacenter
  • DesktopHealth
  • Gateway
  • GatewayHealth
  • MessageClient
  • Monitoring
  • PersistentDiskQueryService
  • Privilege
  • SecondaryCredentials
  • SessionStatistics
  • StorageAccelerator
  • UsageStatistics
  • Validator
  • VirtualCenterStatistics

Sadly it’s late so I can only show a couple of examples:

$services.Privilege.Privilege_ListSelectablePrivileges()

 

$services.SessionStatistics.SessionStatistics_GetLocalSessionStatistics()

Finally we can reset the usage counters as well now

And some statistics from vCenter

($services.VirtualCenterStatistics.VirtualCenterStatistics_listSummaryStatistics())
($services.VirtualCenterStatistics.VirtualCenterStatistics_listSummaryStatistics()).DataStoreSummaryStatistics

The VMware Labs flings monthly for July 2019

So I am in the middle of my summer holiday but stil it’s time for this monthly overview. I see two new flings with the Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer and Machine Learning on VMware Cloud Foundation tools. No less than six have received updates: vSphere Mobile Client, Desktop Watermark, HCIBench, Horizon Toolbox, Horizon Helpdesk Utility and Horizon Session recording. I already blogged about the updates to the Horizon Helpdesk Utility over here.

New Releases

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Machine Learning on VMware Cloud Foundation

Want to do things with big data? This Fling might be able to help you with that on VCF, It could do with a proper logo though.

This Fling provides a platform for Data Scientists to quickly setup a virtualized cloud infrastructure to conduct data science experiments:

  • Virtualized environment based on VMware cloud and Kubernetes
  • Currently support CPU only (but will support GPU in future)
  • Based on Open Source Kubeflow, Horovod

Provides a set of example Notebooks and libraries for common data science tasks, including:

  • Data collection and cleaning (extract data from various sources, and describe the data semantics using metadata)
  • Data cleansing and transformation (clean up collected data and transform them from its raw form to a structured form more suitable for analytic processing)
  • Model training (develop predictive and optimization machine learning models)
  • Model serving (deploy model into a run time environment where online request will be served)

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Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

I personally wouldn’t call the Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer a fling since it’s a script but it’s here.

The Virtual Machine Computer 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.

Note that the VMCO will not analyze whether your VMs are configured with the correct number of vCPUs based on the VM’s workload. A more in-depth analysis tool such as VMware vRealize Operations Manager can make right-sizing determinations based on workload and actual performance.

Update flings

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Horizon Session Recording

The Horizon Session Recording fling gives the Horizon admin a tool to record sessions for troubleshooting reasons for example.

Changelog

Version 1.2.2

  • Added support for horizon 7.8 and above
  • Added support for recording based on group memberships
  • Many bug fixes in agent
  • Bug fixes in server

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Horizon Helpdesk Utility

Like I said I already blogged about the changes in the Horizon Helpdesk Utility but here’s the changelog, just to be complete.

Changelog

Version 1.4.0.1

  • No longer requires a helpdesk license! Yay!
  • Added the ability to interact with vCenter machines
  • Added the ability to open vCenter VM consoles
  • Added the ability to perform bulk machine actions
  • Added the ability to perform refresh / recompose tasks directly from helpdesk.
  • Fixed performance issues with multiple windows open (see single instance).
  • Fixed a crash when logon durations could not be accessed.
  • Added polling to allow logon durations to be received if notavailable when the session page is requested.
  • Fixed a crash in the ending of processes.
  • Fixed a metric ton of bugs with delegated administration.
  • Fixed a memory leak in the tray icon menu, of all places.
  • Removed the logon page graphic as it was to much of a pain to change it’s colour when changing themes
  • Fixed some layout issues when changing themes.
  • Removed empty sites from the viewon the change pod tray menu.
  • Added preliminary support for Horizon 7.9.

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Horizon Toolbox

The Horizon Toolbox is another usefull utility for the Horizon admin that doesn’t have access to the enterprise add-ons.

Changelog

July 12, 2019, 7.8.1

  • Added support for Horizon View 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8
  • Fixed some issues

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HCIBench

We have seen this one quite a lot already, if you need to benchmark your HCI than the HCIBench might be your tool. Good chance though that it’s better optimized for VSAN than others.

