Category: vExpert

The VMware Labs flings monthly for January 2019

  By , , , , , ,

One month down, eleven to go for 2019! I am very busy planning the first Nutanix User Group meet and hopefully I will be selected again as vExpert. You can also still apply for vExpert at http://vexpert.vmware.com/. Back to the flings, this month there has been one new release:  Policy Enforcer and four updates: ESXi Embedded Host Client,
vSphere HTML5 Web Client, vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker and vSphere PKS Plugin.

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”policyenforcer” /]

Policy Enforcer

Policy Enforcer is used to check and remediate restriction policies on a Workspace ONE Managed Windows 10 machine. If a user were to try to override configured Policy CSP settings by attempting to edit the Windows Registry, Policy Enforcer will compare the current value with the MDM configured value and reset the registry if the values differ.

Policy Enforcer can be implemented by uploading the MSI installer to the WS1 UEM console and deploying as an internal app via Apps & Books.

Updated

[sta_anchor id=”vsancompatchecker” /]

vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker

With the vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker you are able to test your hardware against the vSAN Hardware Compatibility list.

The vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker is a tool that verifies all installed storage adapters against the vSAN supported storage controller list. The tool will verify if the model, driver and firmware version of the storage adapter are supported.

Using a supported storage controller and firmware is important in a vSAN deployment to ensure normal operations, optimal performance, and to reduce the chances of hardware/firmware issues. This tool can be useful to ensure that a storage device and its firmware went through certification testing supported by VMware and its partners.

Some scenarios where the tool can be useful:

  • Verify if new server and storage adapter are supported for a vSAN deployment
  • Verify if re-purposed server, storage adapter are supported for a vSAN deployment

For a full vSAN system check, please check vSAN health UI through vSphere web client after a vSAN deployment.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Add 3 new checks
  • Controller is VMware certified for ESXi release
  • Controller driver is VMware certified
  • Controller firmware is VMware certified
  • Update HTML report format
  • Bug fixes

[sta_anchor id=”vspherepksplugin” unsan=”vSpherePKSPlugin” /]

vSphere PKS Plugin

The vSphere PKS plugin gives the administrator a graphical interface within the vSphere HTML5 console.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1 – Build 168317

  • A PKS instance can be added to the plugin by providing the Ops Manager credentials
  • Support an alternate IP address (such as an NSX floating IP) to be used as the registration server and plugin server IP. It is assumed that the IP will be mapped to the appliance’s NIC via other means
  • Minor bug fixes

[sta_anchor id=”esxihostclient” /]

ESXi Embedded Host Client

The latest and greatest version of the ESXi embedded host client as found in production since ESXi6.0

Changelog

Version 1.33.1 build 12086396 (Fling 23) – January 31, 2019
OVF issues 

  • Various fixes for ovf import issues
  • ISO files are now imported from OVAs

General 

  • Fixed an issue with special characters in datastore names in some versions of ESXi
  • Fix swapped labels for transmit and receive in network chart
  • Network adapters are added to the vm in the correct order
  • Fixed issue with firewall notifications displaying incorrect information
  • provide notifications for expiring licenses
  • Support for Swedish input locale in the vm console
  • Display Fibre channel wwn and wwp as 64bit addresses

[sta_anchor id=”html5client” /]

 vSphere HTML5 Web Client

This is the newest release of the HTML5 Web Client for vSphere. The downloadable version is 4.0.1 while the changelog is 4.0 so we’ll have to assume that 4.0.1 is a small bug fix. Starting from this version the fling ONLY supports vSphere 6.5 and newer!

Changelog

Fling 4.0 – Build 11785236

  • New Features
    • Support for VC 6.7
    • ESX Agent Manager UI
    • MxN Convergence in System Configuration
    • Import Certificate and Generate CSR
    • Code Capture: the record button can be toggled between hidden and shown.
    • Ability to remove Script Bundles in Autodeploy for 6.7 VC
    • Ability to remove Discovered hosts in Autodeploy for 6.7 VC
    • Export licensing data in CSV for all licensing views
    • Add and Assign license with single operation
    • Authentication Proxy configuration for VC 6.5+ (VC > Configure  > Settings > Authentication Proxy)
  • Improvements
    • Improved performance for Files browser for VC 6.7
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed an issue where starting a Code Capture recording would lead to dialogs loading slowly or not at all.
  • Known Issues
    • To open the Fling UI, you need to use https://<Fling IP>/ui
    • The VMware vSphere Update Manager (VUM) plugin will not be loaded when the Fling 4.0 is connected to vSphere 65
  • Release Notes
    • The upgrade from Fling 3.x to Fling 4.0 will require to establish new connection to the vSphere by providing the vSphere credentials.
    • The Fling 4.0 is based on the vSphere 6.7 client and does not support vSphere versions prior to vSphere 6.5

Added Checks to the vCheck for Horizon View

  By , , , , , ,

Starting this year I decided to really restart working on the vCheck for Horizon. I had several requests for RDS checks & Active directory plus I really wanted to get rid of everything related to the vmware.hv.helper module to make using it a little easier.

