Search Results for: horizon

The VMware Labs flings monthly for July 2019

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So I am in the middle of my summer holiday but stil it’s time for this monthly overview. I see two new flings with the Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer and Machine Learning on VMware Cloud Foundation tools. No less than six have received updates: vSphere Mobile Client, Desktop Watermark, HCIBench, Horizon Toolbox, Horizon Helpdesk Utility and Horizon Session recording. I already blogged about the updates to the Horizon Helpdesk Utility over here.

New Releases

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Machine Learning on VMware Cloud Foundation

Want to do things with big data? This Fling might be able to help you with that on VCF, It could do with a proper logo though.

This Fling provides a platform for Data Scientists to quickly setup a virtualized cloud infrastructure to conduct data science experiments:

  • Virtualized environment based on VMware cloud and Kubernetes
  • Currently support CPU only (but will support GPU in future)
  • Based on Open Source Kubeflow, Horovod

Provides a set of example Notebooks and libraries for common data science tasks, including:

  • Data collection and cleaning (extract data from various sources, and describe the data semantics using metadata)
  • Data cleansing and transformation (clean up collected data and transform them from its raw form to a structured form more suitable for analytic processing)
  • Model training (develop predictive and optimization machine learning models)
  • Model serving (deploy model into a run time environment where online request will be served)

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Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

I personally wouldn’t call the Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer a fling since it’s a script but it’s here.

The Virtual Machine Computer 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. It will flag a VM as “YES” if it is optimized and “NO” 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.

Note that the VMCO will not analyze whether your VMs are configured with the correct number of vCPUs based on the VM’s workload. A more in-depth analysis tool such as VMware vRealize Operations Manager can make right-sizing determinations based on workload and actual performance.

Update flings

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Horizon Session Recording

The Horizon Session Recording fling gives the Horizon admin a tool to record sessions for troubleshooting reasons for example.

Changelog

Version 1.2.2

  • Added support for horizon 7.8 and above
  • Added support for recording based on group memberships
  • Many bug fixes in agent
  • Bug fixes in server

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Horizon Helpdesk Utility

Like I said I already blogged about the changes in the Horizon Helpdesk Utility but here’s the changelog, just to be complete.

Changelog

Version 1.4.0.1

  • No longer requires a helpdesk license! Yay!
  • Added the ability to interact with vCenter machines
  • Added the ability to open vCenter VM consoles
  • Added the ability to perform bulk machine actions
  • Added the ability to perform refresh / recompose tasks directly from helpdesk.
  • Fixed performance issues with multiple windows open (see single instance).
  • Fixed a crash when logon durations could not be accessed.
  • Added polling to allow logon durations to be received if notavailable when the session page is requested.
  • Fixed a crash in the ending of processes.
  • Fixed a metric ton of bugs with delegated administration.
  • Fixed a memory leak in the tray icon menu, of all places.
  • Removed the logon page graphic as it was to much of a pain to change it’s colour when changing themes
  • Fixed some layout issues when changing themes.
  • Removed empty sites from the viewon the change pod tray menu.
  • Added preliminary support for Horizon 7.9.

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Horizon Toolbox

The Horizon Toolbox is another usefull utility for the Horizon admin that doesn’t have access to the enterprise add-ons.

Changelog

July 12, 2019, 7.8.1

  • Added support for Horizon View 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8
  • Fixed some issues

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HCIBench

We have seen this one quite a lot already, if you need to benchmark your HCI than the HCIBench might be your tool. Good chance though that it’s better optimized for VSAN than others.

Changelog

Version 2.2.1

  • Fixed docker volume moving issue
  • MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.2.1.ova: 1a39c9df7d1485bc06332ae0b9d92ca7

Version 2.2

  • Moved docker volume to sdb to avoid blowing up OS disk
  • Added Fio spreadsheet generator
  • Added DRS warning checkup
  • Enhanced Grafana to keep all the historical data
  • Added DNS exception handler
  • Fixed RAM and PCPU reporting issue
  • Fixed Vdbench spreadsheet not reporting issue
  • MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.2.ova: bb2a77dcf2ecc23b1ec2c30aee9945ec

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Desktop Watermark

I personally haven’t really used the Desktop Watermark fling yet but I guess it could be useful for others.

Changelog

v1.0 – Build 20190724-signed

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

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vSphere Mobile Client

The vSphere Mobile Client fling is still a work in progress but functionality keeps being added. Very useful for most VI admins.

