Day 4 of VMworld was a quiet day as usual, first there is the TED Style keynote where people with remarkable project can show us what they do. This year it was about autonomous drones & robotics, the most successful course ever on Yale: happiness and the way how our brain works by a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience. As always these where great sessions and while they aren’t always related to our day to day work they’re often still very useful.
After this I only had two sessions left, both at the Design studio. Since these where under NDA I can’t tell any more then that they where on VSAN & NSX. In the afternoon I only went out to get some souvenirs and some food and retired to my room for Pizza & football 🙂
Goooodmorning Vegas, Day 3 was awesome even though a lot of it was under NDA so I can’t talk about it. After breakfast things started with a PowerCLI deeper dive hosted by the godfathers of PowerCLI Luc Dekens and Kyle Ruddy. During this session I learned several new things including the fact that how I handle the Horizon View API’s isn’t too bad. We even managed to put some heckling in so it wasn’t too bad for an 8 AM session.
After this it was time to head over to the vmtn area since I had to present my own vBrownbag session about the new cmdlets in the vmware.hv.helper module. Again I had the issues with the gif’s that kept looping but I managed to use all the available time and even got a question in.
Since Katie Holms managed to talk me into having my Techconfession taken by her and I have to say it was pretty weird laying on the couch when the vRex walked by. The show will take some time before it will be posted but once I have the link I will definitely broadcast it.
After my Techconfession it was almost time for the EUC Champions sessions and since these are under NDA I can’t really talk about them. We ended them with a great dinner at Stripsteak though where they even managed to sing Happy Birthday for me. Even while I was really really tired Anthony Hook and I decided to head over to the big VMworld Fest and where just in time to see the Royal Machines starting their set. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about them but I really liked their show and it only became better after Fred Durst & DMC showed up.
Okay Day 2 is gone as well, due to the extra security I have been watching the keynote from the bloggers area. For me it didn’t add a whole lot and while I totally appreciate the Malala story I didn’t see the connection with the conference or tech at all.
After the keynote it was time for my second appearance on the vExpert Daily by Mike Letschin together with Shane Wiliford and Richard Kenyan (and not Sean Massey as the title suggests) we had some fun out there even though we aren’t the biggest party people of all. In the afternoon it was time for my first presentation of this VMworld at the VMware{Code} stage. Sadly Powerpoint on the mac keeps looping all gif’s while they don’t do that on a windows system. Despite that I think it went pretty good and I hope that I soon will be able to give a link to the session.
vExpert Daily with Mike Letschin – Sean Massey, Shane Williford, Wouter Kursten https://t.co/gZu7Qm1h2g
Brian’s event was a late idea so it wasn’t on the official schedule and the amount of people who showed up was also a bit meh but they will allow for more reservations next year to compensate for the no-shows. The evening itself was a bit like the briforum events with short presentations by Sean Massey, Mark Brookfield, Johan van Amersfoort, Mark Plettenberg and Jack Madden. There was beer (and lots of it!), Pizza & snacks so the best combination of things imho.
After Brian’s event it was a quick Uber (although the first one already had some other people in it?) to the Pinball Hall of Fame for the vExpert party. Over there they had a shopping cart full of cups with quarters so we could play and outside at the back one of the best BBQ caterers in Las Vegas was taking care of the food. I didn’t see him myself but Pat Gelsinger also showed up and was his own cool self as far as I heard. Inside I managed to grab some stuffed animals that I was ordered to bring home by the Commander in Chief aka my daughter.
Later in the evening we had a date at the Longevity Sportcenter where we rented a couple of fields to play soccer. This was lots of fun and while I didn’t play the full two hours several people did, how they managed to survive that after 2-3 days of the convention I don’t know.
It was awesome to play #vSoccer with old and new friends. Thanks to all who made this possible. We're a stronger #vCommunity and you have a friend in me. pic.twitter.com/hwTR7Qcrcr
Step count for this day was 12905 excluding vSoccer since I took my Garmin off for that & and the walk from Mandalay to Excalibur was after midnight so counts for Wednesday..
Today was the official first day for VMworld US 2018. For me it started with the keynote from the press seats in the keynote arena. This was a first time for me since previous years I had decided on viewing it from the community areas. With VMware being almost old enough to grab a beer with it’s 20 years it was all about looking back at the past but also looking forward to the future. The message that I really agree on is that everything has to do with the community. A video of Mercy Ships was shown with their hospital ships that run on VMware products.