Just like the pools I pull the farms in the connection plugin so these can be used from other plugins.

# --- Get Desktop pools
$poolqueryservice=new-object vmware.hv.queryserviceservice
$pooldefn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$pooldefn.queryentitytype='DesktopSummaryView'
$poolqueryResults = $poolqueryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $pooldefn)
$pools = foreach ($poolresult in $poolqueryResults.results){$services1.desktop.desktop_get($poolresult.id)}

# --- Get RDS Farms

$Farmqueryservice=new-object vmware.hv.queryserviceservice
$Farmdefn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$Farmdefn.queryentitytype='FarmSummaryView'
$FarmqueryResults = $FarmqueryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $Farmdefn)
$farms = foreach ($farmresult in $farmqueryResults.results){$services1.farm.farm_get($farmresult.id)}

# ---- Remove queries
$services1.QueryService.QueryService_DeleteAll()

The deleteall() for the queries needs to be added to clean things up, otherwise you will run out of queries pdq. The RDS plugins I created are visible down below.

Also an AD check was added

The vCenter api call was split into three checks for vCenter itself, ESXi and datastores.

Besides these I have also added a saml check (tested by Aresh Sarkari, thank you!) and truesso checks (don’t have it in my lab so can’t test).

If you want an example of the vCheck that can be found HERE.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for December 2018

  By , ,

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a great (and safe!) end of the year. I just need to close the year up with one thing: an overview of flings that have been released or updated in December. No less than four new flings have arrived: VMware Workspace ONE Provisioning Tool, Dispatch-Solo, Android Device Pre-Verification Suite and PowerCLI for VMware Cloud on AWS. Two flings have received an update: PowerCLI Extensions and the HCIBench.

New

[sta_anchor id=”wsoneprovtool” /]

VMware Workspace ONE Provisioning Tool

The VMware Workspace ONE Provisioning Tool gives you an gui to provision and test WS One Applications.

The VMware Workspace ONE Provisioning Tool helps you test and validate your applications (exported as a .ppkg file) and the special-purpose unattend.xml configuration file as part of the Dell Provisioning for Workspace ONE offer. This tool simplifies the testing and validation of this process in your own environment before these files are sent and applied in the Dell factory.

Highlights

  • Simple UI to easily enable the IT admin to validate their ppkg and unattend.xml files in their own environment, mimicking what Dell is doing in the factory.
  • Supports PPKGs and unattend.xmls generated with Workspace ONE UEM Console 1811 or newer.
  • Highly flexible. Allows IT admins to specify the configurations for tool in a text based config file in order to change things like tool timeout and report location, to name a few.
  • Generates a detailed final summary report with client details and app installation results. This file is saved in C:\ProgramData\Airwatch\UnifiedAgent\Logs\PPKGFinalSummary.log after the “Full Process” button is clicked.
  • Halts the process if any steps fails for the given operation, giving the ability to IT admins to view & debug the state of the machine and the apps.

Supported Operations

  • Apply Apps Only – Given a ppkg, this tool deploys the applications on a test windows machine
  • Apply Full process – Given a ppkg and xml file, this tool deploys the applications on a test windows machine followed by Workspace ONE enrollment and Sysprep.

[sta_anchor id=”dispatchsolo” /]

Dispatch-Solo

The Dispatch-Solo fling actually is a prepackaged VM to get you started with dispatch as easily as possible.

Dispatch-Solo is lean version of Dispatch which has been packaged as VM appliance. The goals of Dispatch-Solo are simple:

  • Lower the barrier to entry – get started with Dispatch in a matter of minutes
  • Support nearly the full Dispatch feature set – API compatibility
  • Explore use-cases – get user feedback and iterate

Because Dispatch and serverless is still in its infancy, understanding use cases is the highest priority. It therefore makes sense to continue to focus on getting Dispatch in as many hands as possible and making it as easy as possible to get started exploring its usage. By packaging Dispatch-Solo as a VM appliance, getting started is quick and predictable.

For full documentation and examples see the Dispatch project page.

