The VMware Labs flings monthly for February 2020

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

[sta_anchor id=”pallas” /]

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

[sta_anchor id=”vmcompoptimizer” /]

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

[sta_anchor id=”appvolmigutil” /]

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.

[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 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

 

[HorizonAPI] Configuring the Horizon event database in code

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:

The VMware Labs flings monthly for December 2019

Happy new year and the very best wishes for 2020!

In december three new flings where published with SyncML Compare, vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight and App Finder for Tunnel. Thee other received an update: Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool, Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV and The VMware OS Optimization Tool.

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”syncmlcompare” unsan=”SyncMLCompare” /]

SyncML Compare

The SyncML Compare tool is usefull for troubleshooting profiles and applications that are pushed from the Workspace One Console.

SyncML-Compare is an extension to Fiddler application that lets you compare the syncmls pushed from server against the SyncMls received from the device management client on the device.

Comparing SyncMLs is often required to troubleshoot or debug profiles, applications pushed from the WS1 console.

Instead of copying the two syncmls and then manually comparing each syncml node in a separate xml viewer, SyncML compare lets you compare the SyncMLs on the fiddler application itself.
As shown in the below screenshot, you can see the locUris, commandIds and the results using SyncML compare.

This simplifies the SyncML troubleshooting experience as well as speeds up debugging process.

[sta_anchor id=”vrniplugin” /]

vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight

vRealize Network Insight is a great tool but wouldn’t it even be better when the information is accessible from inside vSphere? The vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight fling takes care of that.

The vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight brings relevant information from Network Insight, directly into vCenter. It allows the virtual infrastructure admins to view networking focused data and statistics in the same interface as where they manage their workloads, without having to have 2 interfaces open. Additionally, this plugin also helps add vCenter as a data source to Network Insight and set up incoming network flows.

Features

Summary view of vCenter activity: VMs, vMotions, and snapshots.
Bring in network information directly to vCenter, such as:Summary view of how network traffic behaves; how much east-west and how much internet traffic there is.
Health check violation for the vCenter and attached NSX environments
Network top talkers, grouped by VMs, Cluster, L2 Network, Subnet, Security Group, Source-Destination Pair, Source & Destination Subnet, Source & Destination IPs.
Most used networks
New Virtual Machines that are accessing the internet
o Top 5 Hosts or Networks that are experiencing the most packet loss
Links to the vRealize Network Insight interface shows the source data and allows you to look closer, apply filters, export information, and more.
Configure vCenter as a data source and configure NetFlow on the available vSphere Distributed Switches.

[sta_anchor id=”appfinder” unsan=”AppFinder” /]

App Finder for Tunnel

The App Finder for Tunnel fling can be used to flag applications to use the Workspace One Tunnel on MacOS.

This application is a utility which can be used for conveniently flagging the applications to use WorkspaceONE Tunnel on macOS. On macOS, WorkapceONE Tunnel supports per-app VPN feature where only the whitelisted applications can be Tunneled rather than tunneling the entire device traffic. In order to whitelist the application to use Tunnel, admin needs to enter the following details on the Workspace UEM Console under “VMware Tunnel” device traffic rule:

Friendly name
Package ID
Designated requirement
Path (this is used only for the pure non-bundle binaries like Curl and ssh)
This fling application supports the basic drag and drop interface which admin can launch and then drag and drop the application to be flagged to use per-app VPN (Firefox in the following case), once the applicatin is dropped, it’s attributes are listed and then admin can paste those in the UEM console as shown below:

Updated Flings

[sta_anchor id=”wsonemigtool” /]

Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

The Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool takes care of migrating applications and devices between different Workspace One environments.

Changelog

Version 2.1.0

  • Fixed app upload issues for Workspace One UEM 1910+
  • Fixed profile search issue for Workspace One UEM 1910+
  • Added profile update support
  • Added template folder structure creation
  • Updated Mac app to support notarization for Catalina

[sta_anchor id=”nfvinfradeployer” unsan=”NFVInfraDeployer” /]

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV is an automation-based deployment tool used for setting up the VMware vCloud NFV platform

Changelog

Version 3.2.0 Update

  • Removed internal link in User Guide. Added a link to the correct external location
  • Removed duplicate User Guide document in zip file

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

VMware OS Optimization Tool

While there is some competition OSOT has been THE tool for optimizing images for VDI or RDSH. The changelog on this on is huge!

Changelog

December, 2019, b1130

  • Command LineAdded command line parameters to allow the control of the common options settings. This allows for the control of visual effect, notification, windows update, store applications, background and system clean up tasks, from the command line.
  • Added list of available templates to the output when run with -h (help).
  • Fixed issues with command line options.

The VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide has been updated to include instruction and examples on using the command line.

Visual Effects

  • Changed balanced setting (default) to leave Show shadows under windows enabled. This was making the white on white explorer windows blend in together which did not give the best user experience.

WebCache

  • Added optimization settings to disable WebCache processes from Windows 10. The default is that these optimizations are selected. This removes approximately 40 Mb from each users’ profile on creation and improves logon times.

Horizon Cloud Templates

  • Changed the two Horizon Cloud specific templates (Windows 10 and Windows 7) by removing the item “VMware DaaS Agent Service”. This is no longer required in Horizon Cloud Service.

December, 2019, b1120

Templates

Changed the two existing Windows 10 templates to also cover the associated Server OS and to introduce support for Windows Server 2019.

  • Windows 10 1507-1803 / Server 2016
  • Windows 10 1809-1909 / Server 2019

The old Windows Server 2016 templates have been removed.

System Clean Up

Added System Clean Up options to Common Options dialog. This removed the need for these to be typed and run manually.

  • Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)
    Reduces the size of the WinSxS folder by uninstalling and deleting packages with components that have been replaced by other components with newer versions. Should be run after a Windows update.
  • Native Image Generator (NGEN).
    Optimizes the .NET Framework. Should be run after an update of .NET Framework.
  • Compact
    Compact (Windows 10/ Server 2016/2019). Enables CompactOS to compress specific Windows system files to free up space. Can take several minutes to execute.
  • Disk Cleanup.
    Deletes temporary and unnecessary files.

Background/Wallpaper

  • New Common Options page for Background which allows the choice of color using a picker. This also allows the option to allow the user to be able to change their wallpaper.

Visual Effects options

  • Added a third option where all visual effects are turned off apart from smooth edges and use drop shadows. This is now the default selection.

Windows Store Apps

New page in Common Options that allows more control over removing Windows Store Apps while allowing the user to select common ones to keep. The Windows Store App and the StorePurchaseApp are retained by default.

Applications that will be able to be selected to be kept are:

  • Alarms & Clock
  • Camera
  • Calculator
  • Paint3D
  • Screen Sketch
  • Sound Recorder
  • Sticky Notes
  • Web Extensions

Defaults

The small taskbar option is now no longer selected by default.
In both Windows 10/ Server templates the following services are now no longer selected by default.

  • Application Layering Gateway Service
  • Block Level Backup Engine Service
  • BranchCache
  • Function Discovery Provider Host
  • Function Discovery Resource Publication
  • Internet Connection Sharing
  • IP Helper
  • Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service
  • Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider
  • Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol Service
  • SNMP Trap
  • SSDP Discovery
  • Store Storage Service
  • Volume Shadow Copy Service
  • Windows Biometric Service

Numerous New Optimizations

  • Fully disable Smartscreen.
  • Disable Content Delivery Manager.
  • Disable User Activity History completely.
  • Disable Cloud Content.
  • Disable Shared Experiences.
  • Disable Server Manager when Windows Server OS.
  • Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security when Windows Server OS (not selected by default).
  • Disable Storage Sense service.
  • Disable Distributed Link Tracking Client Service.
  • Disable Payments and NFC/SE Manager Service.

Bug and error fixes

  • Fixed condition when Export Analysis Results would fail to create file.

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for November 2019

None less than eleven newly released and updated flings this month. This includes three that are directly aimed for End use computing including Horizon Reach about which I blogged earlier this week. The three new releases are Horizon Reach, VMware vSAN Live and vCenter Event Broker Appliance. The following received updates: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a Service on vRealize Automation Cloud, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility, Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV, Horizon View Events Database Export Utility, Horizon Helpdesk Utility, Kubewise, USB Network Native Driver for ESXi and HCIBench.

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”reach” /]

Horizon Reach

As I said in the blog posts, Horizon Reach is one of the best tools for Horizon ever if not the best by giving the admin insight into the entire Cloud Pod Architecture.

Horizon Reach is a web based, monitoring and alerting fling for VMware Horizon On Prem deployments. Horizon Reach is designed to tackle the disconnect in Enterprise environments wherein each Pod in a Cloud Pod Architecture is its own technology domain and fault domain, or a customer is running multiple, disconnected pods, outside of a Cloud Pod Architecture, but would still like to treat them all as one unit of compute.

Often when troubleshooting these fault domains, it can feel like a game of “Whack a mole” jumping from Pod to Pod trying to find a pertinent session, alarm or event to the problem your user is describing.

