Remark : as of the time I was writing this article the vCheck for Horizon sba hasn’t been published yet. Contact me if you want me to send you the xml file.
Last week I have been doing a few small updates to the vCheck for Horizon. The file with the encrypted password is now replaced by an xml file that holds all of the credentials and is usable directly for Horizon connections. I have been using this for my blog posts and demo’s for a while already. Also I have renamed the security & composer plugins by default to old as those have been deprecated and I don’t want to have them active by default anymore. Further I have done some small changes to other plugins.
Make sure to save this file to a good location and edit the “00 Connection Plugin for View.ps1” file with the proper location. I haven’t completely removed the old ways yet, they’re still partially there.
Running the vCheck script from ControlUp
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Before everything else: make sure the machine that will run the vCheck has the latest version of PowerCLI installed. Download it here, and unpack the modules to “C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules” like this:
There are several things that I needed to do before I was able to run the vCheck from the ControlUp console or as an Automated Action (more on this later!). First I needed a way of providing credentials to the script. This is something I do using the Create Credentials for Horizon Scripts script action. If you already use some of the other Horizon related sba’s or the Horizon Sync script you might already have this configured. What it essentially does is creating an xml file as described above in a folder dedicated for ControlUp and usable by the service account that ran the sba. More on this can be found here.
Next was a way to get the vCheck itself. I do this by downloading it from github and unpack the zip file to C:\ProgramData\ControlUp\ScriptSupport\vCheck-HorizonView-master if downloads from the interwebz aren’t available you can download and unzip it yourself, just make sure it looks like this:
Next would be all the settings for email, connection server etcetera. This is all done trough the Script Action Arguments. WHat technically happens is that the Script Action removes both the globalvariables.ps1 and the “00 Connection Plugin for View.ps1” files and recreates them with those settings.
Once you have downloaded the vCheck you can run it manually so right click any random machine and select the vCheck for Horizon.
and fill in all the details you need. If you set the Send Email to false there is no need for the rest of the info.
Once you see this screen the script has completed, make sure to read the last line for the correct status and where you saved to file to.
And on my d:\ I see the file (and some others I used for testing)
And even better I received it in my mail as well
But but wasn’t the vCheck all about running it automagically?
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Well yes it is and you can do that starting with version 8.5 that we have announced today! For now it will need to run hourly but in future releases we can also do this once a day. What you need to do for this is first change the default for the script action. Select that sba and hot the modify button.
Under settings you can keep the execution context as console (this will use the monitor when you run it as an automated action) or select other machine to pick a scripting server. Also make sure to select a shared credential that has a Horizon credentials file created on this machine.
Now go to the arguments tab and edit the default settings to set them to what you need.
Before:
Editing the first one
and done, press ok after this.
Now click finalize so the monitors can also use them and go trough all the steps ( no need to share with the community) an dmake sure the ControlUp Monitors have the permissions to run the sba.
Next we go to triggers > add trigger and select the new type: scheduled and click next
select the hourly schedule and a proper start and end time and click next
On the filter criteria make sure that you set the name to a single machine, otherwise the script will run for all machines in your environment. I recommend the same machine you used for the execution context. Keep in mind that the schedule functions just like any other trigger so you need to filter properly to what machine it applies and if you don’t it will apply to all of them.
You can select the folder this machine resides in and/or select a schedule to run the script in.
At the follow-up actions click add and select run an action from the pulldown menu. Under script name select the vCheck for Horizon, click ok and next
Make sure to create a clear name and click finish
The html should automatically end up in the export location and in your email.
So it feels like yesterday that I created the previous flings post but April flew by and it’s almost summer, time for some more bad weather over here in The Netherlands. I see a three new flings and ten who received an update. One of the new ones already has quite a long changelog with fixes!
Are you an NSX admin? Do you spend major part of your work in monitoring the network and/or its security? Do you have the NSX web UI open on your laptop/desktop most of the day to make sure all the services are up and connectivity between systems is fine?
Carrying a laptop all the time with you could be quite challenging task, especially in situations like the current pandemic. However, your smartphone would be on you most of the time. NSX Mobile brings the ease of monitoring the networking and security right from your phone.
NSX Mobile complements the full-fledged NSX-T web UI by providing monitoring capabilities on the go. If you find something wrong, you can use the conventional web UI or ask someone else to investigate the matter immediately. Focus of the app is to provide instant notifications when something goes wrong and side by side ability to monitor the network & its security from a smartphone.
Features
Just install it & login with your NSX-T credentials to get started (make sure that the NSX version is 3.0+ and the NSX IP/domain name is reachable from your smartphone)
List and search all networking and security entities (e.g. Tier-0s, Network segments, Firewall Rules, etc.)
View alarms generated on NSX (e.g. CPU usage high OR a VPN failed to realize OR Intrusion detected in case if you have IDS firewall, etc.)
The vRealize Orchestrator Parser is a tool developed to extend the vRealize Build Tools Fling toolchain or to be used stand-alone with the Export Package to Folder option in native vRealize Orchestrator(vRO).
vRealize Orchestrator Parser parses vRO workflow XML files and extracts programming language code (Javascript, Python, Powershell, etc) and stores it as discrete files, that can then be checked into a source code control system, and or edited directly as discrete programming language source code from a traditional text-based source code editor, such as Visual Studio Code. These discrete files can also be consumed by other, third-party CI/CD systems like Maven and Jenkins. They can be edited, and they can be imported back into vRO workflow XML files. ‘Diffs’ and changes on the resulting code files are easily observed and tied to SCCS version numbers and releases, and can easily be merged and branched through normal software engineering development practices.
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Easy Deploy for NSX Advanced Load Balancing
Easy Deploy for NSX Advanced Load Balancer (formerly Avi Networks) Fling is a virtual appliance that helps you deploy Avi in a handful of clicks!
This will enable you to leverage the power of multi-cloud application services platform that includes load balancing, web application firewall, container ingress, and application analytics across any cloud. No extensive knowledge required as it’s meant to make demo, training and proof-of-concept (POC) easy!
Features
A familiar VMware Clarity User Interface
Automatically deploy an Avi Controller and Avi Service Engines
Seamless integration with your VMware Cloud on AWS environment (with AVS and GCVE support coming soon!)
Option to deploy sample app that leverages Avi load balancing
Fixed SDDC conflict – what if you want to redeploy on the same sddc with another EasyAvi
Fixes “Output link /avi at the end does not work” issue
Destroy.sh – avoid TF error when trying to delete CL
Fixed “Typo in the outputs Advanced pplication Private IP Address”
Check for vCenter API connectivity before starting TF
Hide the button “DFW – Update NSX exclusion list with SE(s)”
Hide Domain Name field in the UI
1.2.3
Changed getMypublic.sh by beforeTf.sh
1.2.2
Fix typo in outputs
1.2.1
Hide Public IP in outputs if empty
1.2.0
MD5 Checksum
Remove cat sddc.json from logs
Auto Apply
Auto routing to Step 3
1.1.0
Minor fixes
1.0.0
First Release
Updates
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Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer
The Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script and module that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the Hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory. It will flag a VM as “TRUE” if it is optimized and “FALSE” if it is not. For non-optimized VMs, a recommendation is made that will keep the same number of vCPUs currently configured, with the optimal number of virtual cores and sockets.
