Search Results for: horizon

The VMware Labs flings monthly for April 2020

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Another month down in the Corona quarantaine. That doesn’t mean that the engineers didn’t work on flings. More the opposite since I can’t remember having to go to page 2 on the site to see all of the new releases and updates. I see four new releases and nine updated flings.

The new ones: Tech For Good – Virtual Reality Experience, vSphere Replication Capacity Planning, Python Client for VMC on AWS, Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools.

The updated flings: vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper, App Finder for Tunnel, USB Network Native Driver for ESXi, vSphere Software Asset Management Tool, VMware OS Optimization Tool, Power vRA Cloud, VMware Appliance for Folding@Home, Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer, vSAN Performance Monitor.

New flings

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Tech For Good – Virtual Reality Experience

The Tech For Good – Virtual Reality Experience fling is a VR huide through 4 key pieces of tech.

Download this Virtual Reality Application for the Oculus Quest and Oculus Go, you will watch this VR experience hosted by VMware, Bask Iyer, CIO and Chief Digital Transformation officer, as he walks us through 4 key technologies Cloud, Mobile, IoT and AI and illustrates new opportunities for technology to deliver a positive impact on society.

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vSphere Replication Capacity Planning

The vSphere Replication Capacity Planning Fling reveals actual VM traffic consumption and delta size. This helps you perform a capacity planning or estimation of vSphere Replication network bandwidth utilization prior to enabling vSphere Replication for VMs.

This Fling exposes graphics regarding LWD (lightweight delta) network traffic and delta size metrics, represented in different time frames – hourly, daily, weekly and monthly.

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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.
Note this is not to interact with your VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter but to run tasks such as creating and deleting networks, setting up security groups and services and building network security rules on the Management and Compute Gateways.

Detailed instructions can be downloaded in the instructions tab or can be also found on the following blog post:
https://nicovibert.com/2020/02/25/pyvmc-python-vmware-cloud-aws/

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Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools

The Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture Tools fling is a set of tools that helps with managing a Horizon cloud pod.

Horizon cloud pod architecture (CPA) has lmvutil commands to manage the global database entitlements data using command line interface. A lmvtools command line wrapper is now available to enhance the command execution of lmvutil commands to input the password only once and leave the command execution to continue. It has capability to export all the site, site-pod mapping, global entitlements, user global assignments, local pool assignments, home site overrides, backup global entitlements in lmvutil commands format to file. The command builder has in-built mechanism to comment the stale user global assignments and stale home site assignments.

Update flings

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vRealize Operations REST Notifications Helper

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

Changelog

Version 1.4.0

  • Added vRealize Operations Cloud Support
  • Added custom tags support
  • Bugfixes and improvements

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App Finder for Tunnel

This application is a utility which can be used for conveniently flagging the applications to use WorkspaceONE Tunnel on macOS.

Changelog

Unknown

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USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

Specially made for homelabs the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi makes it possible to use usb network cards with ESXi.

Changelog

April 6, 2020 – v1.5

  • Added support for ESXi 7.0

Note: This is ONLY for ESXi 7.0, for ESXi 6.5/6.7, please ensure you are using the correct version of driver.

ESXi700-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-34491022-component-15873236.zip

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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 1.1

  • Added vSphere 7.0 support; Added the Host Inventory Table in the generated software asset management report.

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VMware OS Optimization Tool

Osot is the tool to optimize your Horizon golden images.

Changelog

April,2020,b1151

  • Fixed several issues in CLI.

April, 2020, b1150
.docx file of recent change log located in the hyperlink above.

Includes various bug fixes and many new optimizations that have a huge beneficial effect.

Support for Windows 10 version 2004 has been added.

Optimizations

Lots of Windows 10 and Windows Server optimizations have been added to this version. These include settings for Windows features and also for applications:

  • Office 2013/2016/2019
    • Disable start screens
    • Disable animations
    • Disable hardware acceleration
  • Internet Explorer 11 and Edge browserBlank home page
    • Prevent first time wizard
    • Disable hardware acceleration
  • Adobe Reader 11 and DC
    • Disable hardware acceleration
    • Multiple additional optimizations

More optimizations have been added for Windows services and scheduled tasks to achieve a faster OS initialization and improve performance.

UI Button Renames and Reorder

Several buttons have been renamed to more closely reflect the task they perform.

  • Analyze is now called Optimize.
  • The old page that displayed the results of an optimization task used to be called Optimize. That has been renamed to Results.

Inside the Optimize page the buttons at the bottom left have been reorganized. These are now in order that you would execute them in. Analyze > Common Options > Optimize

Removed the button for Compatibility as this was a legacy item.

The top-level buttons and tabs have been reordered to better reflect the main tasks and the order you carry them out in. Analyze > Generalize > Finalize.

Common Options

New option in Visual Effect to allow the selection of disabling hardware acceleration for IE, office and Adobe Reader. The default is that this is selected but this allows this to be easily unselected if using hardware GPU.

Added Photos to the list of Windows Store apps that can be selected to be retained.

Setting the background to a solid color is now selected by default.

Generalize

More comprehensive Sysprep answer file that helps with some optimization items that were getting undone by the Sysprep process.

Finalize

New options to carry out some tasks that get undone during Generalize.

  • Disable Superfetch service. This reduces high usage of CPU and RAM.
  • Clean temporary files from the default user profile.

