Search Results for: horizon

My portable Lab

For a long time I have been wanting to have some kind of portable lab but I had a few requirements that where limiting me:

  • has kvm (for troubleshooting as things always break for me)
  • low power consumption
  • Does’t require a dedicated suitcase for transportation

Not so long ago I got a newer laptop from ControlUp to replace my (not that old) annoying heat and noise generating Dell Lattitude 5401. I never could get this thing even a bit quiet without hurting performance. While I found it annoying to work daily on I thought it might be a good match to turn this laptop in a portable lab.

The Host

One of the advantages was that the laptop did have an intel nic built in so I decided to see if I could get ESXi installed on it. After some tinkering I found out that the only thing required for this was to change the disk mode in the bios from raid to ahci. (Why dell? why? the thing has only one nvme…) and after that change ESXi installed without issues.

Now with the 16GB that my machine had I could run ESXi but it was far from enough for what I was going to need and neither was the storage at 512GB. I did have an intel nvme 1TB 660P nvme in one of my servers that I honestly wasn’t even using so that was swapped in quickly. I also had a Gigabite Brix box with 64GB that I had planned to run 24/7 but with the rising energy costs I never did that and it was mostly gathering dust as my regular homelab has more than enough cpu/memory. These where 2 Lexar Modules and after another quick swap you might have seen this picture on twitter.

Specs

Connectivity

Routing

So I had my host with build-in KVM & UPS, now I also needed connectivity. When using it at home it has it’s own dedicated vlan but on the go I needed some kind of router that can use the same vlan. I did not wat to go for a virtual router as I do not want to potentially connect an ESXi host to a for me unknown network. Again I had a few requirements:

  • USB powered (Requiring a single socket is already enough)
  • Small
  • 2 ports (wan and lan side)
  • gbit
  • wifi (so my regular laptop can connect)
  • Bonus : usb tethering for my phone in case all other connection options fail

In the end I decided to order the GL.iNet GL-AR300M16. While there might have been cheaper options there aren’t that many that have multi rj45 ports and also have openwrt as that is a very flexible OS for routers like these. The only thing I have had to change oimn the router was the ip addresses that it uses + I had to disablke dhcp as I wanted the domain controller to do that. It switches very easily between wired and tethering so it’s checkeng all the boxes that I needed.

Storage

Yes I know I said this machine is a mobile lab but I did want to have an option to connect shared storage in case I want to do maintenance etc. I did not want to use the built-in nic for this so I went looking for a usb to rj45 adapter that supports 2,5gbps as I have a Qnap TS-464 with 2,5gbps connectivity. The first step was to check the usb nic fling for what adapters will work. Now this list doesn’t include the speed but a quick look at amazon showed me that the RealTek 8156 will work and the images (not the text!) in this amazon CY USB-C to 2,5GBPS adapter showed that it should work. So another quick amazon order later I was able to prove it worked and I had connectivity to my NAS.

The Setup

The host

On Host level I didn’t need to make too much changes besides network configuration. The only things done so far was to install the USB NIC Fling, configure NTP, add storage and last but not least enable TPS! For a LAB this small any gain in memory availability is essential so TPS is really needed.

vCenter

I went with the smalles vCenter option available and for now it’s running ok with 2cpu’s and 14GB of ram.

The domain

The first VM to be deployed was my domain controller as that’s needed for just about everything I do. I went for a domain called LoaL.lab wich is an abbreviation for Lab On A Laptop. As always I name my vm’s with the environment name in it so the first VM to be deployed was LoaLDC which was quickly transformed into a domain controller, dns and dhcp server.

VM’s

The goal for this portable lab was to have something that can showcase ControlUp Integrated with vSphere, Horizon, App Volumes & DEM so I ended up with these VM’s. As you can see the connection server more or less is the bitch of this setup and has multiple functions:

NameFunctionCPUMemory
LoaLVCvCenter (Tiny)214
LoalDCDomain Controller26
LoaLCSVMware Horizon Connection Server, SQL Server, File server212
LoaLAPPApp Volumes Server26
LoalCUControlUp Monitor26
LoalRecVMware Horizon Session Recorder (needed for demo)24
LoalW10Static management VM, also available via Horizon28

Desktop Pools & RDS Farms

So besides the manual desktop pool for the mgmt VM I also have an Instant Clone Pool and and RDS Farm. For both I have an App Volume available with notepad ++ and one of the test users also has a writable volume. All iof this still works while I have made the desktops and rds machines as small as possible: 1 cpu and 1gb of ram! Don’t expect that you are able to do a lot but I can login and start notepad++ and that’s enough here. In the VDI pool there are 2 machines while there is a single RDS host deployed. Both Golden Images where optimized to dead with just about everything selected in the VMware OS Optimization Tool.

On the RDS Host the app volume is published using the per user on-demand integration that was added for Horizon 2206. See this article: Revolutionize virtual apps by publishing apps on demand on generic RDSH servers – VMware End-User Computing Blog

Notepad ++ as on-demand App Volume
The login sequence
And as seen from App Volumes

Resource Consumption

So with 64GB of ram this is clearly the bottleneck for this system but how is it looking after it has been running for a few hours? I am receiving a warning about memory consumption but the current usage is 58GB but I don’t see any swapping or ballooning so that’s nice. I also like the Shared Common metric

Power Consumption

While it might be less relevant for a mobile lab I am interested in the power consumption and this is the graph for the current period. This data is coming from a Blitzwolf smart plug connected to my Homey. So the peak at boot time comes close to 80W but seems to stabalize after that.

