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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
I already spoiler the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home but this appliance gives you the opportunity to add your computer power in the search for a solution against Corona or other diseases.
This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software. Upon deploying the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home, the user will be prompted to enter information to configure the Folding@Home software. Once the appliance is deployed, the Folding@Home client is running and ready for Working Units. The Fling is also pre-configured to allow remote management of the Folding@Home client. For more information on the Folding@Home Project and how we can be a Force for Good against diseases like the Coronavirus, visit the website www.foldingathome.org.
The Folding@Home Appliance is configured to automatically join Team VMware ID 52737. Everyone is welcome to join! Check out http://vmwa.re/fah for team and individual statistics.
Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer
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.
Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility
In case the manual deployment is too much work or the PowerCLI based is too difficult engineers have now created Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility for Mac or Windows to install the uag.
Unified Access Gateway (UAG) Deployment Utility assists the deployment of UAG appliances by running the utility on Windows or macOS machines. This utility provides better user interface, which is self explanatory about the next steps and better error handling through useful messages & tool tips which will make it easier for an admin to deploy single or multiple appliances.
Updated Flings
vSphere Software Asset Management Tool
Changelog
March 2020
Minor wording update to the generated software asset management report.
Desktop Watermark
Changelog
v1.1 – Build 20200302-signed
Added a new attribute %DATETIME% to show hour and minute info on screen.
vCenter Event Broker Appliance
Changelog
Too damn much so better head over to William Lam’s blogpost.
Ubuntu OVA for Horizon
Changelog
v1.2
Special thanks to Robert Guske for testing & feedback
Support for Horizon 7.11 and later
Support for vSphere 6.7+
Updated OVA base image to Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Updated Virtual Hardware to v14
Added option to configure static networking
Added support for USB 3.0 and USB Redirection (via linux-agent-installer.sh)
20.03 Release Notes:
Please Note: If you have already setup WS1 SCIM Adapter, it is possible that moving to 20.03 will create new accounts. Please consider resetting Directory Services configuation for the OG you are connecting to.
New Features:
Windows 10 OOBE Enrollment now supported
Bitnami Node.js 12.16.1-0 now supported with embedded install
Various Enterprise and Custom SCIM Schema attributes now supported (see below table)
Bugs Fixed:
Resources with special characters in immutableId do not update
vSphere Mobile Client
Changelog
Version 1.10.2
Improvements/Fixes
Better support for older devices
Fix some issues related to the back button
Fix for the annotation not defined issue
Version 1.10.1
Fixed “TypeError : Cannot read property of ‘annotation’ of undefined”
Errors causing white screen should now have more information about the cause
Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV
Changelog
Version 3.2.1 Update
Updated to new version
Replaced user guide the new version
Horizon View Events Database Export Utility
Changelog
Version 2.2
Fixed the following issues:
Able to return data for All Pools
Able to return data on just user logon and logoff events
Both of these actions would cause a crash or error in previous versions
Pallas helps an admin to manage edge ESXi hosts where it’s not possible to manage them using vCenter due to security reasons.
The goal of Pallas is to provide management ability for ESXi hosts that cannot be managed by vCenter due to firewall or network issues.
Case 1: You have several ESXi hosts which running in a private network, but you have requirement to management them in the public network.
Case 2: Your ESXi host don’t wire connections and must connected through WiFi or Mobile network. For example, you use ESXi running on the oil rig, train head and you want to remote manage the ESXi securely.
Case 3: In IOT world you have the virtualized Edge devices requirements (ESXi host on Edge Device) and need remote management the ESXi(like patch, create VM etc.)
This solution includes a dominate-agent VM to provide remote management ability on the ESXi. If the ESXi has no wire connection then a pluggable network device (USB WiFi card, 3G/4G/5G sim card or other device that can provide network access ability) is needed, the pluggable network device will be pass-through directly to the dominate-agent VM. A remote manager server that accept connections either in public cloud/hybrid or private datacenter.