Automate the use of SDelete to zero empty disk space.

  • Overwrites empty disk space with zeros so that the VMDK size can be reduced when it is cloned.
  • This uses SDelete which needs to be downloaded from Microsoft Sysinternals and copied to a location in the path (Windows\System32 or current user directory).

Create Local Group Policies

  • Creates local group policies for computer and user settings that can then be viewed with tools like RSOP and GPEdit.
  • This uses LGPO.exe which can be downloaded as part of the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit. LGPO.exe should be copied to a location in the path (Windows\System32 or current user directory).

Command Line

Command line support added for the Generalize step.

Command line support added for the Finalize step. This also simplifies and consolidates the previous system clean tasks (NGEN, DISM, Compact, Disk Cleanup) under the new -Finalize option. These can now be run without specifying a template.

Fixed naming of Paint3D application when wanting to retain this while removing other Windows Store Applications. This had been previously been incorrectly named as MSpaint.

Templates

Windows 10 version 2004 was added to the built-in template Windows 10 1809 – XXXX-Server 2019.

Legacy templates for Horizon Cloud and App Volumes packaging have been removed. The two standard Windows 10 templates should be used instead.

LoginVSI templates are no longer built in. They are still available to download from the public templates interface.

Guides

Updated OSOT user guide: VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide.

Updated Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop guide coming soon.

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Power vRA Cloud

PowervRA Cloud is a PowerShell module that abstracts the VMware vRealize Automation Cloud APIs to a set of easily used PowerShell functions.

Changelog

Version 1.2

  • Support for vRealize Automation 8.1
  • New cmdlets
  • Connect-vRA-Server
  • New-vRA-Server-CloudAccount-VMC
  • New-vRA-Server-CloudAccount-vSphere

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VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software to help the fight against Covid.

Changelog

April 17, 2020 – v1.0.3

  • F@H software has been updated to latest 7.6.8
  • Add OVF property (guestinfo.fah_next_unit_percentage) to control Workload Unit Percentage (default value of 90)

VMware-Appliance-FaH_1.0.3.ova
MD5: d82d0829badc64e7e19bf24999a2db1a

April 1, 2020 – v1.0.2

  • F@H software has been updated to latest 7.5.1
  • Add OVF DeploymentOption (Small, Medium and Large) to help simplify initial configuration including optimal memory setting for 16 vCPU
  • SSH is now disabled by default (can be enabled during OVF deployment)

VMware-Appliance-FaH_1.0.2.ova
MD5: 44843701611febbf45d72b8b37a0778a

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Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

The Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory.

Changelog

Version 2.0.4

  • Fixed errors with reporting on VMs with odd number of vCPUs
  • Fixed reporting on VMs that have CPU Hot Add enabled

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vSAN Performance Monitor

The vSAN performance monitor is a monitoring and visualization tool based on vSAN Performance metrics.

Changelog

Version 1.3

  • Fixed issues related to user login. We have removed the user password configuration screen while deploying the fling. Users will be prompted to change the password after login.
  • Few tweaks related to Grafana charts. Removed the login screen to access graphs.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for March 2020

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We are living in some crazy times, we have been locked down here already for several weeks and in my area things are improving, just like my dad who is recovering from Corona. The virus didn’t stop the VMware engineers from working on flings though. This includes the new VMware Appliance for Folding@Home if you want to help in the battle against Corona or other illnesses. Other new releases are Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer and Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility while the following received an update: vSphere Software Asset Management Tool, Desktop Watermark,  vCenter Event Broker Appliance,, Ubuntu OVA for Horizon, Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter, vSphere Mobile Client, Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV and last but not least Horizon View Events Database Export Utility.

New Releases

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VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

I already spoiler the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home but this appliance gives you the opportunity to add your computer power in the search for a solution against Corona or other diseases.

This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software. Upon deploying the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home, the user will be prompted to enter information to configure the Folding@Home software. Once the appliance is deployed, the Folding@Home client is running and ready for Working Units. The Fling is also pre-configured to allow remote management of the Folding@Home client. For more information on the Folding@Home Project and how we can be a Force for Good against diseases like the Coronavirus, visit the website www.foldingathome.org.

The Folding@Home Appliance is configured to automatically join Team VMware ID 52737. Everyone is welcome to join! Check out http://vmwa.re/fah for team and individual statistics.

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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.

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Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility

In case the manual deployment is too much work or the PowerCLI based is too difficult engineers have now created Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility for Mac or Windows to install the uag.

Unified Access Gateway (UAG) Deployment Utility assists the deployment of UAG appliances by running the utility on Windows or macOS machines. This utility provides better user interface, which is self explanatory about the next steps and better error handling through useful messages & tool tips which will make it easier for an admin to deploy single or multiple appliances.

Updated Flings

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vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

Changelog

March 2020

  • Minor wording update to the generated software asset management report.

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Desktop Watermark

Changelog

v1.1 – Build 20200302-signed

  • Added a new attribute %DATETIME% to show hour and minute info on screen.

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vCenter Event Broker Appliance

Changelog

Too damn much so better head over to William Lam’s blogpost.