The ControlUp setup

As a ControlUp employee one of this lab’s usecases was to display what we can do with ControlUp. This is a brand new CU environment that is mainly using Real-Time DX but for fun I have also deployed the Edge DX Agent to a few servers.

Script to send message to all Global Sessions in a Cloud Pod Architecture

So last year I shared a script to send messages to local sessions in a pod regardless of Cloud Pod Architecture being used or not. With Horizon 8 2111 one of the new features is that you can also send messages to Global Sessions in other pods. I have created a script that messages to all those users. I used the same script as base but had to update Get-HorizonRestData to reflect the fact that sometimes some things need to be added to the url like ?pod_id=$podid in this case:

function Get-HorizonRestData(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Array of ordered hashtables' )]
        [array] $filters,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Type of filter Options: And, Or' )]
        [ValidateSet('And','Or')]
        [string] $Filtertype,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Page size, default = 500' )]
        [int] $pagesize = 500,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [string] $RestMethod,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='$True for rest methods that contain pagination and filtering, default = False' )]
        [switch] $filteringandpagination,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="id",
        HelpMessage='To be used with single id based queries like /monitor/v1/connection-servers/{id}' )]
        [string] $id,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        HelpMessage='Extra additions to the query url that comes before the paging/filtering parts like brokering_pod_id=806ca in /rest/inventory/v1/global-sessions?brokering_pod_id=806ca&page=2&size=100' )]
        [string] $urldetails
    )
    
    if($filteringandpagination){
        if ($filters){
            $filterhashtable = [ordered]@{}
            $filterhashtable.add('type',$filtertype)
            $filterhashtable.filters = @()
            foreach($filter in $filters){
                $filterhashtable.filters+=$filter
            }
            $filterflat=$filterhashtable | convertto-json -Compress
            if($urldetails){
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails+"&filter="+$filterflat+"&page="
            }
            else{
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?filter="+$filterflat+"&page="
            }
        }
        else{
            if($urldetails){
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails+"&page="
            }
            else{
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?page="
            }
        }
        $results = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
        $page = 1
        $uri = $urlstart+$page+"&size=$pagesize"
        write-host $uri
        $response = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
        $response.foreach({$results.add($_)}) | out-null
        if ($responseheader.HAS_MORE_RECORDS -contains "TRUE") {
            do {
                $page++
                $uri = $urlstart+$page+"&size=$pagesize"
                $response = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
                $response.foreach({$results.add($_)}) | out-null
            } until ($responseheader.HAS_MORE_RECORDS -notcontains "TRUE")
        }
    }
    elseif($id){
        $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"/"+$id
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
    }
    else{
        if($urldetails){
            $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails
        }
        else{
            $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod
        }
        
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
    }

    return $results
}

I also had to change the get-horizonsessions to get-horizonglobalsessions

function get-horizonglobalsessions(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Id of the Local pod to query' )]
        [string] $podid
    )
    try{
        $results=Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/inventory/v1/global-sessions" -accessToken $accessToken -urldetails "pod_id=$podid"
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

And a new function get-pods

function Get-Pods(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken
    )

    try{
        $results=Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/federation/v1/pods" -accessToken $accessToken
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

while function send-horizongmessage was upgraded to send-horizonglobalmessage

function send-horizonglobalmessage(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [array] $Session_Ids,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $Message,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [validateset("ERROR","WARNING","INFO", IgnoreCase = $false)]
        [string] $Message_Type,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Id of the Local pod to query' )]
        [string] $podid
    )

    $jsonhashtable = [ordered]@{}
    $jsonhashtable.global_session_action_specs=@()
    $sessiondetailshashtable = [ordered]@{}
    $sessiondetailshashtable.ids=$Session_Ids
    $sessiondetailshashtable.pod_id=$podid
    $jsonhashtable.global_session_action_specs+=$sessiondetailshashtable
    $jsonhashtable.message = $message
    $jsonhashtable.message_type = $Message_Type
    $json = $jsonhashtable | convertto-json -depth 100

    try{
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -uri "$ServerURL/rest/inventory/v1/global-sessions/action/send-message" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -body $json
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

and some other of the runtime pieces also changed

$pods=get-pods -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url

foreach($pod in $pods){
    $podid=$pod.id
    $sessions = get-horizonglobalsessions -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url -podid $podid
    send-horizonglobalmessage -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url -Message_Type $Message_Type -message $message -Session_Ids ($sessions).id -podid $podid
}

And this is how you run it with the output in the vdi desktops

D:\GIT\Various_Scripts\Horizon_send_Global_messages.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod1cbr1.loft.lab -message "test vExpert test" -Message_Type ERROR

This is the complete script but it can also be found on Github

<#
    .SYNOPSIS
    Send a message to all global sessions

    .DESCRIPTION
    This script uses the Horizon rest api's to all global sessions in a horizon cloud pod 