Changelog

Version 2.2.1

  • Fixed docker volume moving issue
  • MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.2.1.ova: 1a39c9df7d1485bc06332ae0b9d92ca7

Version 2.2

  • Moved docker volume to sdb to avoid blowing up OS disk
  • Added Fio spreadsheet generator
  • Added DRS warning checkup
  • Enhanced Grafana to keep all the historical data
  • Added DNS exception handler
  • Fixed RAM and PCPU reporting issue
  • Fixed Vdbench spreadsheet not reporting issue
  • MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.2.ova: bb2a77dcf2ecc23b1ec2c30aee9945ec

[sta_anchor id=”desktopwatermark” /]

Desktop Watermark

I personally haven’t really used the Desktop Watermark fling yet but I guess it could be useful for others.

Changelog

v1.0 – Build 20190724-signed

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

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vSphere Mobile Client

The vSphere Mobile Client fling is still a work in progress but functionality keeps being added. Very useful for most VI admins.

Changelog

Version 1.2.0

New features:

  • Focused inventory (bookmark a VM and then enter focused mode by clicking the bullseye button in the header)
  • vCenter dashboard now has host and virtual machine aggregates
  • Swiping the VM card displays a screenshot, clicking on it displays an even larger image

Bug Fixes

  • Removed option to delete virtual machines
  • Improvements to the login page
  • Improvements to the events and alarms page

 

 

 

 

[API]How to successfully logoff users in Horizon

One of the things that annoy me about the Horizon admin interface is the fact that if you give a session the logoff command that this only works if the user is active aka when the desktop is not locked. With the api’s though (and Andrew implemented this in the helpdesk fling) it is possible to force a logoff. Let’s look at the available method’s first.

So we have a logoff and logoffForced. But there are also the logoffsessions and LofoffSessionsForced, I guess those let you logoff multiple sessions. this is what the extensiondata says about them.

So for the singular method’s we need a single id and for the sessions we need an array of ids. At first I will use get-hvglobalsession (yes, this works against sessions in other pod’s in a cloud pod architecture as well!) to get the id’s to show how it works. I have 5 sessions running from my desktop

$services1.Session.Session_Logoff((get-hvglobalsession | select -first 1).id)

Damn locked, let’s force this bastard from his desktop.

$services1.Session.Session_LogoffForced((get-hvglobalsession | select -first 1).id)

Aaaand it’s gone

And to show that it works I had to make sure the first session wasn’t locked.

And now the big bang fuck all of you!

$services1.Session.Session_LogoffSessionsForced((Get-HVGlobalSession).id)

As you can see one of my users was a but slow in logging off (nested esxi with only a couple vcpu’s for that one) I have also created a script that asks for the user whom you want to logoff and which session you want to logoff in case they have multiple. It’s not the cleanest code that I have written but it works 🙂

$hvserver1=connect-hvserver servername -user user -domain domain -password passwords
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

$username= Read-Host "Which user do you want to logoff? (no wildcards needed, part of the name is enough)"

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$userdefn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$userdefn.queryEntityType = 'ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'
$userfilter1= New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterContains
$userfilter1.membername='base.name'
$userfilter1.value=$username
$userfilter2= New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals
$userfilter2.membername='base.group'
$userfilter2.value=$False
$userfilter=new-object vmware.hv.QueryFilterAnd
$userfilter.filters=@($userfilter1, $userfilter2)
$userdefn.filter=$userfilter
$users=($queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $userdefn)).results

$menu = @{}
for ($i=1;$i -le $users.count; $i++){ 
    Write-Host "$i. $($users[$i-1].base.name)" 
    $menu.Add($i,($users[$i-1].id))
}
[int]$ans = read-host "Please select the correct user"
$user=$menu.Item($ans)

$GlobalSessionQueryService = new-object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceService
$sessionfilterspec=new-object vmware.hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceQuerySpec
$sessionfilterspec.user=$user
$sessions=($GlobalSessionQueryService.GlobalSessionQueryService_QueryWithSpec($services1, $sessionfilterspec)).results

$menu = @{}
for ($i=1;$i -le $sessions.count; $i++){ 
    Write-Host "$i. $($sessions[$i-1].namesdata.basenames.MachineOrRDSServerName)" 
    $menu.Add($i,($sessions[$i-1].id))
}
[int]$ans = read-host "Please select the correct VDI Desktop"
$session=$menu.Item($ans)

$Services1.Session.Session_Logoffforced($session)
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($services1)

This script forces the logoff for the sessions since I haven’t been able yet to find where the desktop status (locked or not) is visible.