Changelog
Version 3.0.0
Script will install or update the required modules (VMCO and PowerCLI). The script is now a single script that acts as the easy button to walk through the module installs, connecting to a vCenter, and exporting the results.
Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.
Event though we have had the html5 web client around for a while they’re still using the html5 fling to test some new features!
Changelog
Fling 5.0 – build 15670023
Updated the instructions with the new location of some files and services for the HTML5 client fling v6.pdf
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Horizon Session Recording
The Horizon Session Recording tool allows for (on-demand) recording of Horizon sessions.
Changelog
Version 2.2.5
Added support for > Horizon 8.1
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vSphere Mobile Client
Personally I don’t have a use for it but I do like the idea of being able to manage my vSphere from a mobile device using the vSphere Mobile Client.
Changelog
Version 2.2.0 Update:
New features:
Add filtering by severity options for Alarm and Events
Add windows key button in the virtual console keyboard for key combos
Improvements:
Improve VM console stability on device rotation
Add missing back button on the login pages
Update app logo icon and splash screens
Version 2.1.0 Update:
Improvements:
Compatibility with some ESXi versions using certain licenses has been improved. Operations should now work against those hosts.
Version 2.0.0 Update:
New features:
Introduction of VMware Cloud with VMware on AWS. Access your cloud vCenter servers from within the mobile app.
VM details page: navigation to related objects now possible
Improvements:
Virtual Machine details page now loads faster when it’s powered off
Fixed an issue where the app would show two spinners when navigating between views
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Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool
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Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool helps ease migration of Apps from one WS1 Access tenant to another (on-premises to SaaS or SaaS to SaaS) and use cases that require mirroring one tenant to another (for setting up UAT from PROD or vice versa) by providing capabilities listed below
Resolved bug where Windows Store Apps were being removed even though they were being selected to be kept. This included changing the filter condition for Remove All Windows built-in apps.
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SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS
The SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS tool enables you to save and restore your VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) networking and security configuration.
Changelog
Version 1.4
New feature – on-prem NSX-T DFW configuration export, import into VMC on AWS
New feature – on-prem vCenter folder structure export, import into VMC on AWS
New feature – Indented JSON output for easier reading
Bugfix – Bumped minimum Python version to the actual requirement of 3.6
Bugfix – Fixed issue where the exception block of a try/except on GET calls errored
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VMware Event Broker Appliance
The VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling enables customers to unlock the hidden potential of events in their SDDC to easily event-driven automation based on vCenter Server Events and take vCenter Server Events to the next level! Extending vSphere by easily triggering custom or prebuilt actions to deliver powerful integrations within your datacenter across public cloud has never been more easier before.
A day late but never late than never, this is your monthly overview with all the latest and greatest VMware flings. The flings site received a new fresh look head out to https://flings.vmware.com to have a look yourself. I am not sure if the (are they new?) tags for updated or new flings are okay yet as one has been marked updated but it seems to be new while one new one I could find a blog post for from last month but I missed it for my overview, not sure what happened there. Overall I see four new flings and ten received an update.
Nuance PowerMics are the leading dictation device used in Healthcare today.
This handy standalone Fling will assist in determining the optimal PowerMic configuration for a specific customer environment.
To determine the configuration that works best for you, we need to know a few details about the customer environment:
Endpoint type
Endpoint vendor
Endpoint operating system
Single/nested mode
Horizon protocol
The PowerMic Configuration Wizard will then provide the specific settings for optimal PowerMic performance and accuracy in the customers environment.
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vRealize Automation Code Stream CLI
vRealize Automation Code Stream CLI is a command line tool written in Go to interact with the vRealize Automation Code Stream APIs. This Fling is written to help automate Code Stream and provide a simple way to migrate content between Code Stream instances and projects.
Import and Export Code Stream artefacts such as Pipelines, Variables, Endpoints
Perform CRUD operations on Code Stream artefacts such as Pipelines, Variables, Endpoints
Trigger Executions of Pipelines
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Hillview: Distributed Data Visualization
Hillview is a simple cloud-based spreadsheet program for browsing large data collections. The data manipulated is read-only. Users can sort, find, filter, transform, query, zoom-in/out, and chart data. Operations are performed using direct manipulation in the GUI. Hillview is designed to work on very large data sets (billions of rows). Hillview can import data from a variety of sources: CSV files, ORC files, Parquet files, databases, parallel databases; new connectors can be added with relatively little effort. Hillview takes advantage of all the cores of the worker machines for fast visualizations.
Hillview is a distributed system, composed of two pieces:
A distributed set of one or many workers, which should be installed close to the data (e.g., on the machines that host the data).
A front-end service that runs a web server and aggregates data from all workers.
The source code of Hillview is available as an open-source project with an Apache-2 license from Hillview’s github repository. For any questions, feature requests or bug reports please file an issue on github.
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SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS
The SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS tool enables you to save and restore your VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) networking and security configuration.
There are many situations when customers want to migrate from an existing SDDC to a different one. While HCX addresses the data migration challenge, this tool offers customers the ability to copy the configuration from a source to a destination SDDC.
A few example migration scenarios are:
SDDC to SDDC migration from bare-metal (i3) to a different bare-metal type (i3en)
SDDC to SDDC migration from VMware-based org to an AWS-based org
SDDC to SDDC migration from region (i.e. London) to a different region (i.e. Dublin).
Other use cases are:
Backups – save the entire SDDC configuration
Lab purposes – customers or partners might want to deploy SDDCs with a pre-populated configuration.
DR purposes – deploy a pre-populated configuration in conjunction with VMware Site Recovery or VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery
The Workspace ONE mobileconfig Importer gives you the ability to import existing mobileconfig files directly into a Workspace ONE UEM environment as a Custom Settings profile, import app preference plist files in order to created managed preference profiles, and to create new Custom Settings profiles from scratch. When importing existing configuration profiles, the tool will attempt to separate each PayloadContent dictionary into a separate payload for the Workspace ONE profile.
Changelog
Version 1.1
Support for Big Sur
Updated icon
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Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool
Quite a few updates for this fling already!
The Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool allows a seamless migration of Applications and Device configurations between different Workspace One UEM environments. With the push of a button, workloads move from UAT to Production, instead of having to manually enter the information or upload files manually. Therefore, decreasing the time to move data between Dev/UAT environments to Production.
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
Version 2.0.1
Fixed Baseline Migration issue
Fixed Profile Errors not displaying in the UI
Version 2.0.0
Baseline Migration Support
MacOS application
UI refactoring to make bulk migrations easier
Added support for script detection with Win32 applications
Version 1.0.1
Fixed issue with expired credentials.
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vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker
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.
Changelog
Version 2.2
Support multi-platforms for Windows, Linux and MacOS
Bug fixed
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Vmss2core
Vmss2core is a tool to convert VMware checkpoint state files into formats that third party debugger tools understand. It can handle both suspend (.vmss) and snapshot (.vmsn) checkpoint state files (hereafter referred to as a ‘vmss file’) as well as both monolithic and non-monolithic (separate .vmem file) encapsulation of checkpoint state data.