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Ubuntu OVA for Horizon

Changelog

v1.2

  • Special thanks to Robert Guske for testing & feedback
  • Support for Horizon 7.11 and later
  • Support for vSphere 6.7+
  • Updated OVA base image to Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
  • Updated Virtual Hardware to v14
  • Added option to configure static networking
  • Added support for USB 3.0 and USB Redirection (via linux-agent-installer.sh)
  • Added KDE Desktop Environment Option
  • Added Gnome Desktop Environment Option (recommended)
  • Developer Desktop Package option
  • Added Keyboard Layout Option
  • Added option to enable SSH
  • Removed runlevel 5 setting
  • Fixed MOTD prompt code
  • Disabled auto software updates
  • Removed greeter modifications to support SSO
  • Numerous improvements to script
  • Script renamed to ‘optimize.sh’

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Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter

Changelog

20.03 Release Notes:
Please Note: If you have already setup WS1 SCIM Adapter, it is possible that moving to 20.03 will create new accounts. Please consider resetting Directory Services configuation for the OG you are connecting to.

New Features:

  • Windows 10 OOBE Enrollment now supported
  • Bitnami Node.js 12.16.1-0 now supported with embedded install
  • Various Enterprise and Custom SCIM Schema attributes now supported (see below table)

Bugs Fixed:

  • Resources with special characters in immutableId do not update

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vSphere Mobile Client

Changelog

Version 1.10.2

Improvements/Fixes

  • Better support for older devices
  • Fix some issues related to the back button
  • Fix for the annotation not defined issue

Version 1.10.1

  • Fixed “TypeError : Cannot read property of ‘annotation’ of undefined”
  • Errors causing white screen should now have more information about the cause

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Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Changelog

Version 3.2.1 Update

  • Updated to new version
  • Replaced user guide the new version

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Horizon View Events Database Export Utility

Changelog

Version 2.2

Fixed the following issues:

  • Able to return data for All Pools
  • Able to return data on just user logon and logoff events
  • Both of these actions would cause a crash or error in previous versions

New challenge ahead! (going Vendor this time)

  By ,

After years of contracting a new challenge lays ahead for me in the vendor space. Until now I have always been on either the customer or partner side of things but was always curious how things would be from a vendor perspective. Recently I saw an opportunity at ControlUP passing by that I couldn’t resist in asking if it would also be feasible do do this from The Netherlands since it was posted for the UK. The lines where short since I am already working on for them on a freelance base creating Horizon scripts.

PS Engineers are experienced IT professionals that guide customers through their journey of assessing needs and implementing ControlUp solutions. Prospective candidates must be self-motivated, charismatic individuals that are willing to meet customers and work in very dynamic situations that present new, never before seen business and technical challenges on a regular basis. Ideal candidates possess several years of enterprise IT consulting experience and a deep technical skill set covering VMware’s or Citrix virtualization and PowerShell scripting.
Responsibilities
· Professionally represent ControlUp values at all times
· Maintain current knowledge of the entire ControlUp product portfolio
· Become a trusted advisor to both colleagues and customers
· Help our customers succeed by solving their challenging technical problems, from design through to production operations
· Work closely with customers to understand their needs and objectives
· Provide regular transfer of information presentations to customers
· Provide regular feedback to management for process and practice improvements
· Assist with all phases of Couchbase implementations, starting with installation, architecture design and review
· Contribute to internal technical projects, which can include software development, benchmarking, troubleshooting
· Work closely with the sales team and presales team on technical escalations and help grow opportunities in existing accounts
· Assist with customer PoC/Pilots through effective management of acceptance criteria and issue escalation/resolution
· Work with all technical levels from managers, to architects and developers in the Couchbase Server technology and architecture
· Identify and write internal and external technical collateral, like typical deployment architectures or best practices
· Travel to customers at least 25%
Requirements
· 10+ years of experience in information technology- A MUST
· 5+ years of customer-facing professional services or VDI Administration- A MUST
· Fluent Speak and Writing English- A MUST
· Strong VMware or Citrix experience
· Strong Windows desktop OS administration experience
· VCP/CTP/VCPDT strongly preferred
· B.S./B.A./M.S. degree or equivalent technical training & experience
· Proven technical background –You will need to have a strong hands-on understanding of a number of popular technical platforms
· Positive attitude and very customer-centric; always willing to put the customers’ needs first
· MCSE – a plus
While I have been doing mainly VMware for the last few years I also have a bit of history with Citrix so I thought this would fit perfectly. After a couple of zoom calls first I traveled to ControlUP’s yearly Sales Kick-Off in Jerusalem last month to have a face to face meeting but also to feel how things are run inside the company. Looking back at that I have to say I really enjoyed it and was able to connect with just about everyone (I just didn’t have the time to connect with everybody). So when I received the call a week or so later that they wanted to hire me I couldn’t be more happy about that and I will be starting March first as Professional Service Engineer!
tldr: Got hired by ControlUP as Professional Services Engineer starting March first

The VMware Labs flings monthly for January 2020

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Here we go again with the new and updated flings for January 2020. It’s been a busy month for me including a visit to Israel but more on that in a future blog post. There have been three new releases in January with the App Volumes Migration Utility, vSphere Software Asset Management and Power vRA Cloud. No less than six received updates: DRS Dump Insight, Horizon Reach, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility, vCenter Event Broker Appliance, vSphere Mobile Client and the one and only VMware OS Optimization Tool.