The dominate agent VM will talk to ESXi through ESXi SDK for workload VM management. There is no direct connection between the workload vm and dominate agent by default.
The dominate agent VM will talk to Pallas Manger though MQTT protocol, it will not allow any inbound traffic.
Updated Flings
Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer
Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer is a script that analyses vm’s and the hosts running them to see if they run in an optimized way. It does not look into the vm’s themselves, if that is needed vRealize Operations is recommended.
Changelog
Version 2.0.2
Modified Get-OptimalvCPU.ps1 to account for vCenters with no clusters
Modified Error Catches so they display the line number of the error
Code Capture new language: the recorded interaction can now be translated to Go.
PowerActions: integrating PowerCLI and the vSphere Client. The vSphere Client now provides the ability to execute PowerCLI commands and scripts, and store scripts in a library. Custom actions backed by PowerCLI scripts can be defined and executed on inventory objects.
PowerActions must be explicitly enabled on a vSphere Client Fling deployment. For setup instructions and a quick walkthrough, see the file PowerActions_documentation_Fling50.pdf .
Improvements
PowerActions: when executing a script from the context menu of an object, the context object is prepopulated, but the object selector control has to be expanded and collapsed in order for this to become visible.
Release Notes
The base operating system for the fling is changed to Photon OS.
Upgrade from previous versions to 5.0 is not supported. A new appliance has to be deployed.
Server.bat Replaced, December 3
Fix a small error where ls.url was printed twice in the resulting webclient.properties which leads to errors when trying to login to the H5 web client.
App Volumes Entitlement Sync
The App Volumes Entitlement Sync helps the App Volumes admin in copying entitlements between various App Volumes environments like from test to production.
Changelog
Version 2.4
Fixed problem with sync button being disabled
Added check for App Volumes 2.x and App Volumes 4.x managers and will pop up message that they can’t be synced
Fix for Migrated Appstack upload failure in AVM due to JSON parsing error.
Instructions doc updated to reflect the name change from “Upload Prepackaged Volume” to “Upload Template” in the AVM UI.
vRealize Build Tools
vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.
Changelog
Version 2.4.18
Support vRA 8 support for blueprints, custom forms, subscriptions and flavor-mapping
vRO 8 support for existing content management and import
Support vRO 8 export of WFs in a folder structure derived from WF tags
Support for running WFs on vRO using maven command
Support persisting JS Actions IDs in source to allow for actions originating in vRO first to not create conflicts
TypeScript Projects (experimental) support improvements and bug fixes
General bugs fixing an documentation updates
Power vRA Cloud
Power vRA Cloud makes the vRA API’s more accessible for people already used to PowerCLI or PowerShell.
The App Volumes Migration Utility has been build to migrate App Volumes 2.18 app stacks to the brand new App Volumes 4 format.
App Volumes Migration Utility allows to migrate appstacks, which are managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new appstack format of VMware App Volumes 4.0. The format of appstacks in VMware App Volumes 4.0 have changed in order to provide improved login to desktops among many other features. This utility addresses the migration of appstacks so that applications don’t have to be provisioned again after upgrading to VMware App Volumes 4.0.
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.
Features
Support both vCenter Server cluster and Standalone ESXi host with a version of vSphere 5.5, 6.X or newer.
Generate comprehensive report from various aspects:
High-level product deployment summary
Product deployment report by targets (standalone ESXi or VC cluster)
High level license key usage report
License key usage by targets
Provide Software Asset Management suggestions on:
Evaluation license warning
License term
Pre-expiration 90 days warning
Expiration alert
License capacity
Potential capacity waste warning based on customized threshold
Potential capacity shortage warning based on customized threshold
Capacity over-use alert
Product support
End of General Support info
General Support pre-expiration 90 days warning
Unsupported product alert
Protect customer sensitive information by:
Collecting minimal set of information relative with Software Asset Management
Masking sensitive info in the report
Supporting encryption of raw data file
Support merging multi reports into one report
Support English and Chinese report
Support customization of report
Power vRA Cloud
Power vRA Cloud is a PowerShell module that abstracts the VMware vRealize Automation Cloud APIs to a set of easily used PowerShell functions. This tool provides a comprehensive command line environment for managing your VMware vRealize Automation Cloud environment.