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_send_Global_messages.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod2cbr1.loft.lab -message "test message" -message_type "ERROR"

    .PARAMETER Credential
    Mandatory: No
    Type: PSCredential
    Object with credentials for the connection server with domain\username and password

    .PARAMETER ConnectionServerFQDN
    Mandatory: Yes
    Default: String
    FQDN of the connection server to connect to

    .PARAMETER message
    Mandatory: Yes
    Message to send to the users

    .PARAMETER message_type
    Mandatory: Yes
    Message type: INFO, ERROR or WARNING

    .NOTES
    Created by: Wouter Kursten
    First version: 17-03-2022

    .COMPONENT
    Powershell Core

#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    HelpMessage='Credential object as domain\username with password' )]
    [PSCredential] $Credential,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,  HelpMessage='FQDN of the connectionserver' )]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string] $ConnectionServerFQDN,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
    HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
    [string] $Message,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
    HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
    [validateset("ERROR","WARNING","INFO", IgnoreCase = $false)]
    [string] $Message_Type
)

function Get-HRHeader(){
    param($accessToken)
    return @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $($accessToken.access_token)
        'Content-Type' = "application/json"
    }
}
function Open-HRConnection(){
    param(
        [string] $username,
        [string] $password,
        [string] $domain,
        [string] $url
    )

    $Credentials = New-Object psobject -Property @{
        username = $username
        password = $password
        domain = $domain
    }

    return invoke-restmethod -Method Post -uri "$url/rest/login" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($Credentials | ConvertTo-Json)
}

function Close-HRConnection(){
    param(
        $accessToken,
        $url
    )
    return Invoke-RestMethod -Method post -uri "$url/rest/logout" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($accessToken | ConvertTo-Json)
}

function Get-HorizonRestData(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Array of ordered hashtables' )]
        [array] $filters,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Type of filter Options: And, Or' )]
        [ValidateSet('And','Or')]
        [string] $Filtertype,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Page size, default = 500' )]
        [int] $pagesize = 500,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [string] $RestMethod,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='$True for rest methods that contain pagination and filtering, default = False' )]
        [switch] $filteringandpagination,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="id",
        HelpMessage='To be used with single id based queries like /monitor/v1/connection-servers/{id}' )]
        [string] $id,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        HelpMessage='Extra additions to the query url that comes before the paging/filtering parts like brokering_pod_id=806ca in /rest/inventory/v1/global-sessions?brokering_pod_id=806ca&page=2&size=100' )]
        [string] $urldetails
    )
    
    if($filteringandpagination){
        if ($filters){
            $filterhashtable = [ordered]@{}
            $filterhashtable.add('type',$filtertype)
            $filterhashtable.filters = @()
            foreach($filter in $filters){
                $filterhashtable.filters+=$filter
            }
            $filterflat=$filterhashtable | convertto-json -Compress
            if($urldetails){
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails+"&filter="+$filterflat+"&page="
            }
            else{
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?filter="+$filterflat+"&page="
            }
        }
        else{
            if($urldetails){
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails+"&page="
            }
            else{
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?page="
            }
        }
        $results = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
        $page = 1
        $uri = $urlstart+$page+"&size=$pagesize"
        write-host $uri
        $response = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
        $response.foreach({$results.add($_)}) | out-null
        if ($responseheader.HAS_MORE_RECORDS -contains "TRUE") {
            do {
                $page++
                $uri = $urlstart+$page+"&size=$pagesize"
                $response = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
                $response.foreach({$results.add($_)}) | out-null
            } until ($responseheader.HAS_MORE_RECORDS -notcontains "TRUE")
        }
    }
    elseif($id){
        $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"/"+$id
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
    }
    else{
        if($urldetails){
            $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails
        }
        else{
            $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod
        }
        
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
    }

    return $results
}

function get-horizonglobalsessions(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Id of the Local pod to query' )]
        [string] $podid
    )
    try{
        $results=Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/inventory/v1/global-sessions" -accessToken $accessToken -urldetails "pod_id=$podid"
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

function Get-Pods(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken
    )

    try{
        $results=Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/federation/v1/pods" -accessToken $accessToken
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

function send-horizonglobalmessage(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [array] $Session_Ids,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $Message,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [validateset("ERROR","WARNING","INFO", IgnoreCase = $false)]
        [string] $Message_Type,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Id of the Local pod to query' )]
        [string] $podid
    )

    $jsonhashtable = [ordered]@{}
    $jsonhashtable.global_session_action_specs=@()
    $sessiondetailshashtable = [ordered]@{}
    $sessiondetailshashtable.ids=$Session_Ids
    $sessiondetailshashtable.pod_id=$podid
    $jsonhashtable.global_session_action_specs+=$sessiondetailshashtable
    $jsonhashtable.message = $message
    $jsonhashtable.message_type = $Message_Type
    $json = $jsonhashtable | convertto-json -depth 100

    try{
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -uri "$ServerURL/rest/inventory/v1/global-sessions/action/send-message" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -body $json
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

if($Credential){
    $creds = $credential
}
else{
    $creds = get-credential
}

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'

$username=($creds.username).split("\")[1]
$domain=($creds.username).split("\")[0]
$password=$creds.password

$url = "https://$ConnectionServerFQDN"

$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password) 
$UnsecurePassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)

$accessToken = Open-HRConnection -username $username -password $UnsecurePassword -domain $Domain -url $url

$pods=get-pods -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url

foreach($pod in $pods){
    $podid=$pod.id
    $sessions = get-horizonglobalsessions -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url -podid $podid
    send-horizonglobalmessage -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url -Message_Type $Message_Type -message $message -Session_Ids ($sessions).id -podid $podid
}

 

Powershell script to push a new RDS Farm image

For those of you who haven’t seen my demo last week at the VMUG EUC day I have created a new script that will push a new Golden Image to a RDS farm. The same API call can also be used to schedule a recurring maintenance but that will have to wait for a future post.