Updates to the VMware Horizon Helpdesk fling

Today a new version has been released of the VMware Horizon Helpdesk fling by Andrew Morgan. One big change is that the Helpdesk license isn’t required anymore so at least a part of the functionality is available to owners of advanced or standard Horizon licenses.

the entire changelog:

Version 1.4.0.1

  • No longer requires a helpdesk license! Yay!
  • Added the ability to interact with vCenter machines
  • Added the ability to open vCenter VM consoles
  • Added the ability to perform bulk machine actions
  • Added the ability to perform refresh / recompose tasks directly from helpdesk.
  • Fixed performance issues with multiple windows open (see single instance).
  • Fixed a crash when logon durations could not be accessed.
  • Added polling to allow logon durations to be received if notavailable when the session page is requested.
  • Fixed a crash in the ending of processes.
  • Fixed a metric ton of bugs with delegated administration.
  • Fixed a memory leak in the tray icon menu, of all places.
  • Removed the logon page graphic as it was to much of a pain to change it’s colour when changing themes
  • Fixed some layout issues when changing themes.
  • Removed empty sites from the viewon the change pod tray menu.
  • Added preliminary support for Horizon 7.9.

 

Let’s look into some of the new options (will do the options without the helpdesk license last)

Added the ability to interact with vCenter machines 

From the pool view you’ll see an extra button for vCenter actions

And that will give these options

These all speak for themselves in functionality.

Added the ability to open vCenter VM consoles 

Open VM console will give an popup that asks for vCenter credentials.

Hit logon and a vrmc client should start if it’s installed

Added the ability to perform bulk machine actions 

The vCenter actions above can be done against multiple vm’s but also the various actions from View itself

Added the ability to perform refresh / recompose tasks directly from helpdesk. 

No longer requires a helpdesk license! Yay! 

when you use the std license the biggest difference is that you can’t view any specifics inside sessions since that’s all limited to the helpdesk license.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for May 2019

Originally I created this post with only 2 updated and one new fling. Some engineers though added two more new flings so 3 new ones and 2 have received an update. The new ones are the Distributed Trust Incident Reporting fling, vRealize Build Tools and Cloud Automation Services SDK for Python. while the Horizon Toolbox and Horizon Migration Tool have received updates.

New Releases

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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.

This Fling is focused on code quality, code reusability, unit testing, dependency management and parallel releases of vRealize projects. In practice, it is a set of Maven extensions, packaged in a Maven repository format, that support the use of IDE (via Maven) and CLI to develop, test and deliver vRA and vRO-based solutions. It includes a vRO plug-in that exposes autocomplete information for standard and third-party scripting objects and actions and CLI that can deploy packages to vRO and vRA via the standard APIs.

[sta_anchor id=”cassdkpyth” /]

Cloud Automation Services SDK for Python

The Cloud Automation Services SDK for Python is a set of Python classes to simplify automation against several aspects of the Cloud Assembly, Service Broker, and Code Stream API when using Python.

Note: The github repo will be public soon!

 

[sta_anchor id=”dtir” /]

Distributed Trust Incident Reporting

The Distributed Trust Incident Reporting fling is an  open source security incident tracker.

Security incidents are important to track so that all parties know the status of a breach and can respond in concert and with appropriate speed. Current methods to track incidents are generally paper-based manual processes. More recent systems are based on a centralized database with some web interface to interact with the record and response tracking.

We propose that this does not work well enough in the scenarios where:

  • security incidents may affect more than a single entity
  • where more than one entity must respond to an incident
  • some or all entities have no trust in the others
  • no party can or will be responsible for hosting the full system

For example, a security breach in the supply chain for a food manufacturer could result in several retail businesses with products on shelf that contain a pathogen. Current methods of notifying the proper authorities require a phone tree to call all the correct parties which then react as individuals or local committees. In addition the incident must either be initially submitted to each entity separately or one entity must take responsibility to notify the others.

This Fling:

  • allows all parties (e.g. retail, governmental, public) to see the incident via a single report transaction
  • allows all parties to respond in concert as required
  • allows automated systems to report incidents
  • allows transparency across all organizations

Updated flings

[sta_anchor id=”horizontoolbox” /]

Horizon Toolbox

The Horizon toolbox is an extension to the Horizon Admin Console giving all kinds of user and session information. It is no replacement for the Horizon Helpdesk (or the fling).

Changelog

May 28, 2019, 7.8.0

  • Fix some incompatible issues
  • Only support Horizon View 7.7 & 7.8

[sta_anchor id=”horizonmigtool” /]

Horizon Migration Tool

The Horizon Migration Tool helps you migrating from Citrix to an On-Prem Horizon Environment.