Changelog
Version 1.0.1
Fixed running out of memory issues
Added support for more versions of Windows 10/Windows 2016
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vRealize Build Tools
vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.
Changelog
Version 2.12.5 Update
[vRBT] Package installer – Add support for installation on a standalone vRO (not embedded) version 8.x with basic authentication
[vRA] Added catalog entitlements and examples to the vra-ng archetype
[vRO] Support / in Workflow name or path, by substituting it with dash (-) character.
[vRBT] Added http / socket timeouts support in the installer
[ABX] Support for ABX actions
[vRO] Support of placeholders in workflow description
[vRA] Import vRA8 custom resources before blueprints
[vROPS] Fixed policy import / export problem with vROPs 8.2, maintaining backward compatibility
[MVN] Fixed ussue with installer timeouts
[TS] vRO pkg – Adds support for slash in workflow path or name
[vRBT] Package installer – updated documentation, added checking of workflow input, writing of workflow error message to file, setting of installer exit code when executing of a workflow
[TS] Allow additional trigger events for policies trigered by the vcd mqtt plugin
[MVN] Fix Missing vRA Tenant After Successful package import
Based on the customer requests, have added few more command line options for CSV reports generation and AD LDS data cleanup.
What’s New:
Adds support to cleanup stale global local entitlement assignments from ADAM DB.
Global AD LDS Command:
adlds-analyzer.cmd –resolve-localpool-ga
Scans the cloud pod database and resolves the stale entries of local pool global assignments.
Note: This resolves deleted local pool conflicts of current pod only. If dashboard session data load error or session search fails in a different pod, a scan and resolve has to be executed in that pod.
List of new commands added to Local AD LDS:
adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-machine
All machine data exported as CSV file. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-machine -pool=”DesktopPool1,DesktopPool2″
All machine data exported as CSV file. Use -pool= to filter machines by desktop pool name. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
Spaces are not allowed in -pool= optional argument.
adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-session
All local sessions data exported as CSV file. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-session -pool=”PoolName1,PoolName2″ -farm=”FarmName1,FarmName2″
All local session data exported as CSV file. Use -pool= to filter sessions by desktop pool name. -farm= filter sessions by RDS farm name. Compatibility: Horizon 7.10 and above, 8.x
Spaces are not allowed in -pool= and -farm= optional argument.
adlds-analyzer.cmd –check-apps-integrity
Scans and lists the stale application icons in local ADLDS instance.
adlds-analyzer.cmd –check-apps-integrity -input=”AbsoluteFilePath1″,”AbsoluteFilePath2″
Reads the list of adam LDIF files in “-input=” for parsing and exports the stale application icons data to a file.
adlds-analyzer.cmd –export-named-lic-users
Exports the utilized and un-utilized named license users list information.
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Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS
The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.
Changelog
Version 1.2.1
Fixed bug that caused crash with certain System Extension configurations
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App Volumes Packaging Utility
This App Volumes Packaging Utility helps to package applications. With this fling, packagers can add the necessary metadata to MSIX app attach VHDs so they can be used alongside existing AV format packages. The MSIX format VHDs will require App Volumes 4, version 2006 or later and Windows 10, version 2004 or later.
Changelog
Version 1.2 Update
Fixed bugs found in internal testing.
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DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB
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 March 2021
New ESXi 7.0 STIG VIB release
Updated sshd_config file to meet the ESXi 7.0 Draft STIG which is also now the default config in 7.0 U2 with the exception of permitting root user logins.
Removed /etc/vmware/welcome file from VIB since it can be configured via the UI or PowerCLI now with issue.
See the updated Overview and Installation guide included in the download.
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VMware OS Optimization Tool
No comments needed, just use the OS Optimization Tool when creating your golden images!
Changelog
March 2021, b2002
Fixed issue where the theme file was being updated by a Generalize task and the previously selected optimizations including wallpaper color were being lost.
The administrator username used during Generalize was not getting passed through properly to the unattend answer file. This resulted in a mismatch when using some languages versions of Windows.
Removed legacy code GPO Policy corruption
Removed CMD.exe box that displayed at logon.
Windows Store Apps were not being removed properly on Windows 10 version 20H2. Fixed the optimizations to cope with the differences introduced in this version.
Optimizations
Changed step Block all consumer Microsoft account user authentication to be unselected by default. When disabled this was causing failures to login to Edge and Windows store.
Changed the step Turn off Thumbnail Previews in File Explorer to be unselected by default. This was causing no thumbnails to show for store apps in search results.
Windows 8 and 8.1 templates have been removed from the list of built-in templates. To optimize these versions of Windows, use the separate download for version b1130.
Removed old Windows 10 templates from the Public Templates repository:
Windows 10 1809-2004-Server 2019
Windows 10 1507-1803-Server 2016
January 2021, b2001 Bug Fixes
All optimization entries have been added back into the main user template. This allows manual tuning and selection of all optimizations.
Fixed two hardware acceleration selections were not previously controlled by the Common Option for Visual Effect to disable hardware acceleration.
Optimize
During an Optimize, the optimization selections are automatically exported to a default json file (%ProgramData%\VMware\OSOT\OptimizedTemplateData.json).
Analyze
When an Analyze is run, if the default json file exists (meaning that this image has already been optimized), this is imported and used to select the optimizations and the Common Options selections with the previous choices.
If the default selections are required, on subsequent runs of the OS Optimization Tool, delete the default json file, relaunch the tool and run Analyze.
Command Line
The OptimizedTemplateData.json file can also be used from the command line with the -applyoptimization parameter.
Optimizations
Changed entries for Hyper-V services to not be selected by default. These services are required for VMs deployed onto Azure. Windows installation sets these to manual (trigger) so these so not cause any overhead on vSphere, when left with the default setting.
It’s been a busy month on the flings front, no less than 17(!!) new releases and updated flings. This is how my browser tabs look:
If I have therm all correct there are 6 new releases and 10 updates (2 1 of which update without a changelog so a boo for that!) so this post is going to be a long one!
This Fling is a collection of ESXi Native Drivers which enables ESXi to recognize and consume various NVMe-based storage devices. These devices are not officially on the VMware HCL and have been developed to enable and support the VMware Community.
Currently, this Fling provides an emulated NVMe driver for the Apple 2018 Intel Mac Mini 8,1 and the Apple 2019 Intel Mac Pro 7,1 allowing customers to use the local NVMe SSD with ESXi. This driver is packaged up as an Offline Bundle and is only activated when it detects ESXi has been installed on either an Apple Mac Mini or Apple Mac Pro.
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VMware Cloud Foundation Powernova
VMware Cloud Foundation Powernova is a Fling built on top of VCF that provides the users the ability to perform Power Operations (Power ON, Power OFF) seamlessly across the entire inventory. It has a sleek UI to visualize the entire VCF inventory (which is the first of its kind for VCF) across the domains of VCF.
The UI is easy to use and elucidates the current Health and Power State of each node in the VCF inventory. Powernova lets the user work on the Power Operations on the components with domain specific inter dependencies automatically resolved.
Powernova also performs valid health checks on all nodes in the VCF inventory to ensure Power Operations are performed only on healthy nodes. Powernova takes minimal input (4 user defined inputs on their VCF system) and does all the magic for the users behind the scenes.