[sta_anchor id=”androidpreversuite” /]

Android Device Pre-Verification Suite

This Android Device Pre-Verification Suite Fling reduces the time to perform a preliminary test on any Android device from any OEM. Pre-verification result decides whether the device is eligible for a full device verification program or not. This eliminates the TAT (turnaround time) for basic test failures during the initial phase of verification from VMware. Customers/Partners can run this tool at their premise and check whether the device passes the device verification program entry criteria.

[sta_anchor id=”powerclivmc” /]

PowerCLI for VMware Cloud on AWS

If you are using VMware Cloud on AWS the PowerCLI for VMware Cloud on AWS fling will give you an preview on what to expect from PowerCLI to automate VMC.

This Fling provides a community preview of the upcoming PowerCLI commands for managing VMware Cloud on AWS. It comes in the form of a single PowerCLI module and integrates with existing PowerCLI modules.

All commands have been automatically generated. They are still in development, contain known issues, and will change in the future.

Updated

[sta_anchor id=”powercliextensions” /]

PowerCLI Extensions

The PowerCLI extensions fling gives you a preview on what to expect in the official PowerCLI releases.

Changelog

Version 3.0.0.11173018

  • Updated PowerCLI.Extensions Module to be compatible with VMware PowerCLI 11.0.0

[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” /]

HCIBench

This one should be known by now, the HCIBench is made for benchmarking your hyperconverged infrastucture. Ideal for things like vSAN but please be aware that it could also possibly be tuned for that.

Changelog

Version 1.6.8.7

  • Enhanced easy-run, put original 4k,70% read as the first test case, then 4k, 100% read and 256k, 100% write
  • Enhanced tvm deployment validation
  • Added Checksum into easy-run consideration
  • Updated guest VM template with increased ring_pages and disk scheduler
  • Added DNS configuration guidance into welcome message

Version 1.6.8.5

  • Added 2 more test cases into easy-run, 4k 100% random read and 256k 100% sequential write
  • Batch deployment will be involved if deploying more than 8 VMs to speed up deployment process
  • Allow user to choose IP prefix when using static IP
  • Optimized UI to allow user to review the results by single click
  • Fixed regression issue when placing Datacenter/Cluster in the folder

 

Setting maintenance mode for Linked Clones using API’s

  By , , ,

If you have used the VMware.hv.helper the title of this blog post might sound strange since the set-hvmachine already has a way to set maintenance mode. When Ryan Butler asked me the question this week though I didn’t think of that and dived into the api’s immediately. The machines.Machine_EnterMaintenanceMode method looked good to me and than I though of the vmware.hv.helper and noticed that with

Set-HVMachine -Maintenance ENTER_MAINTENANCE_MODE

it was also possible so set maintenance mode. The usage though made me think immediately that this was not actually using a proper api call but the update function. A quick look at the function itself confirmed this. It sets that status of the virtual machine by directly setting the status.

if ($Maintenance) {
      if ($Maintenance -eq 'ENTER_MAINTENANCE_MODE') {
        $updates += Get-MapEntry -key 'managedMachineData.inMaintenanceMode' -value $true
      } else {
        $updates += Get-MapEntry -key 'managedMachineData.inMaintenanceMode' -value $false
      }
    }
(this is just a snippet of the complete function)

If you are below version 7.5 of Horizon view it’s probably of no use to continue with the rest of this blog post. The api explorer only mentions the relevant functions since 7.5! They have been tried against 7.0.3 and 6.2 and there they don’t work.

So back to the drawing board it was and I needed to look at the API explorer, there are 4 relevant methods for maintenance mode.

As usual there are methods for multiple machines that use an array of id’s (with machines in the name) and methods for single machines id’s (without the machines in the name).

Since I usually use instant clones these days I created a small pool with three linked clones. With get-hvmachine I can show you their names and state.

(get-hvmachine -pool pod2_linked).base | select-object name,basicstate

Since I know that get-hvmachine will already give you the id of a machine it’s easy to do a one liner to set one system in maintenance mode.

 $services1.Machine.Machine_EnterMaintenanceMode((get-hvmachine -machinename p2lc001).id)

and exit maintenance mode.

 $services1.Machine.Machine_ExitMaintenanceMode((get-hvmachine -machinename p2lc001).id)

And the entire pool?

$services1.Machine.Machine_EnterMaintenanceModemachines((get-hvmachine -pool pod2_linked).id)

And exit maintenance mode for the entire pool.