What you need to run it are the following parameters:

-Credentials: credentials object from get-credential

-ConnectionServerURL: Full url to the connection server https://pod1cbr01.loft.lab for example

-vCenterURL : Full url to the vCenter Server: https://pod1vcr1.loft.lab

-DataCenterName : name of the Datacenter in vCenter

-BaseVMName : VM name of the new golden image

-BaseSnapShotName : name of the snapshot to be used

-FarmName : name of the RDS farm to push the image to

-StoponError : Boolean $True or $False to stop on error or not. Defaults to $true

-logoff_policy : String in capitals to wait for the users to logoff (WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF) or to forcefully log them off (FORCE_LOGOFF). Defaults to WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF

-Scheduledtime : datetime object for the time to schedule the image push. If not provided it will push the image immediately.

In my Lab I have this RDS Farm:

The last Image push actually failed

And It’s using this Golden Image with the Created by Packer Snapshot

With the following command I will push the new image:

D:\git\Various_Scripts\Horizon_Rest_Push_Image_RDS.ps1 -Credentials $creds -vCenterURL https://pod1vcr1.loft.lab -ConnectionServerURL https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab -DataCenterName Datacenter_Loft -BaseVMName "srv2019-gi-2021-11-12-14-16" -BaseSnapShotName "VM Snapshot 2%2f24%2f2022, 7:02:07 PM" -Scheduledtime ((get-date).adddays(1)) -logoff_policy WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF -StoponError $true -farmname  "Pod01-Farm01"

And you see that it’s pushing the new image for tomorrow ( I am writing this on Thursday)

The script itself looks like this and can be found on my Github:

<#
    .SYNOPSIS
    Pushes a new Golden Image to a Desktop Pool

    .DESCRIPTION
    This script uses the Horizon rest api's to push a new golden image to a VMware Horizon Desktop Pool

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_Rest_Push_Image.ps1 -ConnectionServerURL https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab -Credentials $creds -vCenterURL "https://pod1vcr1.loft.lab" -DataCenterName "Datacenter_Loft" -baseVMName "W21h1-2021-09-08-15-48" -BaseSnapShotName "Demo Snapshot" -DesktopPoolName "Pod01-Pool02"

    .PARAMETER Credential
    Mandatory: No
    Type: PSCredential
    Object with credentials for the connection server with domain\username and password. If not supplied the script will ask for user and password.

    .PARAMETER ConnectionServerURL
    Mandatory: Yes
    Default: String
    URL of the connection server to connect to

    .PARAMETER vCenterURL
    Mandatory: Yes
    Username of the user to look for

    .PARAMETER DataCenterName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER BaseVMName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER BaseSnapShotName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER FarmName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER StoponError
    Mandatory: No
    Boolean to stop on error or not

    .PARAMETER logoff_policy
    Mandatory: No
    String FORCE_LOGOFF or WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF to set the logoff policy.

    .PARAMETER Scheduledtime
    Mandatory: No
    Time to schedule the image push in [DateTime] format.

    .NOTES
    Minimum required version: VMware Horizon 8 2012
    Created by: Wouter Kursten
    First version: 13-02-2022

    .COMPONENT
    Powershell Core
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    HelpMessage='Credential object as domain\username with password' )]
    [PSCredential] $Credentials,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,  HelpMessage='FQDN of the connectionserver' )]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string] $ConnectionServerURL,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "URL of the vCenter to look in i.e. https://vcenter.domain.lab")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$vCenterURL,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Datacenter to look in.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$DataCenterName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Golden Image VM.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$BaseVMName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Snapshot to use for the Golden Image.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$BaseSnapShotName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the RDS Farm.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$FarmName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "True or false for stop on error.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [bool]$StoponError = $true,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "Use WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF or FORCE_LOGOFF.")]
    [ValidateSet('WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF','FORCE_LOGOFF', IgnoreCase = $false)]
    [string]$logoff_policy = "WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF",

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "DateTime object for the moment of scheduling the image push.Defaults to immediately")]
    [datetime]$Scheduledtime
)
if($Credentials){
    $username=($credentials.username).split("\")[1]
    $domain=($credentials.username).split("\")[0]
    $password=$credentials.password
}
else{
    $credentials = Get-Credential
    $username=($credentials.username).split("\")[1]
    $domain=($credentials.username).split("\")[0]
    $password=$credentials.password
}