If any infrastructure maintenance activity, VCF migration activity, or power operations need to be performed only on specific domains in VCF, then Powernova is the one stop solution for all VCF users.
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Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool
Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool helps ease migration of Apps from one WS1 Access tenant to another (on-premises to SaaS or SaaS to SaaS) and use cases that require mirroring one tenant to another (for setting up UAT from PROD or vice versa) by providing capabilities listed below
Features
Copying of App Categories
Migrating Weblinks (3rd party IDP), icons as is
Creating a link to federated apps and copying the icons (to maintain the same user experience)
Copying App Assignment to a Category mapping
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Sample Data Platform Deployment on Virtualized Cloud Infrastructure
Data is king and your users need a sample data platform quickly.
With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 with vRealize Automation deployment and stand a sample data platform based on vSphere Virtual Machines in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.
You can also choose whether to deploy a wavefront proxy and configure the components to send data to the wavefront proxy or use your own.
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Community Networking Driver for ESXi
This Fling is a collection of ESXi Native Drivers which enables ESXi to recognize and consume various PCIe-based network adapters (See Requirements for details). These devices are not officially on the VMware HCL and have been developed to enable and support the VMware Community.
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Code Stream Concourse Integrator
The Code Stream Concourse Integrator (CSCI) Fling provides integration between a vRealize Automation Code Stream and Concourse CI tools with which users can trigger Concourse CI pipelines from Code Stream pipelines without any additional tooling/scripting. This enables users to use the features from both the tools flexibly and seamlessly as per their needs. This solution is built using Code Stream’s extensibility feature named Custom Integration.
Updates
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ESXi Compatibility Checker
The ESXi Compatibility Checker helps the vSphere admin out in checking if their environment will work with later versions of ESXi. [non-sponsored advertisement]Also check Runecast, they can run a simulation for you as well.[/non-sponsored advertisement]
Changelog
Build 20210219
Fix for ESX / VC 7.0 U1 Versioning issues
A new logo 😉
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VMware Machine Learning Platform
Our goal is to provide an end-to-end ML platform for Data Scientists to perform their job more effectively by running ML workloads on top of VMware infrastructure.
Save the costs by enabling efficient use of shared GPUs for ML workfloads
Reduce the risks of broken Data Science workflows by leveraging well-tested and ready-to-use demos and project templates
Faster “go-to-market” for ML models by utilizing end-to-end oriented tooling including fast and easy model deployment and serving via standardized REST API
Changelog
Version 0.4.1
Jupyter: R Kernel
Jupyter: BitFusion 2.5.0 Demo
Jupyter: MADlib/RTS4MADlib on Greenplum Demo
Multiple bug fixes
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Virtualized High Performance Computing Toolkit
This toolkit is intended to facilitate managing the lifecycle of these special configurations by leveraging vSphere APIs. It also includes features that help vSphere administrators perform some common vSphere tasks that are related to creating such high-performing environments, such as VM cloning, setting Latency Sensitivity, and sizing vCPUs, memory, etc.
Changelog
Nope 🙁
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Horizon Peripherals Intelligence
Horizon Peripherals Intelligence is an online self-serviced diagnosis service that can help increase the satisfaction when using peripheral devices with Horizon product by both the end users and the admin user. Currently, we support diagnosis for the following device categories – USB storage devices, USB printers, USB scanners, Cameras. We will continue to cover more device categories in the future
Changelog
Version 1.0
Add support for USB Audios, Speechmics, Signaturepads, Barcode scanners
Add support for L10n of web pages in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and English
Add support for window 7 and windows 2012R2
Add support for 32 bits OS
Add support for cmdline installation
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Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS
The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.
Update: OSOT didn’t receive an update, someone only edited the page according to Hilko.
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Horizon Helpdesk Utility
Besides ControlUp the helpdesk fling is the best tool to help your users.
Changelog
Version 1.5.0.24
Added support for Horizon 8.1
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HCIBench
HCIBench stands for “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark”. It’s essentially an automation wrapper around the popular and proven open source benchmark tools: Vdbench and Fio that make it easier to automate testing across a HCI cluster. HCIBench aims to simplify and accelerate customer POC performance testing in a consistent and controlled way. The tool fully automates the end-to-end process of deploying test VMs, coordinating workload runs, aggregating test results, performance analysis and collecting necessary data for troubleshooting purposes.
Changelog
Version 2.5.3
Fixed graphite permission issue which blocked vdbench/fio grafana display
Updated drop cache script to make it compatible with upcoming vSphere
Again if you’re not a ControlUp customer Reach is the next best thing to manage you’re Horizon environment.
Changelog
Version 1.3.1.2
Added support for Horizon 8.1
Bugfixes
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Workspace ONE Discovery
VMware Workspace ONE UEM is used to manage Windows 10 endpoints, whether it be Certificate Management, Application Deployment or Profile Management. The Discovery Fling enables you to view these from the device point of view and review the Workspace ONE related services, which applications have been successfully deployed, use the granular view to see exactly what has been configured with Profiles, view User & Machine certificates and see which Microsoft Windows Updates have been applied.
Changelog
February, 16, 2021 – Version 1.2
Replaced icon
New logo 🙂
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App Volumes Migration Utility
App Volumes Migration Utility allows admins to migrate AppStacks managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new application package format of App Volumes 4. The format of these packages in App Volumes 4 have evolved to improve performance and help simplify application management.
Changelog
Version 1.0.7 Update
Migration fails if their are blacklisted registry entries containing embedded NULL chars.
File system migration fails if their are directories having a trailing DOT name ( ex- Microsoft. ).
Project Supernova is to build a common machine learning inference service framework by enabling machine learning inference accelerators across edge endpoint devices, edge systems and cloud, with or without hardware accelerators.
Changelog
Version 1.2 Update
Support Xilinx Cloud FPGA
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App Volumes Packaging Utility
The App Volumes Packaging Utility helps to package applications. With this fling, packagers can add the necessary metadata to MSIX app attach VHDs so they can be used alongside existing AV format packages. The MSIX format VHDs will require App Volumes 4, version 2006 or later and Windows 10, version 2004 or later.
First of all I hope that everyone is staying safe en sound and keeping their social distance. Over here we’ve been back to a light lockdown again but at least most of the shops are still open. I just opened the flings site and the VMware engineers have been dam busy! This are the tabs I had after opening all of them.
If I count it right I have six new flings and another eight received updates, I can’t remember the last time we had so much activity on the flings front. The new flings include one of the most anticipated VMware products for the last years: ESXi on Arm!
Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning
With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 deployment and stand a sample data platform on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid guest cluster in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.
Additionally, this Fling comes with a market data sample application (using real market data from dxFeed) that shows how all these data platform components work together.
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vSphere Pod Autoscaler
This Fling is useful for vSphere PodVM users who want to perform auto-scaling on vSphere PodVMs based on memory utilization.