$services1.Machine.Machine_ExitMaintenanceModemachines((get-hvmachine -pool pod2_linked).id)

Okay so we now know how this works but I don’t want to use to vmware.hv.helper module for this at all because I want to be able to use a list of machines or based on part of the name. That can be done using a query. The query entitytype to use is MachineSummaryView and if you use queryfiltercontains it’s also possible to use only a part of the name for a kind of wildcard selection. Combine several of these in with queryfilteror and it gives the opportunity to select them from a list.

$connectionserver="servername"
$hvserver1=connect-hvserver $connectionserver 
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData
$machines=get-content machines.txt
$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryentitytype='MachineSummaryView'
$filterset=@()
foreach ($machine in $machines) {
    $queryfiltercontains=New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFiltercontains -Property @{ 'memberName' = 'base.name'; 'value' = $machine }    
    $filterset+=$queryfiltercontains
    }
$orFilter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterOr
$orFilter.filters = $filterSet
$defn.filter=$orFilter
$ids=($queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $defn)).results
$services1.Machine.Machine_EnterMaintenanceModeMachines($ids.id)
p2lc001
p2lc003

Now I replaced the names in the txt file with only p2lc00

$connectionserver="servername"
$hvserver1=connect-hvserver $connectionserver 
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData
$machines=get-content machines.txt
$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryentitytype='MachineSummaryView'
$filterset=@()
foreach ($machine in $machines) {
    $queryfiltercontains=New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFiltercontains -Property @{ 'memberName' = 'base.name'; 'value' = $machine }    
    $filterset+=$queryfiltercontains
    }
$orFilter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterOr
$orFilter.filters = $filterSet
$defn.filter=$orFilter
$ids=($queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $defn)).results
$services1.Machine.Machine_ExitMaintenanceModeMachines($ids.id)

And back into maintenance mode

So this is a nice way to manage the machines and their maintenance state. Please remember that these scripts only work against horizon 7.5 and higher.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for November 2018

  By , , ,

The year’s almost over but for me it feels like it just got started, how does it feel for you? Time certainly flies! This month there was one new fling: vSphere PKS Plugin and five have received updates: Workspace ONE UEM Profile Migration Utility, HCIBench, ESXi Embedded Host Client, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility and Workspace ONE Configuration Tool for Provisioning.

New

[sta_anchor id=”vspherepks” /]

vSphere PKS Plugin

The vSphere PKS Plugin provides a user interface for managing and monitoring Kubernetes cluster deployments for the PKS platform. Using the vSphere PKS Plugin you can view details about your Kubernetes clusters, including master and worker nodes as well as networking configuration.

Features

The vSphere PKS Plugin:

  • Provides a graphical interface to visualize the Kubernetes clusters deployed and managed by PKS
  • Provides visibility into underlying infrastructure such as VMs, network objects and storage objects that are created when a Kubernetes cluster is deployed in a vSphere environment
  • Provides a centralized launch point for viewing components deployed with the Kubernetes cluster, including nodes and network objects such as routers, logical switches, load balancers
  • Provides a simple user interface to get easy access to the cluster using the kubectl interface and the cluster Dashboard

Updated

[sta_anchor id=”wsonemigutil” /]

Workspace ONE UEM Profile Migration Utility

The Workspace ONE UEM Profile Migration Utility helps  in moving profiles between various WS One UEM Consoles.

Changelog

Version 1.6

  • Added a log file for more advanced troubleshooting and auditing. A new file in the folder called: WS1UEM-Profile-Migration-Utility-log.txt
  • Added logic to ensure the user has to hit Review button before Create
  • Fixed a bug where the Status wouldn’t clear if selecting a new Profile therefore the user was unable to tell if the new Create Profile was successful

HCIBench

[sta_anchor id=”hcibench” /]

The HCIBench is a Hyperconverged Infrastructure Benchmark build around VDbench.

Changelog

Version 1.6.8.1

  • Fixed regression when datastore is in the datastore folder
  • Avoid checking connection to host directly and use tvm deployment instead
  • Added Vdbench version check in summary script

Version 1.6.8

  • Added resource pool and VM folder fields for VMC environment
  • Fixed easy-run disk size issue
  • Enhanced pre-validation error message handling
  • Changed the names of network interface from “Public Network” to “Management Network”, and “Private Network” to “VM Network”

ESXi Embedded Host Client

[sta_anchor id=”esxihostclient” /]

While the ESXi embedded host client has been officially released for 5.5, 6, 6.5 and 6.7 the fling gets all the latest updates.