Reach tackles this issue by performing health checking and gathering pertinent errors from each separate environment and displaying them all in a single place, creating an easy location for administrators to monitor the environment, along with providing a detailed first step in the troubleshooting process.

[sta_anchor id=”vsanlive” /]

VMware vSAN Live

Did you like the vSphere mobile fling? Guess what there is a vSAN mobile fling now as well to give you all the insights while on the go. Personally I expect this one to be merged with the vSphere app at some point but as of now it’s a separate app.

VMware vSAN Live provides vSAN users with instant insights into their hyperconverged infrastructure environments from their mobile devices. Instead of stopping, signing into a laptop and then logging in remotely to view their vSAN environments, users can monitor their HCI clusters while on the go, troubleshooting in just a few clicks.

What’s included in this release?

  • Overview dashboard of vSAN clusters
  • Full-featured Health Checks
  • Cluster inventory view including Fault domain and host status.
  • Easily switch between different vCenter Servers
  • Cluster configuration view including vSAN settings and service status.
  • Full-featured Performance monitoring for VMs and Cluster
  • Full-featured Capacity monitoring

VMware vSAN powers VMware’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution, which combines compute virtualization, storage virtualization and storage networking with unified management into a single system running on industry-standard x86 servers. VMware vSAN, primes businesses for growth through seamless evolution, industry leading deployment flexibility and hybrid-cloud capabilities.

vSAN is native to the market-leading hypervisor, vSphere, simplifying HCI adoption by leveraging existing tools and skillsets. vSAN provides customers industry leading deployment flexibility with over 500+ ReadyNodes, or jointly-certified x86 servers, a turn-key appliance, Dell EMC VxRail, and native services with all of the top public cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, IBM and Oracle. vSAN supports the most hybrid cloud uses cases and provides enterprise-grade, general-purpose infrastructure for VM and container-based applications.

[sta_anchor id=”vcentereventbroker” /]

vCenter Event Broker Appliance

This is quite a handy appliance when you want some event driven automation for your vSphere environment.

The vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) enables customers to easily create event-driven automation based on vCenter Server Events. For example, VEBA can drive basic workflows like automatically attaching a vSphere tag when a virtual machine (VM) is created. Even more powerful integrations between datacenter-internal enterprise services and cloud services, for example Slack and Pager Duty, can be created with VEBA out of the box.

VEBA is provided as a Virtual Appliance that can be deployed to any vSphere-based infrastructure, including an on-premises and/or any public cloud environment, running on vSphere such as VMware Cloud on AWS or VMware Cloud on Dell-EMC.

With this appliance, end-users, partners and independent software vendors only have to write minimal business logic without going through a steep learning curve understanding vSphere APIs. As such, we believe this solution not only offers a better user experience in solving existing problems for vSphere operators. More importantly, it will enable new integration use cases and workflows to grow the vSphere ecosystem and community, similar to what AWS has achieved with AWS Lambda.

Continue the conversation with us on Slack: #vcenter-event-broker-appliance on VMware {code}

Updated flings

[sta_anchor id=”rhaas” /]

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a Service on vRealize Automation Cloud

The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a Service on vRealize Automation Cloud fling gives you a tool to automate the end to end deployment of an Openshift Cluster.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Updated / Revalidate for Red Hat Enterprise Server 7.7
  • Updated / Revalidate for minor changes in bash scripts
  • Updated/ Revalidate for Ansible playbooks

[sta_anchor id=”xvcentermigutil” /]

Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

If you need to migrate or clone vm’s between unlinked or even linked vCenters than the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility is a very useful tool for you.

Changelog

Version 3.0, Novemember 5, 2019

  • New plugin UI integrated with the vSphere HTML5 Client and supported with both vSphere and VMware Cloud environments
    • Full feature parity with the standalone XVM UI
    • Supports migrations triggered by the host, cluster and resource pool actions from the vSphere Client inventory tree
  • Standalone UI is now deprecated but is still supported
  • Ability to migrate networks with the same name
  • Sorting and filtering of the list of VMs to migrate (plugin only)
  • Error reporting improvements

[sta_anchor id=”infradepnfv” /]

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV is an automation-based deployment tool used for setting up the VMware vCloud NFV platform (NFV 3.2 VCD edition). It is based on VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 Reference Architecture design and targets greenfield deployments only.

There are two components:

The input text file – User enters all details of the environment and component products that need to be deployed, and
The power shell scripts – Executed to do the actual deployment of the products.