This python script is intended to implement the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler algorithm for podVM for the vSphere 7.0 with Kubernetes. The implementation follows the algorithm from the official Kubernetes documents: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/horizontal-pod-autoscale/
This script will automatically scale the number of PodVMs in the environment. The script will perform the following actions:
The script will retrieve the memory utilization of PodVMs in the environment
The script will then allow users to provide the memory threshold for PodVMs
The script will then calculate the desired number of replicas based on the memory threshold and utilization
The script will automatically scale the PodVMs to the desired number of replicas calculated in step #3
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Workspace ONE Discovery
VMware Workspace ONE UEM is used to manage Windows 10 endpoints, whether it be Certificate Management, Application Deployment or Profile Management. The Discovery Fling enables you to view these from the device point of view and review the Workspace ONE related services, which applications have been successfully deployed, use the granular view to see exactly what has been configured with Profiles, view User & Machine certificates and see which Microsoft Windows Updates have been applied.
Discovery provides you a view of the Managed device and can be used to help with troubleshooting.
Over the past several years, you’ve seen us demonstrate our virtualization technology on the Arm platform across several use cases, everything from running mission critical workloads on a windmill, to running on the SmartNIC, to running on AWS Graviton in the cloud. We realized that the resilient platform created for the datacenter can be equally valuable in non-traditional environments. We’ve learned a lot from exploratory discussions with customers and Arm Silicon Partners.
Now we’d like to give our customers a chance to evaluate this technology in their own environments. This evaluation program is for the enterprise architects who are considering the viability of virtualizing Arm workloads, for the test/dev team looking for a way to spin up Arm environments, and for the tinkerers who simply want to explore running ESXi-Arm in a small form factor Edge environment. We’re interested to understand what features you will find most valuable, and how you will want to deploy this technology.
As there has been an update for this fling already here’s the changelog:
Changelog
October 22, 2020 – v1.1
Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.
Fix for https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-edition/bugs/1098 (PSOD adding to VDS)
Support for Arm N1 SDP platform
Support for VMs on Neoverse N1 CPU
Pass-thru stability improvements to LS1046A and LX2160A platforms
Fix for vCenter/DRS incorrect CPU usage
Fix for VM crash when VM storage fills up
Stability fix for non-coherent DMA device support
Installer: tolerate RAM size within 4% of 4GB instead of 3.125 (for the otherwise unsupported RK3399 boards)
Serial port handling improvements (for unsupported/unknown boards, to be a bit more resilient of firmware configuration errors)
Documentation Updates:
Moved and expanded iSCSI doc for Pi doc to main ESXi-Arm Fling doc
Added LS1046ARDB docs (including ref to it from main ESXi-Arm doc and Fling website)
Fixed Ampere server name and links (its HR330A/HR350A, not SR-something)
Added Arm N1SDP document (including ref to it from main ESXi-Arm doc)
Updated GuestOSes known to work with ESXi-Arm including new “Verified” section
Horizon Peripherals Intelligence is an online self-serviced diagnosis service that can help increase the satisfaction when using peripheral devices with Horizon product by both the end users and the admin user. Currently, we support diagnosis for the following device categories – USB storage devices, USB printers, USB scanners, Cameras. We will continue to cover more device categories in the future.
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Storage Performance Tester
Storage Performance Tester is a one-click storage performance test tool, which is able to collect IOPS, latency and CPU cycles per I/O for ESXi storage stack. This tool automates all the testing steps including the customized VMs deployment, I/O workload running, and storage performance analysis. It displays the performance metrics through multiple visualized graphical charts. The only thing that users need to do is enter one command and wait for the performance report of your server.
This tool is designed to be a developer-friendly tool help troubleshoot and identify storage performance issues. It could be used to validate the maximum performance of new storage hardwares/drivers and setups of vSphere/vSAN. For more details please check the guild located in the instructions
Updated Flings
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VMCA Certificate Generator
The VMCA Certificate Generator is useful to create your own certificates using the VMCA in vCenter if you don’t have access to a purpose build system in your network.
Changelog
Version 1.0 Update
Added the open source license file.
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vRealize Build Tools
vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.
Changelog
Version 2.8.8 Update
[MVN] Support SHA1 checksum generation for JS,TS,XML,vRA,vRANG project types.
[MVN] Include the pom.xml description content as description of the built vRO package artifact
[TS-AutoGen] Define a property for storing the version of the API for which this project is generated.
[TS-AutoGen] Store the API version as part of the vRO package description.
[vRA-NG] Adds support for import/export of custom resources and resource actions.
[TS] Typescript projects for vRO, now support syntax for specifying a description for a configuration element attribute.
[vRA-NG] Adds support for using project name when managing vRA-NG content.
[vROps] Adds support for vROps 8.1
[vROps] Change default authentication provider to Token-based Authentication
[TS] Extend vropkg tool to support Polyglot bundle
[TS] Support for skipping unmapped dependencies, e.g. –skipUnmappedDeps
[TS] Bumped up Typescript version to 3.8.3
[TS] Added support for tsconfig file override using the project option of the tsc executable.
[MVN] Updated vRBT infrastructure project with latest dependencies and improved installation robustness
[vROps] Fixes a problem with resource kind during alert definition import
[TS] Use fixed node package versions
[vROps] Support for policy assignment to custom groups
[vRA] Fixes a problem with vra-ng authentication always setting System Domain and users not being able to authenticate with different domain
[vROps] Removed sshHost from Installer. Use host instead.
[TS] Make dependency:go-offline execution conditional
[TS] All version of Node are supported from 10.x and above
[TS] npm repository is no longer needed [TS] Support for RequireJS imports/exports
[TS] Support for yaml configurations
[TS] Improved workflows and policy templates transpilation
[TS] Improved diagnostic messages
[TS] Improved handling of cycle references
[TS] Extended workflow support
[TS] Support for ES2017.String
[sta_anchor id=”unndfe” /]
USB Network Native Driver for ESXi
USB has become one the most widely adopted connection type in the world & USB network adapters are also popular among Edge computing platforms. In some platforms, there is either limited or no PCI/PCIe slots for I/O expansion & in some cases, an Ethernet port is not even available. Another advantage of a USB-based network adapter is that it can be hot-plugged into an system without a reboot which means no impact to the workload, same is true for hot-remove.
This Fling supports the most popular USB network adapter chipsets found in the market. The ASIX USB 2.0 gigabit network ASIX88178a, ASIX USB 3.0 gigabit network ASIX88179, Realtek USB 3.0 gigabit network RTL8152/RTL8153 and Aquantia AQC111U. These are relatively inexpensive devices that many of our existing vSphere customers are already using and are familiar with.
Changelog
October 26, 2020 – v1.7
Added support for ESXi 7.0 Update 1
USB NIC Bindings are now automatically persistent
5GbE USB NICs now properly show Full vs Half Duplex
Note: This is ONLY for ESXi 7.0 Update 1, for ESXi 7.0/6.7/6.5, please ensure you are using the correct version of driver.
The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.
Changelog
Version 1.1 Update
10/27/2020 – Fixed bug that prevented Privacy Preferences from loading when default shell was set to zsh.
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App Volumes Migration Utility
App Volumes Migration Utility allows admins to migrate AppStacks managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new application package format of App Volumes 4. The format of these packages in App Volumes 4 have evolved to improve performance and help simplify application management.
Changelog
1.0.6 Version Update
Create meta_json.zip in migrated appstacks.