After this I went on the exhibition floor for a bit to wander around and look at new products. The floor was mostly about Cloud & monitoring this year where for me Uila and EG Innovations. Rather quickly the vmtn area became THE place to be again for vExperts and everyone in the community.
After lunch I went to the first of my two regular breakouts I visited this week: EUC Champions panel with Brian Madden as moderator. This was a fun panel where we even managed to heckle them from the first row.
Later in the afternoon it was time for the EUC Keynote where some of the newly announced things included Industry baselines for WIndows 10 Modern Management and a demo was shown for Horizon Cloud management.
The day ended with the VMworld hackathon. This kicked of with a short Kyle Ruddy Hecklethon where he introduced the audience into what can be done with PowerCLI.
The Hackathon itself wasn’t that successful for our team since I wasted most of the times with laptop issues. We had applied 1 fix though for the vmware.hv.helper and started work on vDocumentation for Horizon view. It was lots of fun though and that was the most important part for me.
I ended up with a step count of 16.240 for the day.
So before things really start on Monday there’s always day 0 for VMworld. The VM village opens up and, in the evening,, there is the welcome reception at the Solution Exchange. For me things started after a rough night without a lot of sleep by registering and getting the badge. Things really looked like they were messed up and there where awful queues with people waiting for their badges. Luckily something went wrong with mine and I was helped by the staff at the assisted check-in pretty fast.
After spending some time in the VM village with some awesome people it was time to head out for my first real thing: an expert led workshop on pulse & IOT. This was really interesting, and I even managed to put in some feedback that was appreciated.
In the afternoon I visited the EUC Inside track event at Top Golf (please stop me from walking that way again) before heading out to the Solution Exchange for a small vExpert gift scavenger hunt. I closed out the evening at the VCDX Wolfpack part at the Cosmopolitan.
The policy builder is an hosted fling that helps the user to create custom MDM policies for Workspace UEM (former Airwatch)
Official summary:
This cloud hosted Fling helps users with custom Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy generation that use MDM capabilities available through Microsoft’s Windows 10 MDM Configuration Service Providers (CSPs).
Note: On login with My VMmware credentials, the tool provides an easy to use form based UI that allows the Windows 10 admin to simply enter the required values for the policies and auto generates corresponding syncML that can be copied to publish through Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management.
This tool greatly reduces the effort of hand rolling syncML and the possibility of code and formatting errors when creating or managing custom settings profiles through Workspace ONE UEM.
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SDDC Certificate Tool
The SDDC Certificate Tool is an automated process that replaces all certificates in a SDDC for you. This normally can be a lengthy process but should be a breeze with this fling.
Official summary:
Replacing SSL certificates across VMware products is a manual and time-consuming process. The SDDC Certificate Tool automates this workflow and makes it easy to keep certificates across your SDDC up to date. It will replace all certificates in the supported products and reestablish trust between the components.
Not my cup of tea but this fling is supposed to be an example where you can talk against vRealize Automation.
Official summary:
vAssist.ai, a Natural Language Processing (NLP) platform, enables bot developers to train machine learning models for intent classification and entity extraction. This platform is available as a SaaS model which exposes easy-to-use REST APIs to train and parse natural language inputs. It also provides a multi-tenant user interface dashboard which can be used to annotate and visualize training data expressions and train machine learning models in the cloud.
VMware customers who are serious about building conversational interfaces can benefit from this platform. With this Fling we trained a sample model for vRealize Automation. Users can chat with the test bot to query available catalog services and initiate a provisioning request in a natural, conversational way. Please note that we are using a sample internal environment for vRealize Automation.
Features
NLU Engine for Intent and entity extraction
Customizable NLU pipeline
Rule based and ML based Conversation Engine
Privacy of the data
Scalable and Fault Tolerant
REST APIs exposed for integration with multiple channels and platforms
The Workspace ONE UEM Samsung E-FOTA Tool is designed to add to the existing abilities of AirWatch’s Samsung E-FOTA implementation. These new abilities include scheduling a firmware/OS update in a targeted window. This feature is dependent on the existing abilities within AirWatch which enroll the MDM into Samsung E-FOTA and push profiles to enroll the device into Samsung E-FOTA. Users should use this tool along with the information gathered from the Workspace ONE UEM console. The information can then be used to make an API command to schedule the firmware/OS update to your Samsung devices.
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Horizon Helpdesk Utility
Like I said yesterday the Horizon Helpdesk Utility is how the original Horizon View Helpdesk Tool should have been. Please read yesterdays;s post for more information and screenshots.