Changelog

  • None

[sta_anchor id=”horeventexport” /]

Horizon View Events Database Export Utility

While I personally prefer to use the api’s to grab Horizon event logs I still think the Horizon View Events Database Export Utility could be very usefull for people, specially now it has been updated to work with the latest version of Horizon.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Added support for RDSH Pools
  • Returns desktop name now
  • Several bug fixes
  • Tested with Horizon 7.11

[sta_anchor id=”horizonhelpdesk” /]

Horizon Helpdesk Utility

The Horizon Helpdesk Utility still is a 1000 times better than the official java or html5 interfaces and it keeps getting better and better.

Changelog

Version 1.5.0.11

  • Added Named user support in the views
  • Added support for VM image details
  • Added Global search on the overview
  • Added an option to disable the global mutex
  • Fixed numerous bugs

Version 1.5.0.9

  • Updated all binaries to be signed
  • Added full name support for search results
  • Added image status and details for machines view
  • Added a privacy setting to remove the windows title caption
  • Many Bug Fixes

[sta_anchor id=”kubewise” unsan=”Kubewise” /]

Kubewise

Kubewise is a nifty multi-platform Kubernetes Desktop client. In case you don’t want to type kubctl this could be a replacement.

Changelog

Version 1.1.0

[ Features ]

Terminal command UI – users can now override the default command to open a new terminal window of their choice.
About Info UI – displays the version of currently installed kubectl

[ Bug fixes ]

Fixed an issue where Windows users cannot add a kubeconfig file
Fixed an issue where Linux users cannot list resources due to snap security policies
Switching to YAML format in the Inspect resource view loaded all resources of the same type
Surround path params of kubectl commands with double quotes

[ Misc ]

Save settings file pretty printed
Allign ‘trash’ icons in kubeconfig dropdown
Show loading spinner on application startup

[sta_anchor id=”esxiusbnetwork” /]

USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

The USB Network Native Driver for ESXi is specially build for homelabs so people can have (fast) enough nic’s even when running smaller systems in the lab.

Changelog

November 27, 2019 – v1.3

  • Resolved USB device detection issue on Intel XHCI controller
  • Resolved packet record issue for ASIX USB network adapters

ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-30899283-offline_bundle-15188556.zip
ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-30940032-offline_bundle-15188510.zip

[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” unsan=”HCIBench” /]

HCIBench

The HCIBench received 2 updates this month but the second mostly was a bugfix.

Changelog

Version 2.3.1

  • Fixed static IP setting issue
  • Fixed reuse VMs on multi datastores issue
  • Fixed vm/tvm deployment issue
  • MD5 Checksum: 1b220f22575eacf62a965992a4c916e7 HCIBench_2.3.1.ova

Version 2.3.0

[Horizon API] Discovering pods and sites

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

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

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.

 

VMworld Europe 2019 day 2 report

Day 2 of VMworld was interesting for me. I actually did my first (and only) breakout session in the afternoon about VSAN and was in the first row for the one and only Virtually Speaking Podcast. The day actually started with having control of the @VMware_NL twitter handle during the general session (lots of demos!!) and until noon. I also did another two Design Studio sessions and I can’t encourage enough people to do those because you’re helping out with creating our tools from the future. I was for 45 minutes at the VMworld Fest but there where huge lines at the food stands so I grabbed a but and went back to my hotel where I was asleep in no-time.

 

Day 1 of VMworld Europe 2019

So yesterday was a very interesting day for me. It started at the reserved bloggers seats for the keynote where we didn’t see too much really big announcements. After that I had to rush to the community area for my appearance in the vExpert daily this year. If you’re interested to watch that you can find it over here. And at 12.45 I had another go at vBrownbag presenting on a couple of helpdesk tools for VMware Horizon. The rest of the day mainly was hanging around in the community area distributing Pink Cookies, Stroopwafels and gathering swag inn the solutions Exchange. In the evening I once again went onto a stage with Hans Kraaijeveld at the EUC Community beer and tapas event. This was my biggest crowd to present for until now but the beer part made it rather easy. We even showed a brand new fling called Horizon Reach from Andrew Morgan that hasn’t even been released yet. The evening came to a closing for me at the Benelux party where we had some beers and tapas again.

 

The VMworld day 0 report in text and some tweets

Ever played football (or Soccer for the yanks) after a day at a conference? I did this yesterday for the second year in a row but at least we waited with most of the beer until after doing the active bit. Before that my morning was filled with a couple of sessions at the Design Studio’s. The afternoon was more interesting with a a workshop on operationalizing NSX-T. Or well to be more exact that was the description but it ended up being 4 hours of death by powerpoint. But hey it gave me more time for networking with friends at the vCommunity area after bailing out.

https://twitter.com/GreatWhiteTec/status/1191446898017742848