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HCIBench
HCIBench is THE tool to test the performance of your VSAN cluster. Always use your own metrics based on the actual requirements for your environment.
HCIBench stands for “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark”. It’s essentially an automation wrapper around the popular and proven open source benchmark tools: Vdbench and Fio that make it easier to automate testing across a HCI cluster. HCIBench aims to simplify and accelerate customer POC performance testing in a consistent and controlled way. The tool fully automates the end-to-end process of deploying test VMs, coordinating workload runs, aggregating test results, performance analysis and collecting necessary data for troubleshooting purposes.
HCIBench is not only a benchmark tool designed for vSAN, but also could be used to evaluate the performance of all kinds of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Storage in vSphere environment.
Changelog
Version 2.5.1 Update
Fixed non vSAN cluster testing issue
Fixed pre-validation storage policy issue
Added in-place upgrading capability, to do so, you can also upgrade HCIBench to the latest version by running the following command in HCIBench: tdnf install -y git && git clone https://github.com/cwei44/HCIBench.git && sh HCIBench/upgrade.sh
MD5 Checksum: 1d14426f92b353e90469a8623ade2bc1 HCIBench_2.5.1.ova
Version 2.5.0 Update
Added support vSAN HCI Mesh testing, now you can test both local and remote vSAN datastores at the same time
Added support local storage including VMFS and vSAN-Direct testing
Added vSAN Debug Mode, allow user to collect vm-support bundle and vmkstats automatically when running testing against vSAN
Changed guest VMs name convention to {vm_prefix}-{datastore_id}-batch_num-sequence_num
Enhanced testing report format
Allow user to specify customized IP addresses for guest VMs
Allow user to configure CPU and Memory for guest VMs
Added best practice and network troubleshooting guide in the user manual
Horizon View True SSO uses Microsoft Enterprise Certificate Servers to issue certificates that are used when the user logs on to the desktop. The Horizon View Enrollment Server (ES) is responsible for sending a certificate request to certificate servers, and for monitoring the PKI configuration settings in the Active Directory.
Changelog
Version 2.2
The tool has been updated to allow performance-testing of the enrollment-server.
And another month gone, for some the Summer Holidays have already started while others might have to wait a few weeks or so. This month there have been two new fling releases and seven received an update.
The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.
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True SSO Configuration Utility
True SSO can be a though cookie to actually configure the True SSO Configuration utility might be help to help you with that.
This project is intended for the VMware Horizon customers in order to use True SSO Configuration Utility to help you configuring TrueSSO using View Connection Server, Enrollment Server and your Certificate Authoriry / Active Directory.
Updated Flings
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Python Client for VMC on AWS
If Python is your favorite programming language the Python Client for VMC on AWS will help you in automating things for VMC.
Changelog
Version 1.1
Added support for Distributed Firewall.
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FlowGate
Flowgate helps you integrate multiple systems like Infoblox, Pulse IoT center and PowerIQ with your IT management systems..
Changelog
Version 1.1
Refactor the powerIQ and Nlyte adapter to support more metrics and properties
Refactor the Metric api.
Enhance the manual facility mapping functionality, support pdu,switch and sensor mapping.
Support add IP and AssetName mapping.
Security bugs fixed.
largely reduce the images size
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VMware OS Optimization Tool
If you are into EUC the VMware OS Optimization Tool is THE tool to optimize your images or at least the base to use for scripting those optimizations.
Changelog
June, 2020, b1160
Windows Update
Brand new option called Update that make it easier to re-enable Windows Update functionality on a Windows image that has previously been optimized and had this disabled.
This process has the following four steps:
Enable – Changes the required registry values, local group policy and enables the required services.
Windows Update – Starts the Windows update process and open the Windows setting page. You can run the Windows Update process as often as required and reboot, if necessary, before progressing to the next step.
Restore – Returns all settings to their original values. This will also disable scheduled tasks that get regenerated when a Windows Update runs.
Recommendations – After updating Windows, it is recommended that you rerun an optimize and then a finalize task.
Generalize
Completely redesigned interface that makes it easier to change the settings to customize the unattend answer file. These include:
Time Zone.
Input, system, UI, and user locales.
Administrator account autologon and password.
Copy Profile.
You still have the ability to view and edit the generated unattend answer file, if required, before execution.
Added cleanup of the local administrator profile before performing a copy profile including deleting the following registry entries:
Another month, another monthly overview of the new and changed flings as published on https://flings.vmware.com/. There are three new flings and seven received an update.
ptp_vmw is a Linux driver for VMware Precision Clock, a new type of virtual device available in ESXi 7.0 (hardware version 17 on-wards) that provides virtual machines with access to the underlying ESXi host’s system clock. Guests can use the device as a reference clock in Chrony time synchronization software to synchronize their system clocks with.
Precision Clock offers an alternative to existing methods of time synchronization in the guest, such as NTP. A potential benefit of using Precision Clock, when compared to a network time synchronization, is that it uses a VMware proprietary paravirtual interface between a virtual machine and the host to fetch time information. Achievable accuracy using network based time synchronization in a guest is limited by delay and variability in the virtual networking paths (including the guest’s own networking stack), especially under high loads. By avoiding virtual networking, time synchronization using Precision Clock can, potentially, achieve higher accuracy. See the vSphere 7.0 documentation at https://docs.vmware.com for more information about this virtual device.
This fling includes a Linux kernel module source RPM, which can be built and installed in a Linux system. Upon loading the driver, a PTP clock device is created, which can be consumed as a reference clock in Chrony. See included README file for more information.
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Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
A Virtual Appliance that pre-bundles all required dependencies to help customers in learning and deploying standalone Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters running on either VMware Cloud on AWS and/or vSphere 6.7 Update 3 environment for Proof of Concept, Demo and Dev/Test purposes.
This appliance will enable you to quickly go from zero to Kubernetes in less than 30 minutes with just an SSH client and a web browser!
Features:
Quickly deploy TKG Clusters onto VMware Cloud on AWS or vSphere-based infrastructure
Online vSphere Content Library to sync all TKG Demo Appliance dependencies
Accompany step-by-step workshop-style guide
Embedded Harbor registry pre-loaded with all required TKG and Demo Containers
Support for Air-Gapped and Non-Internet accessible environments
Sample demo applications including Persistent Volume, K8s 3-Tier Application with a LoadBalancer example
With machine learning is widely used in enterprises, big data are trained on the edge, inference services go to production either in the cloud or on the edge.
On the edge
Edge devices have limited resources, space and power supply
Edge servers cost much higher than devices
Hardware accelerators are heterogeneous in architecture and various on interfaces and performance on the edge
In the cloud
Accelerator market is dominated by Nvidia GPU
Other options come as AMD GPU, Intel Habana Goya/Altera FPGA, AWS Inferentia, Xilinx FPGA etc
Common inference interfaces from cloud to edge doesn’t appear generally
Limitation on specific hardware accelerators or cloud leads to new vendor lock-in
Project Supernova is to build a common machine learning inference service framework by enabling machine learning inference accelerators across edge endpoint devices, edge systems and cloud, with or without hardware accelerators.