Changelog

Version 1.2.0

New features:

  • Focused inventory (bookmark a VM and then enter focused mode by clicking the bullseye button in the header)
  • vCenter dashboard now has host and virtual machine aggregates
  • Swiping the VM card displays a screenshot, clicking on it displays an even larger image

Bug Fixes

  • Removed option to delete virtual machines
  • Improvements to the login page
  • Improvements to the events and alarms page

 

 

 

 

The VMware Labs flings monthly for June 2019

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Wow there are already six months gone in 2019. Both my kids passed passed their schoolyears and this month there have been three new fling releases and four that have received updates. The new ones are: vSphere Mobile Client, Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter and FlowGate. The ones that received updates are USB Network Native Driver for ESXi, HCIBench, IOBlazer and the Horizon DaaS Migration Tool.

New Releases

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vSphere Mobile Client

I already posted a short blog about this fling over here.

vSphere Mobile Client enables administrators to monitor and manage vSphere infrastructure directly from any mobile device. Whether you want to check on the current or historical resource consumption; you want to get notifications on long running tasks; or you want to check the currently running tasks – the vSphere Mobile Client is there to help.

Features

  • VM overview: Review the status of your VMs including state (powered on/off), resource usage and configuration information
  • VM management: Change the power state of a VM or restart it. Locating the virtual machine to operate on can be done through search.
  • Task monitoring: Subscribe to any running task and receive a notification on your mobile device upon task completion, even when your device is in-active or you have another application running on the foreground.
  • Performance charts: Monitor the resource usage of a VM in real time or a day, week, month or year back. Counters include CPU, Memory, Storage and Network.

NOTE: vSphere Mobile Client is currently available for Android and iOS devices and vCenter 6.0+ deployments. Check the “Requirements” tab for more details. Access to vSphere infrastructure may require a secure access method such as VPN on a mobile device.

This is a technical preview release and as such it only has a limited subset of the intended functionality. The team would be releasing updates with new features regularly, but our main task is to gather feedback so please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

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Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter

Workspace ONE UEM SCIM Adapter provides SCIM user/group management capabilities to Workspace ONE UEM. The middleware translates the System for Cross-Domain Identity Management, SCIM, to a CRUD REST framework that Workspace ONE UEM can interpret. This capability allows Workspace ONE UEM to synchronize cloud-based identity resources (users/groups/entitlements) without the need for an LDAP endpoint (service to service model). Examples include Azure AD, Okta, and Sailpoint.

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Flowgate

The Flowgate fling is all about linking IT & Facility systems with each other.

In enterprise data centers, IT infrastructure and facility are generally managed separately, which leads to information gaps. Collaboration between facility and IT infrastructure systems are limited or manual, and virtualization adds more complexity.

The goal of Flowgate is to make facility awareness in IT management system and make IT operations management and automation better on high availability, cost saving and improved sustainability, with more information on power, cooling, environment (e.g. humidity, temperature) and security.

Built-in adapter for multiple DCIM and CMDB system integration:

  • Nlyte
  • PowerIQ
  • Infoblox
  • Labsdb
  • IBIS(TODO)
  • Pulse IoT Center (TODO)
  • Open for other facility system integration

Built-in adapter for multiple IT stack systems:

  • vCenter Server
  • vRealise Operation Manager
  • Open for other IT stack integration. More systems will coming soon.

 

  • UI based Integration process: One click integration.
  • Role based access control: API level access control support.
  • RESTFul API support: Provide unified facility information querying services. APIs for all operations and data query make it easy to integrate with other systems.

Updated flings

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USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

Are you building an awesome homelab but received some funky USB Network adapters? The USB Network Native Driver for ESXi might just have the correct drivers for you.

Changelog

June 17, 2019 – v1.1

  • Added support for 9 additional USB NIC devices including USB 2.0 RTL8152 & TPLINK (see Requirements page for complete list)
  • Added support for Jumbo Frames (up to 4K) for RTL8153 & AX88179
    ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-24524132-offline_bundle-13958648.zip
    ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-24599816-offline_bundle-13964320.zip

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HCIBench

HCIBench is one of two benchmarking utilities that received an update.