New Releases

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App Volumes Migration Utility

The App Volumes Migration Utility has been build to migrate App Volumes 2.18 app stacks to the brand new App Volumes 4 format.

App Volumes Migration Utility allows to migrate appstacks, which are managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new appstack format of VMware App Volumes 4.0. The format of appstacks in VMware App Volumes 4.0 have changed in order to provide improved login to desktops among many other features. This utility addresses the migration of appstacks so that applications don’t have to be provisioned again after upgrading to VMware App Volumes 4.0.

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vSphere Software Asset Management Tool

The vSphere Software Asset Management Tool gives the user insight into license usage of and vSphere environment version 5.5 and up.

The vSphere Software Asset Management (vSAM) is a tool that collects and summarizes vSphere product deployment information. It calls on vSphere APIs for deployment data and produces a PDF report that the customer can consult as a part of their infrastructure review and planning process. This lightweight Java application runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS.

Features

  • Support both vCenter Server cluster and Standalone ESXi host with a version of vSphere 5.5, 6.X or newer.
  • Generate comprehensive report from various aspects:
    • High-level product deployment summary
    • Product deployment report by targets (standalone ESXi or VC cluster)
    • High level license key usage report
    • License key usage by targets
  • Provide Software Asset Management suggestions on:
    • Evaluation license warning
    • License term
      • Pre-expiration 90 days warning
      • Expiration alert
    • License capacity
      • Potential capacity waste warning based on customized threshold
      • Potential capacity shortage warning based on customized threshold
      • Capacity over-use alert
    • Product support
      • End of General Support info
      • General Support pre-expiration 90 days warning
      • Unsupported product alert
    • Protect customer sensitive information by:
      • Collecting minimal set of information relative with Software Asset Management
      • Masking sensitive info in the report
      • Supporting encryption of raw data file
  • Support merging multi reports into one report
  • Support English and Chinese report
  • Support customization of report

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Power vRA Cloud

Power vRA Cloud is a PowerShell module that abstracts the VMware vRealize Automation Cloud APIs to a set of easily used PowerShell functions. This tool provides a comprehensive command line environment for managing your VMware vRealize Automation Cloud environment.

This module is not supported by VMware and comes with no warranties expressed or implied. Please test and validate its functionality before using this product in a production environment.

Updated Flings

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DRS Dump Insight

The DRS Dump Insight flings gives an explanation why in the bloody hell a VM was moved from one host to the other.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Users can now upload multiple dumps as a folder.
  • Creates a vMotion timeline based on the dumps uploaded, users can navigate through multiple dump analysis.
  • Users can export multiple dump analysis as a PDF at once.
  • Added support to 65u2, 65u3 and 67u3 dumps.
  • Bug fixes and backend improvements

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Horizon Reach

I have said this before but Horizon Reach is awesome and gives you an proper overview over all pod’s in an Horizon Cloud Pod setup.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1 brings vCenter performance data along with a myriad of bugfixes!

New Features

  • Gauges, gauges everywhere.
  • Search field! for those huge customers who hate to dig.
  • vCenter performance statistics will now be captured for Pods running version 7.8 or better.
  • vCenter RAM, CPU, sesions and Datastore Usage have all been added to the historical data views.
  • Datastore usage is now calculated only for datastores used by pools or farms.
  • New layouts for Pools, Farms, Pods, Vcenters etc..
  • RDSH Servers load is now correctly measured and a new view is available.
  • Page headers look much better.
  • vCenters now have the pod name listed.
  • Added support for nested groups and some additional LDAP logging on startup.
  • Added the ability to modify a connection rather than just add and delete.
  • Side nav will now collapse if screen space is low.
  • Don’t use internet explorer, friends don’t let friends do that, I’ve added a warning too.
  • Further logging enabled for LDAP integration including a self test on service start.
  • LDAP now supports nested groups.
  • Events view has been deprecated due to a thread exhaustion issue on the server side.

Bug Fixes

  • Farm usage is now accurate, wow that was broken!
  • Many cast errors were found and dealt with.
  • Problem machines now correctly display the vCenter.
  • Fixed a health score bug in the page header.
  • Fixed a problem machines bug in pools and farms.
  • Fixed a bug in pod numbers calculation.
  • Improved the speed of database enumeration of sites and pods.
  • Fixed a bug in global application entitlements where the lack of shortcuts would cause the UI to freak out.
  • Fixed a bug in Datastore usage where it was reporting the wrong value.
  • Fixed a bug where Reach sessions may not be logged off correctly during polling.
  • Fixed a bug where applications were being requested for each farm multiple times.
  • Fixed a bug where pod health would be called twice for no reason.

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Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

The Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility helps in moving vm’s between vCenter servers even if they are not connected.

Changelog

Version 3.1, January 22, 2020

  • Support for disk format conversion between Thick (Lazy Zeroed), Thick (Eager Zeroed) and Thin provisioning
  • Support for VM rename pattern for Clone operation
  • Fixed duplicated network selection when performing bulk migration
  • Fixed startup failure when a new home vCenter is specified as a command line argument

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vCenter Event Broker Appliance

Sadly there is no real changelog available but just a tweet for the vCenter Event Broker Appliance, a tool that helps the user to create their own events inside vCenter.

Changelog?

Features:

  • Setup no longer require Internet
  • NTP & Proxy Support

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vSphere Mobile Client

If you think your Smartphone screen is big enough to manage vSphere the vSphere Mobile Client will help you in that.