Micro-service based architecture with Restful API
Support heterogenous system architectures from leading vendors
Support accelerator compilers to native code
Neutral to ML training framework file formats
Work on both edge devices and clouds
Hardware CPU support:
x86-64, ARM64
Hardware accelerator support:
Intel VPU, Google Edge TPU, Nvidia GPU
Software
Inference toolkit support: OpenVINO, TensorRT & Tenserflow Lite
Training framework data format: Tensorflow, Caffe, ONNX, MxNet
Updated flings
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VMware Appliance for Folding@Home
Do you have some cpu resources left to use for a good cause? The VMware appliance for folding@home makes life doing that just a bit easier.
The Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory.
Changelog
Version 2.1.0
Fixed errors in reporting for some VMs that are on hosts with 4 sockets
Fixed “memory” missing from Details when VM memory spans pNUMA nodes
Added ability to call function with “-simple” which only reports VM info (leaves out vCenter, Cluster, and Host)
Added support for vSphere with Kubernetes and Tanzu Kubernetes GRID in addition to VMware
Cloud Foundation/PKS
Upgraded to Kubeflow 1.0 GA
Added support for GPUs
Introduced a new data registry component called Data Manager
Upgraded minor components/libraries to the latest versions
Added an easy-to-use installer
Lots of bug fixes
[sta_anchor id=”vspheremobileclient” /]
vSphere Mobile Client
The vSphere Mobile client is the tool to have if you want to be able to an early check on your vCenter while running to your desk to do it on those nice and fancy big screens you have over there.
Changelog
Version 1.11.0
New features:
Virtual keyboard for VM console, with all special keys available
Details page for cluster objects
Improvements:
iOS devices now have the VM console, still requires direct ESXi connection for both Android and iOS
Library updates for better compatibility
Bugfixes:
Host no longer shows as standalone when part of a cluster
Issues for all objects are calculated similarly, by adding together fired alarms and configuration issues
Virtual CPU count in VM summary page is now correct
All details pages are showing information in a similar way
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Horizon Session Recording
The Horizon Helpdesk Recording fling is an underestimated fling in my eyes, it gives you the opportunity to properly record whats’s happening in a users vdi session.
Changelog
Version 2.0.8
Note: Version 2.0.8 is a complete re-write of the whole fling, This fling does not support upgrading, this will require a new deployment, server and agent.
The agent is now multi-threaded.
The web service is now written in angular.
The web service now supports high availability (see documentation).
This release will only work with Horizon 7.9 or higher.
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Horizon Helpdesk Utility
After Reach that sadly had to be pulled the Horizon Helpdesk Utility is on of the best flings to have ever been released for Horizon. FInally a fast tool that properly helps your helpdesk without having to go to the admin console.
Changelog
Version 1.5.0.21
Fixed an intermittent issue with the agent crashed when viewing a pool / session.
Another month down in the Corona quarantaine. That doesn’t mean that the engineers didn’t work on flings. More the opposite since I can’t remember having to go to page 2 on the site to see all of the new releases and updates. I see four new releases and nine updated flings.
Download this Virtual Reality Application for the Oculus Quest and Oculus Go, you will watch this VR experience hosted by VMware, Bask Iyer, CIO and Chief Digital Transformation officer, as he walks us through 4 key technologies Cloud, Mobile, IoT and AI and illustrates new opportunities for technology to deliver a positive impact on society.
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vSphere Replication Capacity Planning
The vSphere Replication Capacity Planning Fling reveals actual VM traffic consumption and delta size. This helps you perform a capacity planning or estimation of vSphere Replication network bandwidth utilization prior to enabling vSphere Replication for VMs.
This Fling exposes graphics regarding LWD (lightweight delta) network traffic and delta size metrics, represented in different time frames – hourly, daily, weekly and monthly.
[sta_anchor id=”vmcpython” /]
Python Client for VMC on AWS
Python Client for VMware Cloud on AWS is an open-source Python-based tool. Written in Python, the tool enables VMware Cloud on AWS users to automate the consumption of their VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.
Note this is not to interact with your VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter but to run tasks such as creating and deleting networks, setting up security groups and services and building network security rules on the Management and Compute Gateways.
Horizon cloud pod architecture (CPA) has lmvutil commands to manage the global database entitlements data using command line interface. A lmvtools command line wrapper is now available to enhance the command execution of lmvutil commands to input the password only once and leave the command execution to continue. It has capability to export all the site, site-pod mapping, global entitlements, user global assignments, local pool assignments, home site overrides, backup global entitlements in lmvutil commands format to file. The command builder has in-built mechanism to comment the stale user global assignments and stale home site assignments.
Update flings
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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 1.4.0
Added vRealize Operations Cloud Support
Added custom tags support
Bugfixes and improvements
[sta_anchor id=”appfinder” /]
App Finder for Tunnel
This application is a utility which can be used for conveniently flagging the applications to use WorkspaceONE Tunnel on macOS.
The vSphere Software Asset Management (vSAM) is a tool that collects and summarizes vSphere product deployment information. It calls on vSphere APIs for deployment data and produces a PDF report that the customer can consult as a part of their infrastructure review and planning process. This lightweight Java application runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS.
Changelog
Version 1.1
Added vSphere 7.0 support; Added the Host Inventory Table in the generated software asset management report.
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VMware OS Optimization Tool
Osot is the tool to optimize your Horizon golden images.
Changelog
April,2020,b1151
Fixed several issues in CLI.
April, 2020, b1150
.docx file of recent change log located in the hyperlink above.
Includes various bug fixes and many new optimizations that have a huge beneficial effect.
Support for Windows 10 version 2004 has been added.
Optimizations
Lots of Windows 10 and Windows Server optimizations have been added to this version. These include settings for Windows features and also for applications:
Office 2013/2016/2019
Disable start screens
Disable animations
Disable hardware acceleration
Internet Explorer 11 and Edge browserBlank home page
Prevent first time wizard
Disable hardware acceleration
Adobe Reader 11 and DC
Disable hardware acceleration
Multiple additional optimizations
More optimizations have been added for Windows services and scheduled tasks to achieve a faster OS initialization and improve performance.
UI Button Renames and Reorder
Several buttons have been renamed to more closely reflect the task they perform.
Analyze is now called Optimize.
The old page that displayed the results of an optimization task used to be called Optimize. That has been renamed to Results.
Inside the Optimize page the buttons at the bottom left have been reorganized. These are now in order that you would execute them in. Analyze > Common Options > Optimize
Removed the button for Compatibility as this was a legacy item.
The top-level buttons and tabs have been reordered to better reflect the main tasks and the order you carry them out in. Analyze > Generalize > Finalize.
Common Options
New option in Visual Effect to allow the selection of disabling hardware acceleration for IE, office and Adobe Reader. The default is that this is selected but this allows this to be easily unselected if using hardware GPU.
Added Photos to the list of Windows Store apps that can be selected to be retained.
Setting the background to a solid color is now selected by default.
Generalize
More comprehensive Sysprep answer file that helps with some optimization items that were getting undone by the Sysprep process.
Finalize
New options to carry out some tasks that get undone during Generalize.
Disable Superfetch service. This reduces high usage of CPU and RAM.
Clean temporary files from the default user profile.
Automate the use of SDelete to zero empty disk space.