Changelog

Version 2.1

  • Switched UI to dark theme
  • Redesigned VMDK preparation methodology, which can complete much faster using RANDOM on deduped storage
  • Added VMDK preparation process update
  • Added Graphite port check into prevalidation
  • Added vCenter/Host password obfuscation
  • Added “Delete Guest VM” button
  • Fixed Grafana display issue
  • Fixed FIO blank results issue
  • Bug fixes
    MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.1.ova: d37e6f164ed962a6e7ccbe104ba9eaec

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IOBLazer

It looks like the IOBlazer fling was first released in 2014(!!!!) as a tool to benchmark all kinds of storage systems. Since I haven’t posted about it here yet let me give you the overview:

IOBlazer is a multi-platform storage stack micro-benchmark. IOBlazer runs on Linux, Windows and OSX and it is capable of generating a highly customizable workload. Parameters like IO size and pattern, burstiness (number of outstanding IOs), burst interarrival time, read vs. write mix, buffered vs. direct IO, etc., can be configured independently. IOBlazer is also capable of playing back VSCSI traces captured using vscsiStats. The performance metrics reported are throughput (in terms of both IOPS and bytes/s) and IO latency.

IOBlazer evolved from a minimalist MS SQL Server emulator which focused solely on the IO component of said workload. The original tool had limited capabilities as it was able to generate a very specific workload based on the MS SQL Server IO model (Asynchronous, Un-buffered, Gather/Scatter). IOBlazer has now a far more generic IO model, but two limitations still remain:

  1. The alignment of memory accesses on 4 KB boundaries (i.e., a memory page)
  2. The alignment of disk accesses on 512 B boundaries (i.e., a disk sector).

Both limitations are required by the gather/scatter and un-buffered IO models.

A very useful new feature is the capability to playback VSCSI traces captured on VMware ESX through the vscsiStats utility. This allows IOBlazer to generate a synthetic workload absolutely identical to the disk activity of a Virtual Machine, ensuring 100% experiment repeatability.

Changelog

Updates in IOBlazer 1.01:

  • Added configurable IO alignment
  • Increased the robustness of the trace file parser in the face of spurious lines
  • Increased the robustness of the build process by automatically detecting target OS and arch within the Makefile
  • In the Windows version, changed the raw access mode from volume to physical drive to avoid unnecessary mount/unmount operations at every test run.

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Horizon DaaS Migration Tool

The Horizon DaaS Migration Tool is for the Horizon DaaS providers to migrate their customers to the latest version of Horizon DaaS.

Changelog

Version 2.1.0

  • Fix for the bug on “Requested Capacity” at the pool/assignment summary page showing inappropriate values.
  • Intelligently handling import of new VMs skipping previously imported VMs.

Runecast Analyzer: now with automated HCL checks in public Beta

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DIsclaimer: I was asked to write this article but don’t gain any returns from. All tekst except for the quote are mine and my opinion.

Three years ago, at my very first VMworld I met a couple of guys at the infamous @cxi party that managed get a table in the up and coming vendors section. One of them was Runecasts very own Stanimir Markov and one of his co-workers to whom I want to apologize for not remembering his name. We had a great time over there and the product they where showing was simply awesome: The Runecast Analyzer. Since that time I always make time to meet them if possible and they have become great friends of the entire vCommunity.

While I haven’t blogged about Runecast yet (shame on me!) I have been following the product ever since. I loved the addition of the Horizon checks (remember me to log about it somewhere soon please!) and today they released Runecast Analyzer version 2.7 with automated HCL checks in public beta, a feature that was in private beta in version 2.6.

excerpt from the announcement:

Following on from our recent private beta we are delighted to release our new Automated VMware HCL functionality as a public Beta to our valued Customers and new users. With this release, Runecast Analyzer checks your servers for compatibility and verifies the I/O devices within them.

The Hardware Compatibility List: VMware Best Practice #1

The VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is the definitive human-readable resource used to verify whether your ESXi servers and their internal components are supported by VMware. Ensuring your vSphere data center complies with the HCL is considered a number one best practice throughout the professional community.

The HCL contains thousands of devices – it lists the tested and supported physical hardware together with the compatible software and firmware versions. Compliance with the HCL is essential, not only during the design phase and in greenfield deployments, but also throughout the whole lifecycle. The HCL is continually updated, as are server and component build versions. Keeping your environment compatible is complex and onerous, unless you deploy Runecast Analyzer to do it for you.