Changelog

Version 1.32.0 build 10692217 (Fling 22) – November 2, 2018

  • Import / Export
    • Iso files and nvram files can now be exported and imported (if suppored by the esx version)
    • Files can be individually selected when exporting
    • All advanced vm config options are exported by default
    • Several bug fixes related to the export wizard
  • General
    • Permissions previews now display correctly
    • Support Bundles are now generated on the fly
    • Domain user functionality has been restored
    • Fibre Channel WWNs are displayed in hex

Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

[sta_anchor id=”xvcentermigutil” /]

If you want to use a gui to move vm’s between different vCenter servers than the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility is the tool to use.

Changelog

Version 2.5, November 5, 2018

  • Remember registered site information (without password)
  • Easily retry a previously attempted task in case of failures
  • Search box for keyword filtering of migration task history
  • Option to clear task history by removing completed tasks
  • Added documentation and other links under the help menu
  • Partial fix for an issue related to duplicate network names

Workspace ONE Configuration Tool for Provisioning

[sta_anchor id=”wsoneconfig” /]

The Workspace ONE Configuration Tool for Provisioning assists in building unattend.xml configuration files that can be used by Dell (or others when more provide the service) when delivering systems from the factory to set them up for your environment.

Changelog

Release Update – Version 2.0.0

Improvements

  • The version number is shown in the window title
  • The version number is shown as a comment in the generated XML
  • The product key is now validated to conform with the 11111-11111-11111-11111-11111 pattern
  • Split the locale settings into ‘Operating System Language’, and ‘Region and Keyboard Settings’.
  • ‘Operating System Language’ maps to the language of the operating system installation media, and ‘Region and Keyboard Settings’ maps to the locale settings available to the user during OOBE
  • ‘Operating System Language’ is now a required field as it is needed for certain customizations, such as adding a user to the administrators group
  • Removed the ability to set a custom computer name. The computer name now defaults to ‘*’, which causes the Windows OS to generate a random name, taking up to seven characters from the ‘Registered Organization’ field plus eight random characters. This change makes sure every computer has a unique name on the network.
  • The ‘Auto Admin Logon’ feature is no longer selectable. Instead, it will be activated when it is required by the deployment scenario.
  • All deployment scenarios now allow for the creation of a local user.
  • Moved the node from the ‘oobeSystem’ pass to the ‘specialize’ pass
    to be consistent with the node

Bug Fixes

  • Auto Admin Logon would only work with an unattend XML generated for an en-US installation image
  • Enabled the ASSIGNEDTOLOGGEDINUSER=Y flag to enable the WS1 agent to correctly enroll the user in the ‘Workgroup’ deployment scenario
  • Fixed an issue where the ‘Show Privacy Settings’ option would have no effect

Horizon View Api’s: back to basics part 3: Methods

  By , , , ,

Like I said in part two I wanted to do that first before going to method’s since for some methods you actually need the output from a query. I posted an example of that in the meanwhile with my post about sending messages to users. The get-hvglobalsession and get-hvlocalsession are based on queries that are used for the Session_SendMessages method of the session service.

The obvious way of finding available methods is by looking into the API Explorer.

It’s a complete list but it’s hard to find all the methods that belong to a service. It’s easier to do a get-method on a service.

$services1.connectionserverhealth | gm

So, in here we have two methods: ConnectionServerHealth_Get and ConnectionServerHealth_List. Even my wide PowerShell window is not big enough to show what’s needed to with the ConnectionServerHealth_Get method. For that we can use service.method without any brackets.

$services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_Get

and

$services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_List

The required input for the method’s is visible between the brackets. The _Get method requires an id of the type vmware.hv.connectionserverid and the list doesn’t even need an input. I will keep the first one to use for later while I run the latter one.

$services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_List()

A lot of these lists have information that is available on a deeper level, with a get-method everything is shown.

$services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_List() | gm

The ones where you see a property that has a definition that starts with vmware.hv…. has more content hidden. It is possible to access these by putting the entire line between brackets followed by .membername for example

($services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_List()).certificatehealth

Please be aware that this can go multiple levels deep for some methods. To avoid unneeded api calls it’s wise to declare a variable from the method and use that to access the data.

$connectionserverhealth=$services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_List()
$connectionserverhealth.certificatehealth

Now to show the use of the _get method I could use the id that I received from the _list method but that would be cheating. What I will do is put a list of all connectionservers into an array (even though I only have 1) and do a foreach with the _get method.