Changelog

Version 1.9.1

Features:

  • Added host shutdown quick action

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where the app would crash when using face ID authentication (iOS)
  • Fixed an issue in the VM card (reversed icons for Windows and Linux)

Version 1.9.0

New features:

  • Ability to save information around a vCenter server (address/username)
  • Use FaceId/Fingerprint recognition to login to a vCenter server

Bug fixes:

  • Do not make first letter uppercase on input fields on the login form
  • Better compatibility with auto-complete applications on the login form

[sta_anchor id=”osot” /]

VMware OS Optimization Tool

The one, the only and the real VMware OS Optimization Tool. Simply the best tool out there to optimize your windows image.

Changelog

January, 2020, b1140

Includes various bug fixes.

Optimize Results

  • A new button has been added to the results page that displays once an optimization job has completed. This Export button allows you to save the results page as an HTML file.

Generalize

  • New option and button that simplifies the task of running Sysprep using a standard answer file. You can edit the provided answer file before running Sysprep with it.

Finalize

  • New option and button to automate many common tasks that are typically run as a last step before you shut down Windows to use the VM in Horizon. These include the system clean up tasks (NGEN, DISM, Compact and disk clean up) that were previously provided in the Common Options dialog. This also includes clearing event logs, KMS information and releasing the IP address.

Common Options

  • System clean up tasks have been removed from the common options so will now not run during optimize but instead should be run as part of the Finalize process.
    New tab for Security options. This allows for the quick selection of common settings that might need to be left enabled depending on the security requirements. This offers control over Bitlocker, Firewall, Windows Defender, SmartScreen, HVCI.

Command Line

  • Added command line parameter to allow the tool to run without applying optimizations. This is part of the -o parameter called none that then allows you to run things like the system cleanup tasks (NGEM DISM, etc.) without also having to optimize at the same time.
  • VMwareOSOptimizationTool.exe -o none -t template -systemcleanup 0 1 2 3 WebCache
  • Changed default to not disable Webcache. In testing this was shown to break Edge and IE browsers ability to download and save files. The settings are still available in the Windows 10 templates if you want to disable Webcache.

Guides

  • Updated OSOT user guide: VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide.
  • Updated Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop guide coming soon.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for December 2019

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Happy new year and the very best wishes for 2020!

In december three new flings where published with SyncML Compare, vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight and App Finder for Tunnel. Thee other received an update: Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool, Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV and The VMware OS Optimization Tool.

New Releases

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SyncML Compare

The SyncML Compare tool is usefull for troubleshooting profiles and applications that are pushed from the Workspace One Console.

SyncML-Compare is an extension to Fiddler application that lets you compare the syncmls pushed from server against the SyncMls received from the device management client on the device.

Comparing SyncMLs is often required to troubleshoot or debug profiles, applications pushed from the WS1 console.

Instead of copying the two syncmls and then manually comparing each syncml node in a separate xml viewer, SyncML compare lets you compare the SyncMLs on the fiddler application itself.
As shown in the below screenshot, you can see the locUris, commandIds and the results using SyncML compare.

This simplifies the SyncML troubleshooting experience as well as speeds up debugging process.

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vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight

vRealize Network Insight is a great tool but wouldn’t it even be better when the information is accessible from inside vSphere? The vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight fling takes care of that.

The vCenter Plugin for vRealize Network Insight brings relevant information from Network Insight, directly into vCenter. It allows the virtual infrastructure admins to view networking focused data and statistics in the same interface as where they manage their workloads, without having to have 2 interfaces open. Additionally, this plugin also helps add vCenter as a data source to Network Insight and set up incoming network flows.

Features

Summary view of vCenter activity: VMs, vMotions, and snapshots.
Bring in network information directly to vCenter, such as:Summary view of how network traffic behaves; how much east-west and how much internet traffic there is.
Health check violation for the vCenter and attached NSX environments
Network top talkers, grouped by VMs, Cluster, L2 Network, Subnet, Security Group, Source-Destination Pair, Source & Destination Subnet, Source & Destination IPs.
Most used networks
New Virtual Machines that are accessing the internet
o Top 5 Hosts or Networks that are experiencing the most packet loss
Links to the vRealize Network Insight interface shows the source data and allows you to look closer, apply filters, export information, and more.
Configure vCenter as a data source and configure NetFlow on the available vSphere Distributed Switches.

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App Finder for Tunnel

The App Finder for Tunnel fling can be used to flag applications to use the Workspace One Tunnel on MacOS.

This application is a utility which can be used for conveniently flagging the applications to use WorkspaceONE Tunnel on macOS. On macOS, WorkapceONE Tunnel supports per-app VPN feature where only the whitelisted applications can be Tunneled rather than tunneling the entire device traffic. In order to whitelist the application to use Tunnel, admin needs to enter the following details on the Workspace UEM Console under “VMware Tunnel” device traffic rule:

Friendly name
Package ID
Designated requirement
Path (this is used only for the pure non-bundle binaries like Curl and ssh)
This fling application supports the basic drag and drop interface which admin can launch and then drag and drop the application to be flagged to use per-app VPN (Firefox in the following case), once the applicatin is dropped, it’s attributes are listed and then admin can paste those in the UEM console as shown below:

Updated Flings

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Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool

The Workspace One UEM Workload Migration Tool takes care of migrating applications and devices between different Workspace One environments.