This module is not supported by VMware and comes with no warranties expressed or implied. Please test and validate its functionality before using this product in a production environment.
Updated Flings
DRS Dump Insight
The DRS Dump Insight flings gives an explanation why in the bloody hell a VM was moved from one host to the other.
Changelog
Version 1.1
Users can now upload multiple dumps as a folder.
Creates a vMotion timeline based on the dumps uploaded, users can navigate through multiple dump analysis.
Users can export multiple dump analysis as a PDF at once.
Added support to 65u2, 65u3 and 67u3 dumps.
Bug fixes and backend improvements
Horizon Reach
I have said this before but Horizon Reach is awesome and gives you an proper overview over all pod’s in an Horizon Cloud Pod setup.
Changelog
Version 1.0.1 brings vCenter performance data along with a myriad of bugfixes!
New Features
Gauges, gauges everywhere.
Search field! for those huge customers who hate to dig.
vCenter performance statistics will now be captured for Pods running version 7.8 or better.
vCenter RAM, CPU, sesions and Datastore Usage have all been added to the historical data views.
Datastore usage is now calculated only for datastores used by pools or farms.
New layouts for Pools, Farms, Pods, Vcenters etc..
RDSH Servers load is now correctly measured and a new view is available.
Page headers look much better.
vCenters now have the pod name listed.
Added support for nested groups and some additional LDAP logging on startup.
Added the ability to modify a connection rather than just add and delete.
Side nav will now collapse if screen space is low.
Don’t use internet explorer, friends don’t let friends do that, I’ve added a warning too.
Further logging enabled for LDAP integration including a self test on service start.
LDAP now supports nested groups.
Events view has been deprecated due to a thread exhaustion issue on the server side.
Bug Fixes
Farm usage is now accurate, wow that was broken!
Many cast errors were found and dealt with.
Problem machines now correctly display the vCenter.
Fixed a health score bug in the page header.
Fixed a problem machines bug in pools and farms.
Fixed a bug in pod numbers calculation.
Improved the speed of database enumeration of sites and pods.
Fixed a bug in global application entitlements where the lack of shortcuts would cause the UI to freak out.
Fixed a bug in Datastore usage where it was reporting the wrong value.
Fixed a bug where Reach sessions may not be logged off correctly during polling.
Fixed a bug where applications were being requested for each farm multiple times.
Fixed a bug where pod health would be called twice for no reason.
Support for disk format conversion between Thick (Lazy Zeroed), Thick (Eager Zeroed) and Thin provisioning
Support for VM rename pattern for Clone operation
Fixed duplicated network selection when performing bulk migration
Fixed startup failure when a new home vCenter is specified as a command line argument
vCenter Event Broker Appliance
Sadly there is no real changelog available but just a tweet for the vCenter Event Broker Appliance, a tool that helps the user to create their own events inside vCenter.
Changelog?
Features:
Setup no longer require Internet
NTP & Proxy Support
vSphere Mobile Client
If you think your Smartphone screen is big enough to manage vSphere the vSphere Mobile Client will help you in that.
Changelog
Version 1.9.1
Features:
Added host shutdown quick action
Bug fixes:
Fixed an issue where the app would crash when using face ID authentication (iOS)
Fixed an issue in the VM card (reversed icons for Windows and Linux)
Version 1.9.0
New features:
Ability to save information around a vCenter server (address/username)
Use FaceId/Fingerprint recognition to login to a vCenter server
Bug fixes:
Do not make first letter uppercase on input fields on the login form
Better compatibility with auto-complete applications on the login form
VMware OS Optimization Tool
The one, the only and the real VMware OS Optimization Tool. Simply the best tool out there to optimize your windows image.