$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password) 
$UnsecurePassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)

function Get-HRHeader(){
    param($accessToken)
    return @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $($accessToken.access_token)
        'Content-Type' = "application/json"
    }
}
function Open-HRConnection(){
    param(
        [string] $username,
        [string] $password,
        [string] $domain,
        [string] $url
    )

    $Credentials = New-Object psobject -Property @{
        username = $username
        password = $password
        domain = $domain
    }

    return invoke-restmethod -Method Post -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/login" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($Credentials | ConvertTo-Json)
}
function Close-HRConnection(){
    param(
        $accessToken,
        $ConnectionServerURL
    )
    return Invoke-RestMethod -Method post -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/logout" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($accessToken | ConvertTo-Json)
}

try{
    $accessToken = Open-HRConnection -username $username -password $UnsecurePassword -domain $Domain -url $ConnectionServerURL
}
catch{
    throw "Error Connecting: $_"
}

$vCenters = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/monitor/v2/virtual-centers" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$vcenterid = ($vCenters | where-object {$_.name -like "*$vCenterURL*"}).id
$datacenters = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/external/v1/datacenters?vcenter_id=$vcenterid" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$datacenterid = ($datacenters | where-object {$_.name -eq $DataCenterName}).id
$basevms = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/external/v1/base-vms?datacenter_id=$datacenterid&filter_incompatible_vms=false&vcenter_id=$vcenterid" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$basevmid = ($basevms | where-object {$_.name -eq $baseVMName}).id
$basesnapshots = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/external/v1/base-snapshots?base_vm_id=$basevmid&vcenter_id=$vcenterid" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$basesnapshotid = ($basesnapshots | where-object {$_.name -eq $BaseSnapShotName}).id
$farms = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/inventory/v2/farms" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$farmid = ($farms | where-object {$_.name -eq $FarmName}).id
$startdate = (get-date -UFormat %s)
$datahashtable = [ordered]@{}
$datahashtable.add('logoff_policy',$logoff_policy)
$datahashtable.add('maintenance_mode',"IMMEDIATE")
if($Scheduledtime){
    $starttime = get-date $Scheduledtime
    $epoch = ([DateTimeOffset]$starttime).ToUnixTimeMilliseconds()
    $datahashtable.add('next_scheduled_time',$epoch)
}
$datahashtable.add('parent_vm_id',$basevmid)
$datahashtable.add('snapshot_id',$basesnapshotid)
$datahashtable.add('stop_on_first_error',$StoponError)
$json = $datahashtable | convertto-json
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/inventory/v1/farms/$farmid/action/schedule-maintenance" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -body $json

 

My recipe for a successful vExpert application

This was also posted on the vExpert blog here.

One of the questions that the vExpert pro’s get is what people need to add to their vExpert application for it to be successful. While the things we do during the year are different for everyone, the first thing you need to do is to write everything down as extensively as possible. I will use my own current application as an example of how you can write everything down. There is no single truth to creating your application so you should see it as inspiration for creating your own.

One remark before you start editing or creating your application: make sure to save as often as possible. The vExpert portal needs to have a timeout and you wouldn’t be the first person where it times out and the progress hasn’t been saved and thus lost. I prefer to keep track of everything in a word document.

Preparation:

  • During the year keep track of your activities, this way you won’t forget anything.

(Required) Ingredients for this recipe:

  • Qualification path
  • Write down activities
  • Add url’s to activities if available
  • Be as extensive as possible
  • Work with a vExpert PRO

Step 1, Qualification path:

You need to select a qualification path. I could try as a partner as I work for ControlUp but I always use evangelist as all of my work in the community is done on my own credentials.VCDX are automatically vExperts but these are always checked against the VCDX directory so there’s no way to cheat there.

Step 2, Checkboxes:

If you created content make sure to select all the relevant checkboxes

Step 3 Other Media:

Give examples of the content you have created. There is no need to list every blog post but I always add links to the ones that I think are the most useful for the community. While I don’t consider views count relevant I do add a total amount of posts and views.

Step 3 Events and speaking:

Been an (online) event speaker or Podcast guest? You can list those here, if possible add a link for proof of these. For vmug events I know a lot of the old links give a 404 these days so make sure they work at the moment of submitting. If you can’t get a direct link to the event maybe you can find tweets about it that you were presenting so add those (I would advise to mention why you did that though). If you are an organizer of something like I do with the EMEA Breakfast events those can also be listed here. I won’t hold it against you when voting if you don’t have an attendance count but if you have it it’s even better.

<I would seriously consider hitting that save button here>

Step 4 Communities, Tools and Resources:

Tools & resources: Here is where you can link that nifty github repo where you share all your scripts. I for example list my Personal github profile but also the links to the vCheck for Horizon and the python module for Horizon as those are the main projects I worked on.

Communities: List every and any related community that you are active on, this includes Discord channels, Slack channels, forums etc even if they are not in English. Make sure to add a link to your profile or post history so the people who are voting can easily find your activity. If there’s no link available you can at least post your username.

Step 5, VMware Programs:

This is where you can list all your vExpert titles but also things like VMware Champions, VMware{Code} CodeCoach, beta programs, work as certification SME, Tanzu heroes, VMware Influencers and what not.

<Hit that save button again>

Step 6 Other Activities:

Here’s where you can list the things that aren’t publicly available so it can be very relevant for Customers & partners. I list the work that I internally do at ControlUp even if it is related to my work.