$connectionservers=$services1.ConnectionServer.ConnectionServer_List()
foreach ($connectionserver in $connectionservers){$services1.ConnectionServerHealth.ConnectionServerHealth_get($connectionserver.id)}

This is the basic usage for method’s. For some method’s a spec is required for input please take a look at this post about adding an instantclone administrator for an example. I will show some more details about that one in here. Let’s take a look at what the method requires as input.

$services1.InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministrator.InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministrator_Create

You can see that a spec is required of the type VMware.Hv.InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec. The API Explorer will show that this actually is a bit weird one since it one contains a base.

If you click on the base you’ll see whats required in there.

These levels actually show that we need to declare multiple objects to build the actual spec. You can create the basic object with new-object objecttype

$InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec=new-object vmware.hv.InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec
$InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec
$InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec.base

As you see the base is empty and doesn’t know what data it can contain. This shows that we need to declare the object for every level where we need to enter some information.

First I tried this using the class that’s shown in the API explorer, this obviously didn’t work so I use the data object name.

$InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec.base=new-object vmware.hv.InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorBase
$InstantCloneEngineDomainAdministratorSpec.base

In the link I posted above you should be able to find what’s required to create an actual instantcloneadministrator. With this I have covered most of the method’s and how they work. Please don’t assume that _list nevers needs an id or that _get always needs one because that’s not true. Sometimes it will also say ids like with my previous post about sending messages that means it needs an array of id’s most possibly generated by a query or an _list method.

 

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for October 2018

  By ,

Time flies when you are having fun so it’s already almost time for VMworld EU in Barcelona. Sadly I will not be there so I will be missing all the fun over there. There is one new fling: Workspace ONE UEM Profile Migration Utility that somehow starts at version 1.5 so there must have been an internal version for VMware already and five have received updates: Horizon DaaS Migration Tool, True SSO Diagnostic Utility, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility, vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper and the one and only vSphere HTML5 Web Client.

New

[sta_anchor id=”wsoneprofmig” /]

Workspace ONE UEM Profile Migration Utility

This tool helps to migrate WS One profiles between various environments.

The Workspace ONE UEM Profile Migration Utility aides in moving Profiles between Workspace ONE UEM Consoles. This can be very helpful to programmatically migrate complex Profiles from UAT to PROD environments.

Note: Not all Profile payloads are supported within the AirWatch API.

Updated

[sta_anchor id=”daasmig” /]

Horizon DaaS Migration Tool

The Horizon DAAS Migration Tool is targeted to Service Providers that run an Horizon DAAS environment and that want to upgrade that environment.

Changelog

Version 2.0.0

  • Added functionality for VMware tool upgrade;
  • Added progress statistics;
  • Added support for 32 bit VM;
  • Added support for Windows 10, 7 and 8;
  • Added resoulution for blank screen;
  • Added logging enhancements.

[sta_anchor id=”truessodiag” /]

True SSO Diagnostic Utility

With the True SSO Diagnostic Utility you can validate the Horizon certificates used by the Enrollment Server.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Updated to support VMware Horizon 7.4 and later
  • Added LogonTest method; Performs basic validation of generated certificates
  • Display expiry time for Enrollment and CA certificates
  • Display additional information of generated certificates

[sta_anchor id=”xvcutil” /]

Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

The Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility allows you to move VM’s between vCenter servers using a gui. It now also supports migrating within the same vCenter so you can manage all vmotions with this tool.

Changelog

Version 2.3, October 18, 2018

  • Added support for migration within a single vCenter server

[sta_anchor id=”vropsrestnot” /]

vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper

vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper helps vRealize Operations Manager users improve and customize the REST notifications of alerts. It collects the most useful information about an alert, creates a new payload by user configuration, and sends it to third parties.

Changelog

Version 1.1.3

  • Added “recommendations” value to the final payload
  • All recommendations of the alert are added to the payload as a single string, separated with “\n”.

[sta_anchor id=”html5″ /]

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

It’s already fully featured in vSphere 6.7 u1 but that doesn’t stop the VMware engineers from updating the fling as well.

Changelog

Fling 3.42 – Build 10321112

New Features

  • Dark theme mode for vSphere Client
    • Go to User menu and click on Switch theme to switch over to Dark theme mode of vSphere Client
  • vCenter Authentication Proxy UI is added to vCenter -> Configure -> Authentication Proxy
  • System configuration displays the summary of vCenter (multiple vCenters in case of linked mode) and PSC node (in case of external PSC) and also show them as links. Clicking on these links will open the VAMI UI for these nodes.
  • Update content library item
  • Clone vApp to a vApp template in content library
  • New vApp from a vApp template in content library

Improvements

  • If there are multiple vCenter servers in vSphere Client connected using linked mode, then certain operations like Deploy OVF across different vCenters will result in a certificate warning asking users to open the vSphere Client for the different vCenter than the one you are using. This warning dialog is updated to give the URL of the vCenter server as a link (Refer this reddit post for reported issue)

Bug fixes

  • Performance fix for loading actions menu when fling appliance is pointed to a 6.5 vCenter with external PSC

Known Issues

  • Dark theme might not render well for certain areas of the client. One such known area is for any VMware or partner plugins which are already ported over to HTML5 client. Give us feedback using feedback tool if you notice any areas which does not render well in dark mode.