If you don’t know the Runecast Analyzer yet it is all about analyzing your environment, checking the log file and comparing it with the VMware knowledge base, best practices and security guidelines. Since my lab is NOT an example of following those things I have a whole lot of warnings to show you. The screenshots are still based on version 2.6 so some things might be changed in 2.7.

On the left side just under the middle you’ll see a menu item for HW Compatibility against the vSphere version it is running. Small disclaimer: the hardware in my homelab are HP Gen 7’s (and a gen 6 that isn’t connected atm) from the stone age. This is immediately visible when you open it. The count under I/O devices is not the amount of errors but the amount of I/O devices, something you’ll see later.

When I select one of the servers you get this screen showing some of the first issues.

I already pointed the team to the fact that this shows the hardware to be compatible up to 6.0u3 but also says that there is no match for vSphere 6.* or higher. While this might not be fixed in the 2.7 release it hopefully will be in the future. Now let’s select the I/O devices tab.

As you see it’s only the raid controller that is not on the HCL while the four NIC’s are still okay. It is possible to open the I/O item, so you can see more details about it and what versions are supported.

For me the Runecast Analyzer products is getting better and better and I will keep advocating them to my customers. Some already have their own matrices of software and hardware compatibility for for a lot this would be an excellent addition.

If you want to test the Runecast Analyzer yourself than please sign up over here: https://portal.runecast.com/registration vExperts get a special treatment so check vmtn for what to do or contact me for the details.

 

Small recap of the Belgian VMUG meet on 14-06-2019

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Last Friday it was time for my annual trip tot he Belgian vmug meeting. I consider this my home vmug away from home and have been visiting for years. This was the first time I could give back in Belgium since Hans & mine session was accepted in the call for papers.

Our session

Right after the keynote (from which we sadly had to miss a couple of minutes to get setup) we did our presentation in front of about 22-23 people in the attick of the building. Just like at the Dutch vmug we did it about flings & tools for Vmware Horizon. Luckily we could do some of our demo’s locally because the wifi & 4G weren’t delivering a good speed to connect to our labs.One thing is for sure we did the session in the brightest manner ever.

If you are interested in the slidedeck we partially used you can find it here.

Other sessions

Firts of all the keynote by Joe Baguley was great as always. His vision on how things works or should be done has been evolving over the years but always seems to around the same lines. The 2nd keynote bij Johan van Amersfoor about VDI by day,compute by night wasn’t the first time I have seen this session but it’s so good that I don’t mind watching it several times.

The session about Kubernetes by Eric de Witte contained some usefull information since I haven’t done a whole lot with kubernetes yet. The last two sessions for me where Luc Dekens talking PowerCLI (what else?) and Valentin Bondzio about the computational cost of security. Luc’s session was about his style of coding and steps he takes to write codes plus a bit about working with instant clones.

Conclusion

During the day Hans and I had great fun with the people from EG Innovations and 10Zig in the exhibition area. As usual at the BE vmug the day ended with a great BBQ, those belgians do know their food! While not as big as the Dutch vmug UserCon the Belgian vmug meets are always high quality so I will beep going if my schedule allows me too and yes if needed I will take a PTO day for it.

5 things I will be looking forward to at VMworld

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This year will mark my 4th (yes only 4) trip to VMworld. With San Francisco replacing Vegas I will return to Barcelona for what should be my ‘home’ VMworld since I live in the Netherlands. This post might look a bit like last year’s 5 vCommunity tips but hey, I love the community!

  1. vFootball

    Last year I took part in the first vSoccer at VMworld US and it looks like we might be organizing a vFootball in Barcelona as well, football being the correct name for the sport obviously. On Tuesday night after the vExpert party we went to an indoor sports center where we had 2 fields that we could use for approximately two hours. We had loads of fun in there despite one injured player (he headbutted a wall and had a nasty cut in his eyebrow) my fitness level was definitely not on par but I have started preparations for this year back in January.

  2. Presenting at the vBrownbag stage.

    Just like previous years I submitted a session for vBrownbag stage it will be about a couple of VMware flings for Horizon View. I thought I also submitted for a [Code] sessions but it seems like that was official sessions so I have no idea yet about the status of that. If you think you can fill a 10-12 minute (a bit less is acceptable as well) with something even a bit related I advise you to sign up over here).