Step 7, References:

If you have a VMware employee that you worked a lot with and that can vouch for you make sure to check that box and list their email address. The same applies for the vExpert PRO that you worked with.

You don’t need to be a community crazy person like I am to become a vExpert but as said the most successful recipe for a successful application is to write everything down as extensively as possible. Do you have something that you don’t know if it helps? Just add it, it might be the thing that completes the picture for the PRO’s when we start voting.

If you want to reach out to a vExpert pro you can find the directory here and there’s also Facebook and Linkedin Groups.

Script to cleanup desktops running on old snapshot

So last year Guy Leech asked if if I had a script to identify machines running on an old snapshot. I Created a script for that here. This week Madan Kumar asked for a script that finds these same VDI desktops but that also cleans them out if needed. For this I have created the Horizon_cleanup_old_images.ps1 script (yes I suck at making up names).

If you run a get-help for the script you’ll see this:

By default the script only requires a Connectionserverfqdn and poolname as it works on a per pool level. It will try to give the users a gracefully logoff and has options to force the logoff ( in case their sessions is locked) or to delete the machine. And if you just want to have a preview there’s an option for that as well.

Optional arguments are:

-credential: this can be created with get-credential or can be retrieved from a stored credentials xml file, just make sure that it looks like domain\username and password

-deletedesktops: if used it will forcefully try to logoff the users but always deletes the desktop

-forcedlogoff: A normal logoff doesn’t work when the sessions is locked so you might need to force it

-preview: no actions are taken, just the information will be displayed to screen.

Let’s use the script

d:\git\scripts\Horizon_cleanup_old_image.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod2cbr1.loft.lab -poolname "Pod02-Pool02" -preview

Yes I use write-host but it’s all 1 liners so shouldn’t be too slow and I like colors but as you see with the preview mode it shows what would happen. One of these sessions is locked so let’s see what happens when I log them off.

yes an error but I think it’s clear why, the graceful logoff worked for 2 users but not the third one, I will add the forced option now.

That looks good and when I look at the desktop pool everything is fine there as well.

And that’s being confirmed by the script

Now I will use the delete option for my other desktop pool.

First again with the preview option

and without

and seen from the Horizon Admin

As linked above the script can be found on github but also below this line.

<#
    .SYNOPSIS
    Cleans up desktops running on an image that's not the default for a desktop pool

    .DESCRIPTION
    This script uses the Horizon soap api's to pull data about machines inside a desktop pool that are running on a snapshot or base vm that's not currently configiured on the desktop pool. By default it logs off the users but there are options to forcefully logoff the user or delete the machines.

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_cleanup_old_image.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod2cbr1.loft.lab -poolname "Pod02 Pool02" -delete -preview

    .PARAMETER Credential
    Mandatory: Yes
    Type: PSCredential
    Object with credentials for the connection server with domain\username and password

    .PARAMETER ConnectionServerFQDN
    Mandatory: No
    Default: String
    FQDN of the connection server to connect to

    .PARAMETER Poolname
    Mandatory: Yes
    Type: string
    Display name of the Desktop Pool to check

    .PARAMETER Deletedesktops
    Mandatory: No
    Enables the deleteion of the desktops, this includes an attempt to forcefully logoff the users.

    .PARAMETER Forcedlogoff
    Mandatory: No
    Enables the forcefully logging off of the users.

    .PARAMETER Preview
    Mandatory: No
    Makes the script run in preview mode and not undertake any actions.

    .NOTES
    Created by: Wouter Kursten
    First version: 27-06-2021

    .COMPONENT
    VMWare PowerCLI

#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    HelpMessage='Credential object as domain\username with password' )]
    [PSCredential] $Credential,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,  HelpMessage='FQDN of the connectionserver' )]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string] $ConnectionServerFQDN,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Display Name of the desktop pool to logoff the users.")]
    [string]$poolname = $false,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, 
    HelpMessage='Deletes the desktops instead of forcing the logoff' )]
    [switch] $deletedesktops,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, 
    HelpMessage='Gives a preview only, no action will be undertaken.' )]
    [switch] $preview,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, 
    HelpMessage='Forcefully logs off the users in case the desktop is locked or disconnected.' )]
    [switch] $forcedlogoff
)

if($Credential){
    $creds = $credential
}
else{
    $creds = get-credential
}

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'

# Preview info
if($preview){
    write-host "Running in preview mode no actions will be taken" -foregroundcolor Magenta
 }

 # Loading powercli modules
 Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.HorizonView
 Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.Core

$hvserver1=connect-hvserver $ConnectionServerFQDN -credential $creds
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

# --- Get Services for interacting with the Horizon API Service ---
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

# --- Get Desktop pool
$poolqueryservice=new-object vmware.hv.queryserviceservice
$pooldefn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$pooldefn.queryentitytype='DesktopSummaryView'
$pooldefn.Filter= New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'MemberName'='desktopSummaryData.displayName'; 'value'=$poolname}
try{
    $poolqueryResults = $poolqueryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $pooldefn) 
    $poolqueryservice.QueryService_DeleteAll($services1)
    $results = $poolqueryResults.results
}
catch{
    write-error "There was an error retreiving details for $poolname"
}