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

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Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV is an automation-based deployment tool used for setting up the VMware vCloud NFV platform

Changelog

Version 3.2.0 Update

  • Removed internal link in User Guide. Added a link to the correct external location
  • Removed duplicate User Guide document in zip file

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VMware OS Optimization Tool

While there is some competition OSOT has been THE tool for optimizing images for VDI or RDSH. The changelog on this on is huge!

Changelog

December, 2019, b1130

  • Command LineAdded command line parameters to allow the control of the common options settings. This allows for the control of visual effect, notification, windows update, store applications, background and system clean up tasks, from the command line.
  • Added list of available templates to the output when run with -h (help).
  • Fixed issues with command line options.

The VMware Operating System Optimization Tool Guide has been updated to include instruction and examples on using the command line.

Visual Effects

  • Changed balanced setting (default) to leave Show shadows under windows enabled. This was making the white on white explorer windows blend in together which did not give the best user experience.

WebCache

  • Added optimization settings to disable WebCache processes from Windows 10. The default is that these optimizations are selected. This removes approximately 40 Mb from each users’ profile on creation and improves logon times.

Horizon Cloud Templates

  • Changed the two Horizon Cloud specific templates (Windows 10 and Windows 7) by removing the item “VMware DaaS Agent Service”. This is no longer required in Horizon Cloud Service.

December, 2019, b1120

Templates

Changed the two existing Windows 10 templates to also cover the associated Server OS and to introduce support for Windows Server 2019.

  • Windows 10 1507-1803 / Server 2016
  • Windows 10 1809-1909 / Server 2019

The old Windows Server 2016 templates have been removed.

System Clean Up

Added System Clean Up options to Common Options dialog. This removed the need for these to be typed and run manually.

  • Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)
    Reduces the size of the WinSxS folder by uninstalling and deleting packages with components that have been replaced by other components with newer versions. Should be run after a Windows update.
  • Native Image Generator (NGEN).
    Optimizes the .NET Framework. Should be run after an update of .NET Framework.
  • Compact
    Compact (Windows 10/ Server 2016/2019). Enables CompactOS to compress specific Windows system files to free up space. Can take several minutes to execute.
  • Disk Cleanup.
    Deletes temporary and unnecessary files.

Background/Wallpaper

  • New Common Options page for Background which allows the choice of color using a picker. This also allows the option to allow the user to be able to change their wallpaper.

Visual Effects options

  • Added a third option where all visual effects are turned off apart from smooth edges and use drop shadows. This is now the default selection.

Windows Store Apps

New page in Common Options that allows more control over removing Windows Store Apps while allowing the user to select common ones to keep. The Windows Store App and the StorePurchaseApp are retained by default.

Applications that will be able to be selected to be kept are:

  • Alarms & Clock
  • Camera
  • Calculator
  • Paint3D
  • Screen Sketch
  • Sound Recorder
  • Sticky Notes
  • Web Extensions

Defaults

The small taskbar option is now no longer selected by default.
In both Windows 10/ Server templates the following services are now no longer selected by default.

  • Application Layering Gateway Service
  • Block Level Backup Engine Service
  • BranchCache
  • Function Discovery Provider Host
  • Function Discovery Resource Publication
  • Internet Connection Sharing
  • IP Helper
  • Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service
  • Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider
  • Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol Service
  • SNMP Trap
  • SSDP Discovery
  • Store Storage Service
  • Volume Shadow Copy Service
  • Windows Biometric Service

Numerous New Optimizations

  • Fully disable Smartscreen.
  • Disable Content Delivery Manager.
  • Disable User Activity History completely.
  • Disable Cloud Content.
  • Disable Shared Experiences.
  • Disable Server Manager when Windows Server OS.
  • Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security when Windows Server OS (not selected by default).
  • Disable Storage Sense service.
  • Disable Distributed Link Tracking Client Service.
  • Disable Payments and NFC/SE Manager Service.

Bug and error fixes

  • Fixed condition when Export Analysis Results would fail to create file.

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for November 2019

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None less than eleven newly released and updated flings this month. This includes three that are directly aimed for End use computing including Horizon Reach about which I blogged earlier this week. The three new releases are Horizon Reach, VMware vSAN Live and vCenter Event Broker Appliance. The following received updates: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a Service on vRealize Automation Cloud, Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility, Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV, Horizon View Events Database Export Utility, Horizon Helpdesk Utility, Kubewise, USB Network Native Driver for ESXi and HCIBench.

New Releases

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Horizon Reach

As I said in the blog posts, Horizon Reach is one of the best tools for Horizon ever if not the best by giving the admin insight into the entire Cloud Pod Architecture.

Horizon Reach is a web based, monitoring and alerting fling for VMware Horizon On Prem deployments. Horizon Reach is designed to tackle the disconnect in Enterprise environments wherein each Pod in a Cloud Pod Architecture is its own technology domain and fault domain, or a customer is running multiple, disconnected pods, outside of a Cloud Pod Architecture, but would still like to treat them all as one unit of compute.

Often when troubleshooting these fault domains, it can feel like a game of “Whack a mole” jumping from Pod to Pod trying to find a pertinent session, alarm or event to the problem your user is describing.