Changelog

Version 3.0.2

  • Updated the binary package and the document accordingly

[API’s] Getting session counts (incl performance comparison)

One of my customers asked the question if it is possible to get a quick sessioncount for a script that they can run very often for a correct logging of license usage. While this could easily be done by grabbing all the sessions I thought this could be a slow process. I remembered though that the first release of the vmware.hv.helper module had a function called get-podsessions that only returned a sessioncount. I decided to see what was used for this. By going back in time at github I found that the GlobalSessionQueryService was still used but with the GlobalSessionQueryService_GetCountWithSpec method. It needs the service and a spec of the type VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceCountSpec.

the spec itself can hold one of the many options to get a count for

As you can see there is a globalentitlement property that needs to be set using the id so let’s grab that one first.

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'GlobalEntitlementSummaryView'
$globalentitlements = ($queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $defn)).results

I will use the first globalentitlement to grab the sessioncount

$globalentitlement=$globalentitlements | select -first 1
$globalsessionqueryservice_helper = New-Object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceService  
$count_spec = New-Object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceCountSpec  
$count_spec.globalentitlement=$globalentitlement.id
$sessioncountperglobalentitlements=$globalsessionqueryservice_helper.GlobalSessionQueryService_GetCountWithSpec($services1,$count_spec)

As you can see we actually get a count per pod so to get all the counts from all pods from all globalentitlements I have created a script with a couple foreach’s.

$hvserver1=connect-hvserver SERVERNAME
$services1=$hvserver1.extensiondata
$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'GlobalEntitlementSummaryView'
$globalentitlements = ($queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $defn)).results
$queryservice.QueryService_DeleteAll($services1)
$sessioncount=@()


foreach ($globalentitlement in $globalentitlements){
  $globalsessionqueryservice_helper = New-Object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceService  
  $count_spec = New-Object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceCountSpec  
  $count_spec.globalentitlement=$globalentitlement.id
  $sessioncountperglobalentitlements=$globalsessionqueryservice_helper.GlobalSessionQueryService_GetCountWithSpec($services1,$count_spec)
  foreach ($sessioncountperglobalentitlement in $sessioncountperglobalentitlements){
    $pod=$services1.pod.pod_get($sessioncountperglobalentitlement.id)
    $sessioncount+= New-Object PSObject -Property @{
      "Global_Entitlement_Name" = $globalentitlement.base.displayname;
      "Pod_Name"=$pod.displayname
      "Pod_Sessioncount" = ($sessioncountperglobalentitlement | select-object -expandproperty count);
      "Site_Name"= ($services1.site.site_get($pod.site)).base.Displayname;
    }
  }
}
 return $sessioncount | select-object Global_Entitlement_Name,Pod_Name,Site_Name,Pod_Sessioncount

The W10_MGMT global entitlement only has a pool in pod1 so even though the pod doesn’t have a pool inside the global entitlement it will still return a sessioncount.

Performance

I also decided to time it but in my small environment it took 3 seconds and 3 of those where for connecting to the connection server. If I removed the connecting part it was 0.7 seconds.

Measure-Command {D:\scripts\dev\session_count.ps1}

Back at the customer I decided to compare this against dumping all global sessions, this will give some better data since it has a couple more sessions in it (around 3500 at the moment of testing)

The script I used for getting all global sessions is the code that I used for the get-hvglobalsession in the vmware.hv.helper module

$query_service_helper = New-Object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceService
$query=new-object vmware.hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceQuerySpec

$SessionList = @()
foreach ($pod in $services1.Pod.Pod_List()) {
  $query.pod=$pod.id
  $queryResults = $query_service_helper.GlobalSessionQueryService_QueryWithSpec($services1, $query)
  $GetNext = $false
  do {
    if ($GetNext) { $queryResults = $query_service_helper.GlobalSessionQueryService_GetNext($services1, $queryResults.id) }
    $SessionList += $queryResults.results
    $GetNext = $true
  } while ($queryResults.remainingCount -gt 0)
    $query_service_helper.GlobalSessionQueryService_Delete($services1, $queryresults.id)

}
return $sessionlist

Screenshots from the timing:

so the getcountwithspec method is about 2.5 seconds faster but the data in the globalsession is way more extensive and usable for all kinds of management overviews.

[API]Resetting Desktops

This is the first post in a series of shorts that I will be posting about various methods that you can use with the VMware Horizon API’s. This time it will be about resetting desktops. When looking at the API Explorer you’ll see that there are two ways do do this from the machine service.

So the first is for a single VDI desktop and the latter for multiple.

First we need to get a list of vm’s I will be using the machines in pod1pool02 as victims for this post.