Sending messages to users with the Horizon API’s

  By , , , , ,

I got the question today from Fabian Lenz if it is possible to send messages to end users using the Horizon API. I knew I had seen it somewhere already and here’s a quick explanation.

There are two method’s to do this, one for a single session and the other for a group of sessions. Both fall under the session service.

$services1.session | gm

You can see both the methods called session_sendmessage and session_sendmessages if we look at what’s required for both we see that the difference is a single sessionid or an array of session id’s.

Let’s see what the API explorer says what’s needed.

So the msgtype is a string that can have three values and the message is just a string, let’s test this.

I am lazy and will use get-hvlocalsession for the sessionid.

$session=get-HVlocalsession | select -first 1

I do the -first 1 so it isn’t an array but a single session.

Now let’s send a message.

 $services1.session.Session_SendMessage($session.id,"INFO","This is a test message for retouw.nl at 30-10-2018 19:13h")

And the result:

Now let’s do the same for multiple sessions.

$sessions=get-HVlocalsession
$services1.session.Session_SendMessages($sessions.id,"ERROR","This is a test message with multiple recipients for retouw.nl at 30-10-2018 19:25h")

And to show that this also works for global sessions (both where connected to pod2cbr1)

$sessions=get-HVglobalsession 
$services2.session.Session_SendMessages($globalsessions.id,"WARNING","This is a test message with multiple global recipients for retouw.nl at 30-10-2018 19:30h")

If you want to filter the sessions on user or machine name you can filter the $globalsessions on $globalsessions.namesdata.basenames

 $globalsessions.namesdata.basenames | select-object username,machineorrdsservername,clientname

With the localsessions it’s located in $sessions.namesdata

$sessions.namesdata | select-object username,machineorrdsservername,clientname

It’s also possible to filter this with the query service, take a look on my previous post on how to handle queries.

So now you know how to send messages to users. Not that they always read these messages but at least you can try warning them a bit faster now!

Horizon View Api’s: back to basics part 2: Queries

  By , , , ,

So this is the second post in this series about the Horizon View API basics. While functions logically would be part 2 I have decided on doing queries first since you might need the result for a query before you can use some of the functions. Some if it will seem double from my recent post about pulling event information but not everyone might be looking into that. This post will not have as much gifs as the first post but that’s because only the end results count for this one.

Looking at the API Explorer these are the services that we can actually query:

There are some examples in the API explorer but will show you some different examples with the aduserorgroupsummaryview since that one has a lot of documented filters and I can easily add some extra accounts to show different queries.

The first thing that we always need to do with queries is to declare the queryservice object

$queryservice=new-object vmware.hv.queryserviceservice

If you do a get-method on this object it will show several possible methods to use.

The next thing to do is to create a definition object in which we will declare the things the query looks for.

$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition

When getting this object and its get-method it shows the definitions we can set, as you can see all method’s are already visible from just viewing the object so we don’t need to use the get-method anymore.

Now we need to set a QueryEntityType these can be found in the API explorer under the Queryable Entity Types. They have to be used between quotation marks.

$defn.queryentitytype='ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'

Now we’re already set to create some results by putting the query into an object.

$queryResults = $queryService.QueryService_Create($hvServices1, $defn)

As you can see below this will create an object where the results property contains all the data. This Results property has 2 other properties of it’s own that actually contain all the data.

And if we expand the base property it gives us one of the build-in Active Directory groups.

$queryresults.results | select-object -first 1 | select -expandproperty Base

Since this can go several layers deep it is smarter to use the round brackets to get this information. (Select -expandproperty following select – expandproperty is just ugly and takes too long)

($queryresults.results | select-object -first 1).base

This way it’s also easy to count the amount of returned objects. This is very useful if you have a bigger environment and want to take counts of sessions with their status (i.e. Connected, disconnected, error etc)

($queryresults.results).count

Next up is adding a filter, so we only get user accounts but we need to do some maintenance first. If you do too many queries it is possible that you will get some errors about too many filters or something (of course I am not getting them while writing this post) so, it might be needed to remove the old stored queries is possible with the queryservice_deleteall method.