Changelog
January, 2020, b1140
Includes various bug fixes.
Optimize Results
A new button has been added to the results page that displays once an optimization job has completed. This Export button allows you to save the results page as an HTML file.
Generalize
New option and button that simplifies the task of running Sysprep using a standard answer file. You can edit the provided answer file before running Sysprep with it.
Finalize
New option and button to automate many common tasks that are typically run as a last step before you shut down Windows to use the VM in Horizon. These include the system clean up tasks (NGEN, DISM, Compact and disk clean up) that were previously provided in the Common Options dialog. This also includes clearing event logs, KMS information and releasing the IP address.
Common Options
System clean up tasks have been removed from the common options so will now not run during optimize but instead should be run as part of the Finalize process.
New tab for Security options. This allows for the quick selection of common settings that might need to be left enabled depending on the security requirements. This offers control over Bitlocker, Firewall, Windows Defender, SmartScreen, HVCI.
Command Line
Added command line parameter to allow the tool to run without applying optimizations. This is part of the -o parameter called none that then allows you to run things like the system cleanup tasks (NGEM DISM, etc.) without also having to optimize at the same time.
Changed default to not disable Webcache. In testing this was shown to break Edge and IE browsers ability to download and save files. The settings are still available in the Windows 10 templates if you want to disable Webcache.
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.
The SyncML Compare tool is usefull for troubleshooting profiles and applications that are pushed from the Workspace One Console.
SyncML-Compare is an extension to Fiddler application that lets you compare the syncmls pushed from server against the SyncMls received from the device management client on the device.
Comparing SyncMLs is often required to troubleshoot or debug profiles, applications pushed from the WS1 console.
Instead of copying the two syncmls and then manually comparing each syncml node in a separate xml viewer, SyncML compare lets you compare the SyncMLs on the fiddler application itself.
As shown in the below screenshot, you can see the locUris, commandIds and the results using SyncML compare.
This simplifies the SyncML troubleshooting experience as well as speeds up debugging process.
vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight
vRealize Network Insight is a great tool but wouldn’t it even be better when the information is accessible from inside vSphere? The vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight fling takes care of that.
The vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight brings relevant information from Network Insight, directly into vCenter. It allows the virtual infrastructure admins to view networking focused data and statistics in the same interface as where they manage their workloads, without having to have 2 interfaces open. Additionally, this plugin also helps add vCenter as a data source to Network Insight and set up incoming network flows.
Features
Summary view of vCenter activity: VMs, vMotions, and snapshots.
Bring in network information directly to vCenter, such as:Summary view of how network traffic behaves; how much east-west and how much internet traffic there is.
Health check violation for the vCenter and attached NSX environments
Network top talkers, grouped by VMs, Cluster, L2 Network, Subnet, Security Group, Source-Destination Pair, Source & Destination Subnet, Source & Destination IPs.
Most used networks
New Virtual Machines that are accessing the internet
o Top 5 Hosts or Networks that are experiencing the most packet loss
Links to the vRealize Network Insight interface shows the source data and allows you to look closer, apply filters, export information, and more.
Configure vCenter as a data source and configure NetFlow on the available vSphere Distributed Switches.
App Finder for Tunnel
The App Finder for Tunnel fling can be used to flag applications to use the Workspace One Tunnel on MacOS.