$queryservice=new-object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn=New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.QueryEntityType="MachineNamesView"
$filter=new-object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterContains
$filter.MemberName='base.name'
$filter.Value="Pod1Pool2"
$defn.filter=$filter
$results=($queryservice.QueryService_Query($services1, $defn)).results

with this result:

From this we’ll make a variable with all of them and one with a single one

$singlevm=$results | select-object -first 1
$multiplevms=$results

Before I will reset the single VM I will show the state of all the vm’s.

($queryservice.QueryService_Query($services1, $defn)).results.base.basicstate

And now let’s reset the vm.

$services1.machine.machine_reset($singlevm.id)

Since this is an instant clone you’ll see provisioned and not reset. Now let’s reset the rest as well.

$services1.Machine.Machine_ResetMachines($multiplevms.id)

And this method will work for all managed vdi desktops full, linked or instant clones.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for April 2019

It has been a quiet month for me on the blogging side of things. I am slowly rebuilding my lab so that costs a lot of time that I can’t spend on blogging. This month two new flings have been released and no less than six have received an update. the new flings are MyVMware CLI and App Volumes Entitlement Sync. The ones to receive an update are App Volumes Toolbox, Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility, Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool, vSphere HTML5 Web Client,  and HCIBench.

New Releases

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MyVMware CLI

The MyVMware CLI fling is an early preview of api’s to download your entitled software from http://my.vmware.com.

MyVMware CLI is a command line client used to login and interact with my.vmware.com.
It provides an interface for programmatic query and download of VMware product binaries.

This Fling is in early preview and allows you to find and download:

  • Every product
  • Every version
  • Every file

Note: Any download attempts will be restricted to the entitlements afforded by your my.vmware.com account.

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App Volumes Entitlement Sync

If you have multiple App Volumes installations than the App Volumes Entitlement Sync fling can be usefull to make sure everyone has the same rights everywhere.

The App Volumes Entitlement Sync Fling will read, compare and sync entitlements from one App Volumes instance to another. This helps customers managing multiple App Volumes instances across one or multiple geographic sites.

Updated flings

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App Volumes Toolbox

The App Volumes Toolbox fling makes it easier to manage your App Volumes setups.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Optimized for App Volumes 2.x
  • Remove support for Enzo and App Volumes 3
  • Bug Fixes

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Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

The Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool fling allows you to easily migrate applications and configurations between various WS One setups.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1

  • Fixed issue with expired credentials.

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Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

The Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility allows you to vmotion or move vm’s between linked and unlinked vCenter servers. Since this version it also supports NSX-T Opaque networking.

Changelog

Version 2.6, April 15, 2019

  • Added support for NSX-T Opaque Network (enables migration to/from VMC and on-premises vSphere with NSX-T)

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Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool

With the Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool you can automate the process of migrating and backing up from one idm to another.

Changelog

Version 1.6

  • Exports categories to new XML file appname_categories.xml
  • Exports entitlements to a new XML file called appname_entitlements.xml
  • Imports categories
  • Creates the category if it doesn’t exist on tenant where importing
  • Shows if a bundle has an associated entitlement or category xml file
  • Shows number of applications returned
  • Shows number of categories an application has assigned to it
  • Windows reserved characters are replaced with an underscore for export bundle

Version 1.5

  • Allows more than 20 applications to be returned – now up to 500 applications will be returned by the tool
  • Added number of applications returned into the group box title

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Want the newest even with vCenter 6.7? Use the vSphere HTML5 Web Client fling!

Changelog

Fling 4.2.0 – Build 13172979
New Features

  • vSphere Perspective Management available under Administration > Customization > Perspectives This new feature enables administrators to take control of which parts of the UI other administrators see. This is done by defining a set of views and combining them together into a so called “perspective”.
    • [Perspective tab] As an administrator you can show or hide: tabs, portlets and primary views.
    • [Assignments tab] Perspectives can be assigned to both users and groups.
    • Demo is available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/06z15xspsvrciys/Perspectives-demo-fling.mp4
  • Code Capture can also capture calls for operations made when managing Content Libraries.
  • Code Capture can generate scripts in additional languages: Python and vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) Javascript.

Known Issues

We noticed an intermittent issue with stopping the vsphere-client. You can always kill the process manually by running these commands

ps -ax | grep java
kill -9
ps -ax | node
kill -9

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HCIBench

Want to test your Hyperconverged Infrastructure? HCIBench Is one of the tools you can use for that.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Added fio as an alternative workload generator
  • Added Grafana for workload live monitoring
  • Switched UI to clarity
  • Allow user to select one to four cases while using easy-run

Bug fixes

  • MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.0.ova: ba3c2b06b8c27fb41a1bb68baedb325f