# we need more details of the pool though and check if we even got one
if($results.count -eq 1){
    $pool = $Services1.Desktop.Desktop_Get($results.id)
}
else{
    write-host "No pool found with name $poolname" -foregroundcolor Red
    break
}

# Search for machine details
$queryservice=new-object vmware.hv.queryserviceservice
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryentitytype='MachineDetailsView'
$defn.filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -Property @{ 'memberName' = 'desktopData.id'; 'value' = $pool.id }
[array]$queryResults = $queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $defn)
$services1.QueryService.QueryService_DeleteAll()
# Process the results
if ($queryResults.results.count -ge 1){
    [array]$poolmachines=$queryResults.results
    [array]$wrongsnaps=$poolmachines | where-object {$_.managedmachinedetailsdata.baseimagesnapshotpath -notlike  $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath -OR $_.managedmachinedetailsdata.baseimagepath -notlike $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.parentvmpath}
    # If there are desktops on a wrong snapsot we need to do something with that info
    if($wrongsnaps.count -ge 1){
        if($deletedesktops){
            write-host "Removing:" $wrongsnaps.data.name -foregroundcolor yellow
            $deletespec = new-object vmware.hv.machinedeletespec
            $deletespec.DeleteFromDisk = $true
            $deletespec.ForceLogoffSession = $true
            if(!$preview){
                $Services1.Machine.Machine_DeleteMachines($wrongsnaps.id, $deletespec)
            }
        }
        else{
            write-host "Logging users off from:" $wrongsnaps.data.name -foregroundcolor yellow
            [array]$sessiondata = $wrongsnaps.sessiondata
            write-host "Users being logged off are:" $sessiondata.username -foregroundcolor yellow
            if(!$preview){
                if($forcedlogoff){
                    write-host "Forcefully logging off users" -foregroundcolor yellow
                    $services1.session.Session_LogoffSessionsForced($sessiondata.id)
                }
                else{
                    write-host "Gracefully logging off users" -foregroundcolor yellow
                    $services1.session.Session_LogoffSessions($sessiondata.id)
                }
            }
        }
    }
    else{
        write-host "No machines found on a wrong snapshot" -foregroundcolor Green
    }
}
else{
    write-host "No machines found in $poolname" -foregroundcolor red
}

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for April 2021 – Easy deploy for AVI Loadbalancers & NSX Mobile!

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!

New Releases

NSX Mobile

vRealize Orchestrator Parser

Easy Deploy for NSX Advanced Load Balancing

Updates

Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

Community Networking Driver for ESXi

ESXi Arm Edition

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Horizon Session Recording

vSphere Mobile Client

Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool

VMware OS Optimization Tool

SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Event Broker Appliance

New Releases

[sta_anchor id=”nsxmob” /]

NSX Mobile

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.)
  • Push notifications – COMING SOON
  • Quick actions (enable/disable options wherever possible, actions on failures/alarms) – COMING SOON

[sta_anchor id=”vrop” /]

vRealize Orchestrator Parser

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.

[sta_anchor id=”ednxcalb” /]

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

For more information, read this blog post: New Fling: Easy Deploy for NSX Load Balancing a.k.a EasyAvi

Changelog

1.2.5

  • New Avi release supported – 20.1.5

1.2.4

  • 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

[sta_anchor id=”vmco” /]

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.

[sta_anchor id=”cndfesxi” /]

Community Networking Driver for ESXi

The Community Networking Driver for ESXi fling provides the user the ability to use usually not supported by ESXi.

Changelog

April 08, 2021 – v1.1

Net-Community-Driver_1.1.0.0-1vmw.700.1.0.15843807_17858744.zip
md5: 587d7d408184c90f6baf4204bb309171

  • Resolve issue when using Intel vPro which can cause ESXi PSOD

[sta_anchor id=”esxiae” /]

ESXi Arm Edition

ESXi on arm based system, nuf said!

Changelog

April 02, 2021 – v1.3

Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.

  • Improved hardware compatibility (various bug fixes/enhancements)
  • Add support for Experimental Ampere Altra (single socket systems only) (please see Requirements for more details)
  • ACPI support for virtual machines
  • NVMe and PVSCSI boot support in vEFI
  • Workaround for ISO boot on some Arm servers
  • Address VMM crash with newer guest OSes and Neoverse N1-based systems
  • Improved guest interrupt controller virtualization
  • Improved (skeletal) PMU virtualization
  • Improved big endian VM support

Build 17839012
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-17839012.aarch64.iso

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client

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

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

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

Changelog

Version 1.0.0.24

  • Migrate App Entitlements (groups only)
  • New Logo and UI branding
  • Bug fixes

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Optimize you must, use you should OSOT!

Changelog

April 5, b2003

  • 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.

Changelog

https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2021/04/vmware-event-broker-appliance-veba-v0-6-is-now-available.html

The VMware Labs flings monthly for March 2021 – New Website

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.