Overwrites empty disk space with zeros so that the VMDK size can be reduced when it is cloned.
This uses SDelete which needs to be downloaded from Microsoft Sysinternals and copied to a location in the path (Windows\System32 or current user directory).
Create Local Group Policies
Creates local group policies for computer and user settings that can then be viewed with tools like RSOP and GPEdit.
This uses LGPO.exe which can be downloaded as part of the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit. LGPO.exe should be copied to a location in the path (Windows\System32 or current user directory).
Command Line
Command line support added for the Generalize step.
Command line support added for the Finalize step. This also simplifies and consolidates the previous system clean tasks (NGEN, DISM, Compact, Disk Cleanup) under the new -Finalize option. These can now be run without specifying a template.
Fixed naming of Paint3D application when wanting to retain this while removing other Windows Store Applications. This had been previously been incorrectly named as MSpaint.
Templates
Windows 10 version 2004 was added to the built-in template Windows 10 1809 – XXXX-Server 2019.
Legacy templates for Horizon Cloud and App Volumes packaging have been removed. The two standard Windows 10 templates should be used instead.
LoginVSI templates are no longer built in. They are still available to download from the public templates interface.
Guides
Updated OSOT user guide: VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide.
Updated Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop guide coming soon.
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Power vRA Cloud
PowervRA Cloud is a PowerShell module that abstracts the VMware vRealize Automation Cloud APIs to a set of easily used PowerShell functions.
Changelog
Version 1.2
Support for vRealize Automation 8.1
New cmdlets
Connect-vRA-Server
New-vRA-Server-CloudAccount-VMC
New-vRA-Server-CloudAccount-vSphere
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VMware Appliance for Folding@Home
This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software to help the fight against Covid.
Changelog
April 17, 2020 – v1.0.3
F@H software has been updated to latest 7.6.8
Add OVF property (guestinfo.fah_next_unit_percentage) to control Workload Unit Percentage (default value of 90)
The Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory.
Changelog
Version 2.0.4
Fixed errors with reporting on VMs with odd number of vCPUs
Fixed reporting on VMs that have CPU Hot Add enabled
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vSAN Performance Monitor
The vSAN performance monitor is a monitoring and visualization tool based on vSAN Performance metrics.
Changelog
Version 1.3
Fixed issues related to user login. We have removed the user password configuration screen while deploying the fling. Users will be prompted to change the password after login.
Few tweaks related to Grafana charts. Removed the login screen to access graphs.
I don’t know since what version but somewhere this script stopped working because VMware change some things. In 7.8 there was a change about the thumbprint algorithm to DER_BASE64_PEM so it might have started there. Another change is that in the sslcertthumbprint field they stopped using the thumbprint but actually add the entire certificate.
Yesterday Sean Massey (https://thevirtualhorizon.com/) asked me if it was possible to add a vCenter server + some other things to Horizon View using the api’s. With a quick look at the api explorer I confirmed this should be possible. The other things he asked I will put in a separate blogpost.
It looks like a simple matter of building the spec and I should be good. In the end it turned out to be a bit more work then expected. Some items are not required according to the api explorer but should at least be called in the spec (set them to something empty) while others can safely be left away. The automatic generated ssl certs in my lab also turned out to be a pita. First I copied them from a current spec and later I downloaded the certificate on the Connection server itself and read that cert. Andrew Morgan (http://andrewmorgan.ie/)from VMware helped me out with this by showing their internal script that they use. It turned out that except for the SSL certs I was on the right path. As usual I will add this functionality to the vmware.hv.helper but since that might take a while I decided to create a useful script
$hvServer = $global:DefaultHVServers[0]
$services= $hvServer.ExtensionData
# Create required objects
$spec=new-object VMware.Hv.VirtualCenterSpec
$spec.serverspec=new-object vmware.hv.serverspec
$spec.viewComposerData=new-object VMware.Hv.virtualcenterViewComposerData
$spec.Certificateoverride=new-object vmware.hv.CertificateThumbprint
$spec.limits=new-object VMware.Hv.VirtualCenterConcurrentOperationLimits
$spec.storageAcceleratorData=new-object VMware.Hv.virtualcenterStorageAcceleratorData
# vCenter Server specs
$spec.ServerSpec.servername="pod2vcr1.loft.lab" # Required, fqdn for the vCenter server
$spec.ServerSpec.port=443 # Required
$spec.ServerSpec.usessl=$true # Required
$spec.ServerSpec.username="administrator@vsphere.local" # Required user@domain
$vcpassword=read-host "vCenter User password?" -assecurestring
$temppw = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($vcPassword)
$PlainvcPassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($temppw)
$vcencPassword = New-Object VMware.Hv.SecureString
$enc = [system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$vcencPassword.Utf8String = $enc.GetBytes($PlainvcPassword)
$spec.ServerSpec.password=$vcencPassword
$spec.ServerSpec.servertype="VIRTUAL_CENTER"
# Description & Displayname, neither is required to be set
#$spec.description="description" # Not Required
#$spec.displayname="virtualcenterdisplayname" # Not Required
$spec.CertificateOverride=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.serverspec)).thumbprint
$spec.CertificateOverride.SslCertThumbprint=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.serverspec)).certificate
$spec.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprintAlgorithm = "DER_BASE64_PEM"
# Limits
# Only change when you want to change the default values. It is required to set these in the spec
$spec.limits.vcProvisioningLimit=20
$spec.Limits.VcPowerOperationsLimit=50
$spec.limits.ViewComposerProvisioningLimit=12
$spec.Limits.ViewComposerMaintenanceLimit=20
$spec.Limits.InstantCloneEngineProvisioningLimit=20
# Storage Accelerator data
$spec.StorageAcceleratorData.enabled=$false
#$spec.StorageAcceleratorData.DefaultCacheSizeMB=1024 # Not Required
# Cmposer
# most can be left empty but they need to be set otherwise you'll get a xml error
$spec.ViewComposerData.viewcomposertype="STANDALONE" # DISABLED for none, LOCAL_TO_VC for installed with the vcenter and STANDALONE for s standalone composer
if ($spec.ViewComposerData.viewcomposertype -ne "DISABLED"){
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec=new-object vmware.hv.serverspec
$spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride=new-object VMware.Hv.CertificateThumbprint
$cmppassword=read-host "Composer user password?" -assecurestring
$temppw = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($cmpPassword)
$PlaincmpPassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($temppw)
$cmpencPassword = New-Object VMware.Hv.SecureString
$enc = [system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$cmpencPassword.Utf8String = $enc.GetBytes($PlaincmpPassword)
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.password=$cmpencPassword
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.servername="pod2cmp1.loft.lab"
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.port=18443
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.usessl=$true
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.username="m_wouter@loft.lab"
$spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.servertype="VIEW_COMPOSER"
$spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec)).thumbprint
$spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprint = ($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec)).certificate
$spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprintAlgorithm = "DER_BASE64_PEM"
}
# Disk reclamation, this is required to be set to either $false or $true
$spec.SeSparseReclamationEnabled=$false
# This will create the connection
$services.VirtualCenter.VirtualCenter_Create($spec)
Looking at the output it will only ask for the vCenter user’s password and if a Composer server is set for that user’s password.
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