  3. Hackathon

    I have no idea yet if I will be forming my own team. If I don’t I will definitely be joining another one in having a night of great fun. It doesn’t matter if you have coding experience, just join a team when signups are opened and I can guarantee that you will learn something new.

  4. Meeting up with old and making new friends.

    One of the best things about the vCommunity is having contact with each other over the interwebz. It even gets better when you can meet in real life for the first or the gazillionth time. I don’t care if it’s in a session, while waking up with a coffee or at a party with beer in hand I always have fun talking to people. The subject doesn’t really matter, it’s all about connecting with people.

  5. learning new things

    While I take it easy with my session schedule I always look to learn new things. This could be either in the Hands-on Labs, Instructor led labs, Solutions Exchange, vBrownbag, {Code}, regular session or someone from point 4. Knowledge gaining for me doesn’t need to be tech per se. Learning how people engage customers or projects is very interesting to me.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for May 2019

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Originally I created this post with only 2 updated and one new fling. Some engineers though added two more new flings so 3 new ones and 2 have received an update. The new ones are the Distributed Trust Incident Reporting fling, vRealize Build Tools and Cloud Automation Services SDK for Python. while the Horizon Toolbox and Horizon Migration Tool have received updates.

New Releases

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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.

This Fling is focused on code quality, code reusability, unit testing, dependency management and parallel releases of vRealize projects. In practice, it is a set of Maven extensions, packaged in a Maven repository format, that support the use of IDE (via Maven) and CLI to develop, test and deliver vRA and vRO-based solutions. It includes a vRO plug-in that exposes autocomplete information for standard and third-party scripting objects and actions and CLI that can deploy packages to vRO and vRA via the standard APIs.

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Cloud Automation Services SDK for Python

The Cloud Automation Services SDK for Python is a set of Python classes to simplify automation against several aspects of the Cloud Assembly, Service Broker, and Code Stream API when using Python.

Note: The github repo will be public soon!

 

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Distributed Trust Incident Reporting

The Distributed Trust Incident Reporting fling is an  open source security incident tracker.

Security incidents are important to track so that all parties know the status of a breach and can respond in concert and with appropriate speed. Current methods to track incidents are generally paper-based manual processes. More recent systems are based on a centralized database with some web interface to interact with the record and response tracking.

We propose that this does not work well enough in the scenarios where:

  • security incidents may affect more than a single entity
  • where more than one entity must respond to an incident
  • some or all entities have no trust in the others
  • no party can or will be responsible for hosting the full system

For example, a security breach in the supply chain for a food manufacturer could result in several retail businesses with products on shelf that contain a pathogen. Current methods of notifying the proper authorities require a phone tree to call all the correct parties which then react as individuals or local committees. In addition the incident must either be initially submitted to each entity separately or one entity must take responsibility to notify the others.

This Fling:

  • allows all parties (e.g. retail, governmental, public) to see the incident via a single report transaction
  • allows all parties to respond in concert as required
  • allows automated systems to report incidents
  • allows transparency across all organizations

Updated flings

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Horizon Toolbox

The Horizon toolbox is an extension to the Horizon Admin Console giving all kinds of user and session information. It is no replacement for the Horizon Helpdesk (or the fling).

Changelog

May 28, 2019, 7.8.0

  • Fix some incompatible issues
  • Only support Horizon View 7.7 & 7.8

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Horizon Migration Tool

The Horizon Migration Tool helps you migrating from Citrix to an On-Prem Horizon Environment.

Changelog

Version 3.0.2

  • Updated the binary package and the document accordingly

[API]Resetting Desktops

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This is the first post in a series of shorts that I will be posting about various methods that you can use with the VMware Horizon API’s. This time it will be about resetting desktops. When looking at the API Explorer you’ll see that there are two ways do do this from the machine service.

So the first is for a single VDI desktop and the latter for multiple.

First we need to get a list of vm’s I will be using the machines in pod1pool02 as victims for this post.

$queryservice=new-object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn=New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.QueryEntityType="MachineNamesView"
$filter=new-object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterContains
$filter.MemberName='base.name'
$filter.Value="Pod1Pool2"
$defn.filter=$filter
$results=($queryservice.QueryService_Query($services1, $defn)).results

with this result:

From this we’ll make a variable with all of them and one with a single one

$singlevm=$results | select-object -first 1
$multiplevms=$results

Before I will reset the single VM I will show the state of all the vm’s.