The Horizon Helpdesk Utility is designed to be a tool used by real help desk agents. The Horizon Helpdesk Utility takes all of the functionality of the current HTML5 based Helpdesk in VMware Horizon and adds true desktop integration features, including:
Greater speed in queries
Reduced steps to find a session
Multiple monitoring windows
Keystrokes for fast access
Native remote control functionality
Real-time updates
Built-in session experience score based on session performance and variables
Updated flings
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VMware OS Optimization Tool
Changelog
July 30, 2018, b1100
Issue fix: With group selection operation, unselected optimization items are applied.
Support for vSphere Resource Pool and VM folder for placement under advanced options
Support for VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) by specifying resource pool and folder options
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Blockchain on Kubernetes
Changelog
July 16 2018, BoK 2.1
Support deployment of Hyperledger Fabric 1.1.0.
Allow users to customize the Fabric organizations and peers in bok.yaml.
Add ingress controller for serving traffic to Fabric peers nodes and explorer node.
Make improvement on stability and usability.
Verified against Kubernetes 1.10.3 and Pivotal Container Service (PKS) 1.1.0.
Updated the PCF Fabric Tile which supports creating Kubernetes cluster via PKS Tile and deploy Hyperledger Fabric in the Kubernetes cluster.
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HCIBench
Changelog
Version 1.6.7.1
Fixed vSAN Performance Diagnostic API call
Fixed network validation message not clear issue
Fixed setting re-use VMs as default bug in 1.6.7
Version 1.6.7
Enabled https instead of http
Added storage policy field, user can specify storage policy for the data disks. For this version, storage policy can’t be assigned to existing client VMs
Enhanced deployment methodology
Enhanced vSAN Observer to avoid blow up the memory
Enhanced vSAN Performance Diagnostic API call with HCIBench workload configuration included
Added timestamp to the testing status
Bug fixes
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ESXi Embedded Host Client
Changelog
Version 1.31.0 build 9277095 (Fling 21) – July 20, 2018
General
Resolve several issues related to dropdown selection
Update NTP UX
Update AngularJS to 1.6.10
Other minor bug fixes
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vSphere HTML5 Web Client
Changelog
Fling 3.40 – Build 9292689 New Features
Host profiles
Check compliance
Pre-check and remediate host (known issue exists – see known issues)
You might have seen the announcement on the VMware EUC blog, Twitter or the new EUC Champions page already but I have been named one of the VMware End-User Computing (EUC) Champions for 2018. It is an honour to be awarded this status that only a select few receive each year. For me it feels like a true recognition for the work I have been doing with the Horizon API’s and my activity in the broader (EUC) vCommunity.
What is the EUC Champions Program?
EUC Champions is an experts-only program designed to provide a forum where the end-user computing community and VMware EUC product groups come together and share new product information and ideas through in-person meetings, networking events, industry conferences and webinars. This interaction helps ensure VMware EUC experts receive the most up-to-date information, and VMware product teams hear from industry veterans.
Thought leadership is easier said than done. It takes hard work and an ear to the ground to stay on top of industry trends. Many of our 2018 VMware EUC Champions have been thought leaders for decades, while others are rapidly becoming the go-to experts in their respective area. Whether new or returning, this year’s champions are among the ranks of end-user computing experts, who have done the work, made the commitment and signed up for more of the same in 2018.
What are the requirements to become an EUC Champion?
Not everyone is cut out to be an EUC Champion. It takes deep VMware EUC product expertise, an ability to write about it, a willingness to voice your opinion and the talent to clearly and concisely communicate ideas. EUC Champions are respected by their peers and, most importantly, are respectful of others.
Specifically, we look for candidates that meet the following criteria:
Member of the vExpert Program
Recognized EUC expert
Well regarded member of the greater EUC community
Recommended group member
Who are the 2018 EUC Champions?
On the new page there is a nice overview of all 34 EUC Champions
After having lots of fun in the vExpert Slack channel last evening with everyone waiting for the vExpert 2018 announcements I decided to had to bed not too late. This morning I woke up with this in my inbox:
So this is my third year in a row that I have been awarded VMware vExpert. Those three years have been a thrill ride. I started blogging mid 2016 after doing my first (and somewhat failed) vmug presentation at the Dutch VMUG. Things really picked up after I was awarded my 1st vExpert in the 2nd batch of 2016, my blog started to get more views, I created more content and I found my home in a community that simply rules: the vCommunity!