This application is a utility which can be used for conveniently flagging the applications to use WorkspaceONE Tunnel on macOS. On macOS, WorkapceONE Tunnel supports per-app VPN feature where only the whitelisted applications can be Tunneled rather than tunneling the entire device traffic. In order to whitelist the application to use Tunnel, admin needs to enter the following details on the Workspace UEM Console under “VMware Tunnel” device traffic rule:
Friendly name
Package ID
Designated requirement
Path (this is used only for the pure non-bundle binaries like Curl and ssh)
This fling application supports the basic drag and drop interface which admin can launch and then drag and drop the application to be flagged to use per-app VPN (Firefox in the following case), once the applicatin is dropped, it’s attributes are listed and then admin can paste those in the UEM console as shown below:
Removed internal link in User Guide. Added a link to the correct external location
Removed duplicate User Guide document in zip file
VMware OS Optimization Tool
While there is some competition OSOT has been THE tool for optimizing images for VDI or RDSH. The changelog on this on is huge!
Changelog
December, 2019, b1130
Command LineAdded command line parameters to allow the control of the common options settings. This allows for the control of visual effect, notification, windows update, store applications, background and system clean up tasks, from the command line.
Added list of available templates to the output when run with -h (help).
Fixed issues with command line options.
The VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide has been updated to include instruction and examples on using the command line.
Visual Effects
Changed balanced setting (default) to leave Show shadows under windows enabled. This was making the white on white explorer windows blend in together which did not give the best user experience.
WebCache
Added optimization settings to disable WebCache processes from Windows 10. The default is that these optimizations are selected. This removes approximately 40 Mb from each users’ profile on creation and improves logon times.
Horizon Cloud Templates
Changed the two Horizon Cloud specific templates (Windows 10 and Windows 7) by removing the item “VMware DaaS Agent Service”. This is no longer required in Horizon Cloud Service.
December, 2019, b1120
Templates
Changed the two existing Windows 10 templates to also cover the associated Server OS and to introduce support for Windows Server 2019.
Windows 10 1507-1803 / Server 2016
Windows 10 1809-1909 / Server 2019
The old Windows Server 2016 templates have been removed.
System Clean Up
Added System Clean Up options to Common Options dialog. This removed the need for these to be typed and run manually.
Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)
Reduces the size of the WinSxS folder by uninstalling and deleting packages with components that have been replaced by other components with newer versions. Should be run after a Windows update.
Native Image Generator (NGEN).
Optimizes the .NET Framework. Should be run after an update of .NET Framework.
Compact
Compact (Windows 10/ Server 2016/2019). Enables CompactOS to compress specific Windows system files to free up space. Can take several minutes to execute.
Disk Cleanup.
Deletes temporary and unnecessary files.
Background/Wallpaper
New Common Options page for Background which allows the choice of color using a picker. This also allows the option to allow the user to be able to change their wallpaper.
Visual Effects options
Added a third option where all visual effects are turned off apart from smooth edges and use drop shadows. This is now the default selection.
Windows Store Apps
New page in Common Options that allows more control over removing Windows Store Apps while allowing the user to select common ones to keep. The Windows Store App and the StorePurchaseApp are retained by default.
Applications that will be able to be selected to be kept are:
Alarms & Clock
Camera
Calculator
Paint3D
Screen Sketch
Sound Recorder
Sticky Notes
Web Extensions
Defaults
The small taskbar option is now no longer selected by default.
In both Windows 10/ Server templates the following services are now no longer selected by default.
Application Layering Gateway Service
Block Level Backup Engine Service
BranchCache
Function Discovery Provider Host
Function Discovery Resource Publication
Internet Connection Sharing
IP Helper
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service
Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider
Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol Service
SNMP Trap
SSDP Discovery
Store Storage Service
Volume Shadow Copy Service
Windows Biometric Service
Numerous New Optimizations
Fully disable Smartscreen.
Disable Content Delivery Manager.
Disable User Activity History completely.
Disable Cloud Content.
Disable Shared Experiences.
Disable Server Manager when Windows Server OS.
Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security when Windows Server OS (not selected by default).
Disable Storage Sense service.
Disable Distributed Link Tracking Client Service.
Disable Payments and NFC/SE Manager Service.
Bug and error fixes
Fixed condition when Export Analysis Results would fail to create file.
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