($queryservice.QueryService_Query($services1, $defn)).results.base.basicstate

And now let’s reset the vm.

$services1.machine.machine_reset($singlevm.id)

Since this is an instant clone you’ll see provisioned and not reset. Now let’s reset the rest as well.

$services1.Machine.Machine_ResetMachines($multiplevms.id)

And this method will work for all managed vdi desktops full, linked or instant clones.

The VMware Labs flings monthly for March 2019

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We’re already into April that means it’s time for the flings update for March. There have been 3 updates and two new flings. I already have a blogpost about one of the updated flings: The Horizon Helpdesk Utility. The new flings are: Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool and Physical Desktop as a Thin Client. The updated ones are: vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker, vSphere HTML5 Web Client and as said earlier the Horizon Helpdesk Utility.

New Releases

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Physical Desktop as a Thin Client

Personally I don’t see the added value for this fling since there are already plenty of products that provide the functionality and you can even do it yourself with gpo’s. (and the logo is outdated as well)

A thin client is a stateless, fanless desktop terminal that has no hard drive. Thin clients provide businesses a cost-effective way to access virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI). To simplify the operation steps to access VDI, some features are embedded in thin clients.

For example:

  • Launch the RDP client default
  • Hide desktop/task bar
  • Disable system options to prevent user using other applications

And so on

This Fling will convert physical desktop as a thin client. It will restrict end-users’ behaviors when users log into physical desktops. After user logged in, Horizon view client will be launched automatically and other applications are forbidden to switch. Physical desktop will log off automatically once user exit Horizon view clients.

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Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool

The Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool helps you in migrating vIDM settings between environments.

Identity Manager Migration/Backup Tool automates the process of exporting or importing applications and entitlements from one Identity Manager instance to another. If entitlements exists, they will also be backed up to an XML file. This Fling uses Identity Manager API’s for Export, Import, Delete and applying entitlements.

Updated flings

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vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker

With the vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker you can check easily if you’re hardware is supported for VSAN.

Changelog

Version 2.1

  • Fixed the bug that firmware version of some controllers can’t be fetched

Version 2.0

  • Add 3 new checks
  • Controller is VMware certified for ESXi release
  • Controller driver is VMware certified
  • Controller firmware is VMware certified
  • Update HTML report format
  • Bug fixes

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Nuf said about this one.

Changelog

Fling 4.1.0 – Build 12518617
New Features

  • Hiding VMs in Hosts and Clusters view – A very popular desktop client feature is brought into the vSphere HTML5 client where you can go to User’s menu, select My preferences and Inventory tab from where you can show/hide VMs in Hosts and Clusters view by selecting the checkbox.
  • User’s menu -> My preferences will have additional preference options like Language, Time Zone, Console and Inventory
  • Developer Center now has API Explorer tab listing all the REST APIs exposed by vSphere SDK.
  • New layout for the feedback tool and feedback tool can be invoked even when a dialog is open on the screen. This enables taking the screenshot of the client including the dialogs. Also, feedback tool now has the ability to add screenshots, this will help you compare the features between different clients and upload the screenshots.

Improvements

  • We added the support back to 6.0 vCenters to the fling. You can now point vSphere HTML5 client fling v4.1 to 6.0 or 6.5 or 6.7 version of vCenter servers.
  • License expiration notification now is increased from 60 to 90 days and includes all the licenses
  • Evaluation License is now shown in the licenses list
  • Sorting and Filtering by License Expiration date in the Licenses list

Known Issues

  • New layout of the feedback tool has issues in the Firefox browser, so you will see old feedback tool in that browser.
  • There are some areas where feedback tool might not capture the screenshot of the dialog, like VM edit settings.

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Horizon Helpdesk Utility

For a more complete overview of the Horizon Helpdesk Utility fling so the link I posted in the intro to my previous blogpost.