While sometimes harsh words are spoken my general feeling of the vCommunity is one of camaraderie. No question is too stupid, no solution is to weird, there are always people willing to help you with whatever is going on. This is not only true for the vExpert slack channels but also those of Nutanix, VMware Code, IOPros and last but not least the vExpertEUC channel. Most of the times things are very serious but every now and then the channels buzz with that Friday afternoon feeling where no-one is safe for jokes. When going to events meeting up with all of these people is always fun. If it is at a vmug, VMworld or EUCtechcon there’s almost almost immediate chemistry between people who just enjoy sharing and caring.
So I want to thank all of the vCommunity that have made this possible for me and I look forward to speaking to you whether it’s in person, twitter, slack or some webex. Without all of you this wouldn’t have been half as much fun!!
DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB
This one is for the people who have to implement a very high security on their vSphere environment. Please read the changelog, no STIG has been released yet for vSphere 6.5! Since it’s a lesser updated one I will give you the complete description from the fling site:
The DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide (‘STIG’) ESXi VIB is a Fling that provides a custom VMware-signed ESXi vSphere Installation Bundle (‘VIB’) to assist in remediating Defense Information Systems Agency STIG controls for ESXi. This VIB has been developed to help customers rapidly implement the more challenging aspects of the vSphere STIG. These include the fact that installation is time consuming and must be done manually on the ESXi hosts. In certain cases, it may require complex scripting, or even development of an in-house VIB that would not be officially digitally signed by VMware (and therefore would not be deployed as a normal patch would). The need for a VMware-signed VIB is due to the system level files that are to be replaced. These files cannot be modified at a community supported acceptance level. The use of the VMware-signed STIG VIB provides customers the following benefits:
The ability to use vSphere Update Manager (‘VUM’) to quickly deploy the VIB to ESXi hosts (you cannot do this with a customer created VIB)
The ability to use VUM to quickly check if all ESXi hosts have the STIG VIB installed and therefore are also in compliance
No need to manually replace and copy files directly on each ESXi host in your environment
No need to create complex shell scripts that run each time ESXi boots to re-apply settings
Changelog
Update January 2018
Added 6.5 STIG VIB to the downloads section. **Please note this is not based on a DISA STIG as a 6.5 STIG has not been released**
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VMware OS Optimization Tool
No need to say a lot about this fling. If you need to optimize a windows system this has been the goto tool for years.
Changelog
January 4, 2018
Issue fix: Can not access public templates
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Blockchain on vSphere
Want to build & test blockchain applications? This might be a handy tool in your toolbox for that.
Changelog
Jan 15 2018, BoV 1.1
Designed to run on PKS(Pivotal Container Services), and validated in PKS Beta
Integrate Blockchain Explorer into BoV which makes it easier to view/monitor peers, transactions, etc
Enhance BoV to support saving blocks and channel data to persistent volume
Optimize the installation process
Provide a default channel for blockchain applications
Update Fabric to 1.0.5
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HCIBench
Specially build to benchmark VSAN clusters but can be used to test any HCI.
Changelog
Version 1.6.5.2
Added case comparisons by generating an XLS file for each test folder
Fixed bug when there’s white space in datastore name or test name
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Horizon Toolbox
Missing anything in the (crappy) Horizon? There is a chance that it might be in this tool!
Changelog
2018 Jan 18
Horizon 7.4 support
Some bug fixes
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Desktop Watermark
Do you want to be sure one of your desktops is used for auditing. With this tool you can set an (in)visible watermark.
Changelog
Build 1127
This build is signed now.
Addition
Password protection for the configuration & uninstallation
was supposed to be added in the previous release as well so might be a copy/paste error
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vSphere HTML5 Web Client
Do I really need to add a description to this one? There is a html5 client build into vSphere these days but this version is updated very often and is becoming more and more on par with the (yuck) flash client.
Changelog
Fling 3.33 – Build 7616394
New Features
Support for PCI and Shared PCI devices for a VM
Create vApp wizard
Clone vApp wizard
vApp move to Host & Cluster
Duplicate a VM customization specification to another VC and with custom name/description
Ability to edit VM Advanced configurations in Edit Settings of the VM
Change the shortcuts for Power Operations in VMware tools section in the Edit Settings of the VM
Change the maximum concurrent VMRC sessions for a VM in the Edit Settings
Bug Fixes
Can add an existing hard disk in Edit Settings for VM residing on datastore cluster
Known Issues
Creation of child vApp wizard is not working – the workaround is to create a child vApp as separate vApp and use move to operation to move it under the parent one.
Fling 3.32 – Build 7496117
New Features
vApp power operations
vApp move to operation to folder operation
vApp rename operation
vApp delete operation
vApp export to OVF template
Improvements
vApp related VMs tab, datastore tab and networking
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