Reach tackles this issue by performing health checking and gathering pertinent errors from each separate environment and displaying them all in a single place, creating an easy location for administrators to monitor the environment, along with providing a detailed first step in the troubleshooting process.

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VMware vSAN Live

Did you like the vSphere mobile fling? Guess what there is a vSAN mobile fling now as well to give you all the insights while on the go. Personally I expect this one to be merged with the vSphere app at some point but as of now it’s a separate app.

VMware vSAN Live provides vSAN users with instant insights into their hyperconverged infrastructure environments from their mobile devices. Instead of stopping, signing into a laptop and then logging in remotely to view their vSAN environments, users can monitor their HCI clusters while on the go, troubleshooting in just a few clicks.

What’s included in this release?

  • Overview dashboard of vSAN clusters
  • Full-featured Health Checks
  • Cluster inventory view including Fault domain and host status.
  • Easily switch between different vCenter Servers
  • Cluster configuration view including vSAN settings and service status.
  • Full-featured Performance monitoring for VMs and Cluster
  • Full-featured Capacity monitoring

VMware vSAN powers VMware’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution, which combines compute virtualization, storage virtualization and storage networking with unified management into a single system running on industry-standard x86 servers. VMware vSAN, primes businesses for growth through seamless evolution, industry leading deployment flexibility and hybrid-cloud capabilities.

vSAN is native to the market-leading hypervisor, vSphere, simplifying HCI adoption by leveraging existing tools and skillsets. vSAN provides customers industry leading deployment flexibility with over 500+ ReadyNodes, or jointly-certified x86 servers, a turn-key appliance, Dell EMC VxRail, and native services with all of the top public cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, IBM and Oracle. vSAN supports the most hybrid cloud uses cases and provides enterprise-grade, general-purpose infrastructure for VM and container-based applications.

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vCenter Event Broker Appliance

This is quite a handy appliance when you want some event driven automation for your vSphere environment.

The vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) enables customers to easily create event-driven automation based on vCenter Server Events. For example, VEBA can drive basic workflows like automatically attaching a vSphere tag when a virtual machine (VM) is created. Even more powerful integrations between datacenter-internal enterprise services and cloud services, for example Slack and Pager Duty, can be created with VEBA out of the box.

VEBA is provided as a Virtual Appliance that can be deployed to any vSphere-based infrastructure, including an on-premises and/or any public cloud environment, running on vSphere such as VMware Cloud on AWS or VMware Cloud on Dell-EMC.

With this appliance, end-users, partners and independent software vendors only have to write minimal business logic without going through a steep learning curve understanding vSphere APIs. As such, we believe this solution not only offers a better user experience in solving existing problems for vSphere operators. More importantly, it will enable new integration use cases and workflows to grow the vSphere ecosystem and community, similar to what AWS has achieved with AWS Lambda.

Continue the conversation with us on Slack: #vcenter-event-broker-appliance on VMware {code}

Updated flings

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Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a Service on vRealize Automation Cloud

The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a Service on vRealize Automation Cloud fling gives you a tool to automate the end to end deployment of an Openshift Cluster.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Updated / Revalidate for Red Hat Enterprise Server 7.7
  • Updated / Revalidate for minor changes in bash scripts
  • Updated/ Revalidate for Ansible playbooks

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Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

If you need to migrate or clone vm’s between unlinked or even linked vCenters than the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility is a very useful tool for you.

Changelog

Version 3.0, Novemember 5, 2019

  • New plugin UI integrated with the vSphere HTML5 Client and supported with both vSphere and VMware Cloud environments
    • Full feature parity with the standalone XVM UI
    • Supports migrations triggered by the host, cluster and resource pool actions from the vSphere Client inventory tree
  • Standalone UI is now deprecated but is still supported
  • Ability to migrate networks with the same name
  • Sorting and filtering of the list of VMs to migrate (plugin only)
  • Error reporting improvements

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Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV

Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV is an automation-based deployment tool used for setting up the VMware vCloud NFV platform (NFV 3.2 VCD edition). It is based on VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 Reference Architecture design and targets greenfield deployments only.

There are two components:

The input text file – User enters all details of the environment and component products that need to be deployed, and
The power shell scripts – Executed to do the actual deployment of the products.

Changelog

  • None

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Horizon View Events Database Export Utility

While I personally prefer to use the api’s to grab Horizon event logs I still think the Horizon View Events Database Export Utility could be very usefull for people, specially now it has been updated to work with the latest version of Horizon.

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Added support for RDSH Pools
  • Returns desktop name now
  • Several bug fixes
  • Tested with Horizon 7.11

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Horizon Helpdesk Utility

The Horizon Helpdesk Utility still is a 1000 times better than the official java or html5 interfaces and it keeps getting better and better.

Changelog

Version 1.5.0.11

  • Added Named user support in the views
  • Added support for VM image details
  • Added Global search on the overview
  • Added an option to disable the global mutex
  • Fixed numerous bugs

Version 1.5.0.9

  • Updated all binaries to be signed
  • Added full name support for search results
  • Added image status and details for machines view
  • Added a privacy setting to remove the windows title caption
  • Many Bug Fixes

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Kubewise

Kubewise is a nifty multi-platform Kubernetes Desktop client. In case you don’t want to type kubctl this could be a replacement.