New Releases

Configuration Wizard for Nuance PowerMic

vRealize Automation Code Stream CLI

Hillview: Distributed Data Visualization

SDDC Import/Export for VMware Cloud on AWS

Updates

Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer

Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker

Vmss2core

vRealize Build Tools

Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools

Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

App Volumes Packaging Utility

DoD Security Technical Implementation Guide(STIG) ESXi VIB

VMware OS Optimization Tool

New Releases

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Configuration Wizard for Nuance PowerMic

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

Detailed instructions can be found on the Instructions tab, in the README.md included in the Zip file or on Patrick’s blog (http://www.patrickkremer.com/sddc-import-export/).

Details about the use cases and origins of the project can be found on Nico’s blog (https://nicovibert.com/2021/02/08/fling-sddc-import-export-for-vmware-cloud-on-aws/).

Updates

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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.

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
  • [MVN] Fix vROPS import fails on certain assets

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Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools

The Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools mainly acts as a wrapper around the lmvutil for Horizon Cloud Pod Archtitecture.

Changelog

Version 1.1

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.
  • Draft ESXi content can be found here: https://github.com/vmware/dod-compliance-and-automation/tree/master/vsphere/7.0/docs
  • 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 Update

On Non-Enterprise editions of Windows 10, KB4023057 installs a new application called Microsoft Update Health Tools: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb4023057-update-for-windows-10-update-service-components-fccad0ca-dc10-2e46-9ed1-7e392450fb3a. Added logic to ensure that the Windows Update Medic Service is disabled including after re-enabling and disabling Windows Updates using the Update tab.

Templates

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.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for February 2021 – Reach alert!

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!

New Releases

Community NVMe Driver for ESXi

VMware Cloud Foundation Powernova

Workspace ONE Access Migration Tool

Sample Data Platform Deployment on Virtualized Cloud Infrastructure

Community Networking Driver for ESXi

Code Stream Concourse Integrator

Updates

ESXi Compatibility Checker

VMware Machine Learning Platform

Virtualized High Performance Computing Toolkit

Horizon Peripherals Intelligence

Workspace ONE App Analyzer for macOS

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Horizon Helpdesk Utility

HCIBench

Horizon Reach

Workspace ONE Discovery

App Volumes Migration Utility

New Releases

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Community NVMe Driver for ESXi

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.

Using vMLP allows to:

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.

Changelog

Version 1.2 

  • Added support for Big Sur
  • Updated icon

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VMware OS Optimization Tool

Image optimize you must with osot!

Changelog

  • nope 🙁

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
  • md5sum: 622625cc7a551bd7bf07ff4f19a57a17 HCIBench_2.5.3.ova

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Horizon Reach

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. ).

The VMware Labs flings monthly for January 2021 – it’s OSOT time again!

January was a good month for me as I started the Python 100DaysOfCode challenge but the VMware engineers also did plenty of work. Seven flingss received an update and it looks like we have a single new release.

New Release

Desktop Container Tools

Updates

Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Power vRA Cloud

DRS Dump Insight

vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Workspace ONE Discovery

Python Client for VMC on AWS

New Releases

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Desktop Container Tools

Desktop Container Tools is a free tool that allows you to do basic management of vctl (a CLI tool shipped with VMware Fusion) container engine on macOS for running containers and Kubernetes clusters.

Features

  • Easy&Access

Handy management of vctl container engine through the user interface and Touch Bar. Configure your virtual machines for containers and Kubernetes cluster without CLI.

  • Multi-language Support

Currently support English & Simplified Chinese. More languages are underway.

  • Light & Free

It’s light and it’s free.

Updated Flings

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Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

The Demo Appliance for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is a sample appliance to help customers to learn and deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.

Changelog

Jan 05, 2021 – v1.2.1

  • Support for latest TKG 1.2.1 release
  • Support for TKG Workload Cluster upgrade workflow from K8s 1.18.10 to 1.19.3
  • Updated embedded Harbor to use self-sign TLS certificate (new feature of TKG 1.2.1)
  • Updated to latest version of Harbor (2.1.2)

Known Issue:

DNS resolution issue when installing TKG Extensions. Workaround is to add the following snippet to kapp-controller.yaml

volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /etc/hosts
name: etc
subPath: hosts
volumes:
- name: etc
hostPath:
path: /etc

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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. This tool provides a comprehensive command line environment for managing your VMware vRealize Automation Cloud environment.

Changelog

Version 1.3

  • 4 x New Cmdlets for VMC
  • 5 x New Cmdlets for AWS
  • Powershell 7 on Windows Support
  • Bugfixes

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DRS Dump Insight

DRS Dump Insight is a portal that vSPhere administrators can use to analyze why DRS performed actions.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Added support for 7.0 and 7.0U1 dumps.
  • Toggle added for selective analysis of all full dumps.
  • Bug fixes and backend improvements

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vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

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 1.3 Update

  • Show Tanzu products in the report.
  • Bug fixes.

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VMware OS Optimization Tool

Building a new golden image? Use the OS Optimizer tool to let it perform better but please test test test if all your apps are working.

Changelog

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.

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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

January 14, 2021 – Version 1.1

  • Updated application icon (ICO)
  • Monitoring the VMware Horizon Client, VMware Digital Experience Telemetry and VMware Hub Health services

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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.

Changelog

Version 1.2

  • Added a Dockerfile to build a Docker image to run PyVMC
  • Added Egress counters visibility
  • Added routing table visibility
  • Added L2VPN support
  • Added Nested Group support