$queryservice.QueryService_DeleteAll($hvservices1)

This does not give any feedback on the results so let’s continue with the old query and put a filter on it. First you need to know what kind of filter you need and the options are listed in the API explorer.

The first one I will use is queryfilterequals since I use that the most. I start by defining a filter object consisting of a property with a value.

$filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -Property @{ 'memberName' = 'base.group'; 'value' = $false }

Then I will add it to the querydefinition

 $defn.filter=$filter

Now I will show you the results + the fact that you don’t necessarily need to define an object for the results. I have selected the first result to show you that it contains the domain administrator account

($queryService.QueryService_Create($hvServices1, $defn)).results.base | select -first 1

It is also possible to combine several filters into one query, while the ad service might not be the most useful for this it can still be used as an example. The thing to do is to first create a couple of filters.

Please be aware that these membernames are case sensitive!

$notgroupfilter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -Property @{ 'memberName' = 'base.group'; 'value' = $false }
$usernamefilter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -Property @{ 'memberName' = 'base.loginName'; 'value' = "m_wouter" }

These need to be combined into one array

$filterarray=@()
$filterarray+=$notgroupfilter
$filterarray+=$usernamefilter

To filter on multiple things we need to have a filterand object

$filterAnd = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterAnd

And then we can add the $filterarray to this object

$filterAnd.Filters = $filterarray

and finally we put this object into the querydefinition object

$defn.Filter = $filterAnd

Now let’s run the query

($queryService.QueryService_Create($hvServices1, $defn)).results.base

That’s it for the basics of doing queries using the Horizon View API’s. There are some more things that we can do with these like sorting them, but I think you can find that on your own in the API explorer examples.

[Update 15-10] VMware PowerCLI 11.0.0 release with new Horizon (7.6!) API calls

  By , , , ,

UPDATE 12-10: The new API explorer page also has been published, it just needs to be added to the main page. Check this link: https://code.vmware.com/apis/445

Update 15-10: I have received an overview from VMware about the other changes:

New API Endpoints:
ConnectionServer_GetTags
GlobalSettings_GetEnvironmentSettings
QueryService_DeleteByIds
Datastore_GetDatastoreRequirements
Datastore_ListDatastoresByDesktopOrFarm
RemoteApplication_EndApplication

There also have been some changes to some objects (MachineBase,AccessGroup etc) to include more properties

Original Article:

Today the latest version of PowerCLI was released with version 11.0.0. When you look at the release notes it’s obvious that some extra things have been added for the Horizon VIew API’s.

PowerCLI has been moving at quite the rapid pace over the last 2 years. In 2018, we’ve been releasing roughly every other month to make sure we get the latest features, performance improvements, and updates available as quickly as possible. Well, it’s been two months and we’re not going to break this trend. Today, we are releasing PowerCLI 11.0.0!

PowerCLI 11.0.0 comes with the following updates:

  • Added a new Security module
  • Added new cmdlets for Host Profiles
  • Added a new cmdlet to interact with NSX-T in VMware Cloud on AWS
  • Support for vSphere 6.7 Update 1
  • Support for NSX-T 2.3
  • Support for Horizon View 7.6
  • Support for vCloud Director 9.5
  • Multiplatform support for the Cloud module
  • Updated the Get-ErrorReport cmdlet
  • Removed the PCloud module
  • Removed the HA module

Even though Jake Robinson already gave me a heads up that this version was coming it’s always the question what has been added for Horizon View. According to the API explorer page no new querydefinitions have been added. Like last time I decided to compare the services against the old list and there are two new additions:

  • CategoryFolder
  • ResourceSettings

I have tried both against a Horizon 7.5 setup and they failed so these are only exposed from Horizon View 7.6 and up.

The first one called Categoryfolder is linked to the possibility to put rdsh applications into folders.

It currently has only one function:

I have also investigated if there was a way to change things using the helper function but sadly it has no .update api call so that’s a no-go. I currently have no rdsh on my lab so I can do the list but it doesn’t show anything.

The other new service is the .ResourceSettings just like categoryfolder it also only has one function:

For this one I can actually show what it’s used for:

It shows the general settings for forced logoffs.

Sadly this service also doesn’t show a way to change things.

Sadly I have no found no way yet to see what queryservice entity’s have been added so hopefully we will have a new API explorer soon (maybe with release notes this time, pretty please VMware?) that shows us all the new goods.