Changelog

Version 1.1.0

[ Features ]

Terminal command UI – users can now override the default command to open a new terminal window of their choice.
About Info UI – displays the version of currently installed kubectl

[ Bug fixes ]

Fixed an issue where Windows users cannot add a kubeconfig file
Fixed an issue where Linux users cannot list resources due to snap security policies
Switching to YAML format in the Inspect resource view loaded all resources of the same type
Surround path params of kubectl commands with double quotes

[ Misc ]

Save settings file pretty printed
Allign ‘trash’ icons in kubeconfig dropdown
Show loading spinner on application startup

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USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

The USB Network Native Driver for ESXi is specially build for homelabs so people can have (fast) enough nic’s even when running smaller systems in the lab.

Changelog

November 27, 2019 – v1.3

  • Resolved USB device detection issue on Intel XHCI controller
  • Resolved packet record issue for ASIX USB network adapters

ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-30899283-offline_bundle-15188556.zip
ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-30940032-offline_bundle-15188510.zip

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HCIBench

The HCIBench received 2 updates this month but the second mostly was a bugfix.

Changelog

Version 2.3.1

  • Fixed static IP setting issue
  • Fixed reuse VMs on multi datastores issue
  • Fixed vm/tvm deployment issue
  • MD5 Checksum: 1b220f22575eacf62a965992a4c916e7 HCIBench_2.3.1.ova

Version 2.3.0

My VMworld EU 2019 presentations

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It’s already the week after and I am looking back at a very good VMworld last week in Barcelona. In the end I was at a podium for none less than four times and wanted to share the decks or videos with you when available. For the vExpert daily there is no deck (duh) and for the EUC Beer and tapas community event there is no video. I also had to remove most of the slides because the fling hasn’t been published yet, you can expect a blogpost when it’s been published because it’s going to be awesome!

vExpert Daily: Video | Deck

vBrownbag: tools for Horizon Helpdesk: Video | Deck

EUC Beer and Tapas top 5 flings for Horizon: Video | Deck

VMware{Code}-Horizon API 101: Video | Deck

VMworld EU 2019 day 3 report

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I am writing dus from my own desk in my own house after an awesome VMworld 2019. Day three was the day where I presented at the VMware{Code} theater. There was a good audience that really want to start using the Horizon API’s to automate their environments. The rest of de day I spent for a bit in the Solutions Exchange but mainly in the community area. We talked a lot, played some fussball and at the end of the day we had some fun with Eric Nielsen’s workshop about working with Raspberry pi’s and sensors.

 

Day 1 of VMworld Europe 2019

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So yesterday was a very interesting day for me. It started at the reserved bloggers seats for the keynote where we didn’t see too much really big announcements. After that I had to rush to the community area for my appearance in the vExpert daily this year. If you’re interested to watch that you can find it over here. And at 12.45 I had another go at vBrownbag presenting on a couple of helpdesk tools for VMware Horizon. The rest of the day mainly was hanging around in the community area distributing Pink Cookies, Stroopwafels and gathering swag inn the solutions Exchange. In the evening I once again went onto a stage with Hans Kraaijeveld at the EUC Community beer and tapas event. This was my biggest crowd to present for until now but the beer part made it rather easy. We even showed a brand new fling called Horizon Reach from Andrew Morgan that hasn’t even been released yet. The evening came to a closing for me at the Benelux party where we had some beers and tapas again.

 

My schedule for VMworld 2019 Barcelona

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In less than two weeks VMworld Europe will begin, for me it will be a busy one this year. With four sessions that I will participate in, a bunch of Design Studio sessions, parties and let’s not forget vSoccer (or football for us Europeans). Let me give you an insight into how my schedule will probably look. Probably because things can still change even during the event itself. Sadly there is no Hackathon this year but it would have been a hard choice between that and playing some football anyway.

Monday

My earliest session during the week will actually be on Monday starting at 8am with a Design Studio session. Later in the morning there will be another Design Studio session followed by the entire afternoon filled with an NSX-T workshop. While I am still undecided about the Partner reception I will go to the vSoccer in the evening. After last year’s first but very successful version of it in Las Vegas I am again looking forward to playing some footie with friends. Having lost a bit of weight the last year will also help in how long I will actually stay on the pitch.

Tuesday

This is a packed day for me, after the keynote where we bloggers can sit in the press area I will spend the entire day in the Community area and maybe the Solutions Exchange. I will be there because I will be in the vExpert Daily, will be presenting my own vBrownbag session and someone has to be there as emotional support for my buddy Hans’s first ever vBrownbag as well. From 17.30 I will be at Brian Madden’s EUC Community Tech Talks & Beer evening where I am presenting with previously mentioned Hans. Party wise I can go to the vExpert party but that’s a bit further away than I would like so I’ll wait on where the Benelux party is or I might even just go to the Veaam party.

Wednesday

The Wednesday is a mixed day for me starting in the community area to watch the vExpert Daily followed by two Design Studio sessions and two regular sessions. Well regular? One of the two is the live Virtually Speaking podcast with a lot of great names.

Thursday

On Thursday I will be presenting my own Horizon API 101 Session at the VMware{Code} stage. This session is fully booked but there’s probably a spot for everyone. Session wise I will be doing three regular sessions and a workshop. I will be flying back on Friday so if anyone wants to go out for dinner or something just let me know!