Changelog

Version 1.3.3.1

  • Removed machine listings from session view (overkill)
  • Improved Environment view to include metrics on all connected infrastructure:
    • vSphere
    • Hosts
    • Datastores
    • Remote Pods
    • Events
    • Problem Machines
  • Added repeated queries for logon breakdown if missed on first instance
  • Added event query support for logon breakdown
  • Added events view for Farm and Desktop pools
  • Added inbuilt find / search to users / machines in pool views
  • Added support for multiselect in pool / farm views
  • Added graph / chart views of machines / sessions and problem machines on the environment overview
  • Added a pod switcher to the environment overview
  • Added a global search to the environment overview
  • Added support for Pod Jumping.
    • the ability to jump to a pod on demand
    • the ability to jump to a pod a session belongs to
  • Added support for an architecture view of Desktop Pools
  • Added support for an architecture view of Farms
    • Enhanced view of servers load evaluator value
  • Added bulk user tasks via pool or farm views:
    • Bulk messaging
    • Bulk log off
    • Bulk disconnect
    • Bulk reset
    • Bulk restart
  • Added support for a local pod view (AKA environment view):
    • Connection servers
    • Farms
    • Desktop pools
  • Added documentation (finally)
  • Added MSI installation support
  • Added a start time column to user sessions (this will persist as a preference)

Dutch VMUG UserCon 2019: a short recap

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Currently I am sitting behind my desk still bouncing around after a great Dutch Vmug Usercon yesterday. This was my fourth time presenting at this awesome event and every time I get a little bit better at doing so. With 11 parallel tracks in the afternoon it becomes hard not to find interesting sessions. As always content went from deep technical to marketing or even personal improvement.

My (or more our) session

As said this was the fourth time I presented at the Dutch Vmug and the second time together with my great friend Hans Kraaijeveld. Just like two years ago we had a mix of various flings and tools that could help a Horizon admin in managing their environment. We decided on skipping a couple since we already covered those two years ago or last year in my own session. They did get an honorable mention:

  • VMware OS Optimization Tool (OSOT)
  • Logon Monitor
  • PowerCLi for Horizon.

The tools we did cover are:

  • VMware Horizon Helpdesk fling
  • VMware Performance Tracker
  • VMware log bundle scripts (we still visit too many customer who don’t know about these) & analyzing them with Agent Ransack
  • Procmon

While 20 minutes is really short I think we really did manage to get the message across. We where even able to challenge to audience to present next year and answer some questions. You can find the slides to our presentation over here. This version is in Dutch but you can expect an English one since we will be giving the same presentation with some extras and hopefully live demos at the next https://vcnrw.de/ event on april 4th.

Highlights of the day

Besides our own session the highlights of the day where (re-)connecting with friends. Getting informed about new tech but also the vExpert lunch with Amy Lewis and the afternoon keynote by Jad El-Zein. The vibe during the day was awesome during the entire event!

Any negatives?

While The Fabrique is a great looking location it’s hard to find where you want to go. With a lot of smaller hallways, corners, stairs and stupid doors it sometimes became annoying. And was it just me but I would have liked to find some other softdrinks than this (delicious!) healthy stuff like a coke or something.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvSRRjEnWiG/

 

Recap of the inaugural Dutch Nutanix User Group meet

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Last Thursday we had our inaugural Nutanix User Group Meeting. After Sibo Attema said why don’t we have one in the Netherlands last fall I jumped on it and together we made sure to have a great day. Originally it was planned to take place at the new Dutch Nutanix offices but the move sadly couldn’t be completed in time so we moved to the Novotel right across the road from the old office in Hoofddorp. Out of 40 sign ups we had 26 people who showed up and that’s very good for a free and first event in my opinion. Add all the Nutanix people who dropped in and the room was packed!

This was our schedule for the day:

This doesn’t list the coffee breaks or the Login Techcast crew that paid us a visit and recorded some interviews.

Content wise I think we had a good mix of topics with the Data Science as a good alternative to to pure tech talks. It’s awesome to see what can be done with all the data we constantly generate. There was a lot of interaction with the audience which was very good to see, we also might have managed to convince a couple of people to speak at the next event. The next won’t be a full day event but most probably an afternoon somewhere in the fall.

If you are interested in presenting than please contact me or Sibo and I will always make sure that there is a free spot for someone presenting for the very first time! There is no better place to give presenting a try than at User Groups because no one will judge you on it. The worst thing to happen is that you will learn and improve!

I want to thank Martijn Bosschaart, Danielle Tomakin and Brittany Hoisington for their great support!

Some pictures:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bua53upAyWd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bua9oqoASSA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bua-Lzdgwg-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/BubFcY7gges/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/BubMggZgdFG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/BubRcqtglHj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/BubYGvhg9_j/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link