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The VMware Labs flings monthly for November 2017

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A couple of days late this time but here is your monthly dose of Flings! No new ones but seven flings have been updated by VMware labs this month. The Horizon Toolbox, vSphere HTML5 Web Client and the ESXi Embedded host client make their almost monthly appearances while at least two other received updates in a long time: Cross vCenter Vm Mobility – CLI and the VMFork for pyVmomi. The HCIBench and Desktop Watermark also received an update.

 


ESXi Embedded Host Client

By now we should all be using the embedded host Client unless you are forced by greater powers to run on some ancient version of ESXi.

Version 1.24.0 build 7119706 (Fling 19) – November 13, 2017

Minor features and bugfixes
  • GeneralFix failure to deploy OVF/OVA image with disks attached to multiple disk controllers
  • Address race condition when adding new Network Adapter to virtual machine
  • Allow datastore browser to browse VVOL datastores
  • Address timeout issue in datastore browser when client receives unknown datatypes from host
  • Address issue disabling autostart for a VM
  • Allow downloading of flat VMDK files in datastore browser
  • Show the correct VMware Tools version string in VM summary
  • Show pager in VM editor when VM has many hard disks
  • Support OVF properties with pre-defined values, showing dropdowns
  • Allow modifications of root user’s permissions
  • Support for selecting dependent PCI devices when enabling passthrough
  • Other minor bug fixes


vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Like always the HTML5 Web Client received multiple updates in November so the changelog is rather long.

Fling 3.29 – Build 7157335

New Features

  • Configure traffic filtering and marking rules on distributed port groups
  • Export and import distributed switches and distributed port groups

Improvements

  • Configure the policies of distributed port groups inside the New Distributed Port Group wizard

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an error when trying to edit the settings of VMs with failed installation or update of the VM tools
Fling 3.28 – Build 7110681

New Features

  • Configure advanced CPU Identification Mask
  • Select PVRDMA adapter type for a VM network

Improvements

  • Thanks to the fling users who gave the steps to replace the certificates for FAMI UI running at port 5490, added these instructions to v4 of “Create a new certificate for a HTML5 client fling” document

Bug Fixes

  • Licensing views should be visible for 6.0 VC/PSCs
Fling 3.27 – Build 7055108

New Features

  • Popout the Datastore File browser
  • License Details
  • View License VC assets (Read-only)

Improvements

  • Set license name in the Add License workflow

Known Issues

  • License UI might not work against 6.0 VCs, in particular Windows VCs/PSCs.
  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.


VMFork for pyVmomi

This fling has been around for a while and if you ever wanted to fork your VM’s without having to study PowerCLi then this one is for you. It has a warning that it only supports vSphere 6.0 and 6.5 and no newer releases but hey there are none yet so please use it if you like.

Changelog

Version 1.0.3

  • Fixed a bug that prevented CreateChildSpec from being referenced in versions of 6.5 of pyVmomi
  • Updated the requirement to include pyVmomi 6.5 only, up from 6.0, due to a dependency issue

Version 1.0.2

  • Bug fixes & Improvements


Desktop Watermark

Want to make sure screenshots will show that it is your Image being used then the Desktop Watermark fling can be the tool of choice. It can be used for auditing or exhibition purposes or any other way you like. And yes that type in the changelog is a straight copy/paste from the site.

Changelog

Build 1027

Addition

  • Password protection for the configuration & uninstllation


Cross vCenter VM Mobility – CLI

Ever needed to migrate or clones VM’s form one vCenter to the other while there they are not linked? then the Cross vCenter VM Mobility – CLI might be a good tool in your toolbox.

Changelog

Version 1.4

  • While migrating multiple vms with destination network option, only one vm used to get migrated.This issue has been fixed.


HCIBench

Need to benchmark a Hyperconverged Infrastructure? VDbench is one of the tools to use and VMware labs create the HCIBench to automate this tool. It received a couple of updates since my last post about it.

Changelog

Version 1.6.5.1

  • Enhanced IP segment selection
  • Set open file limit to 4096
  • Updated vm-tools to the latest version
  • Bug fixes

Version 1.6.5

  • Enhanced 95th percentile calculation.
  • Added Curve and Multi Run calculation.
  • Added SSH Service validation.
  • Replaced DHCP Service with Static IP Service.
  • Added IP conflict check.
  • Fixed bunch of bugs.
  • Change the default client VM RAM from 4GB to 8GB


Horizon Toolbox

Being an EUC guy myself this is one of my favorites. The Horizon Toolbox adds some very good tools for servicedesk and operations employees.

Changelog

2017 Nov 30

  • Add a new “Export” button to the clients table

 

Nutanix .Next 2017 Nice: My Sessions

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Intro

Last week as you’ll probably already have seen I was at the Nutanix .Next 2017 Europe event in Nice, France. During this amazing event, I visited several sessions going from sales talks, via an NDA session to a deep dive. In this post, I will try to give a bit more information about the sessions I followed as far as I can do.

Disclaimer: this overview is based on notes written during the session and my memory and since specially the latter is not failsafe they could be some untrue things in this post. Please send the feedback directly to me so I can adjust them. Also, I don’t have equal amounts of text about all sessions because nothing is equal.

Nice disclaimer, right? This was just if the disclaimer all presenters had to read before starting their sessions. On screen, there was an even bigger one equally to the one showed during the keynote’s.

Index

These where the sessions that I followed:

Dell-EMC: 6 rules of disruption

VMware VDI On Nutanix

NX Files (NDA)

SOS Troubleshooting Nutanix

Puppet

Calm Deep dive

[sta_anchor id=”sixrules” /]

The six rules of disruption

While this clearly is a sponsored session only the middle part was commercial. Before and after that it was about those six rules and what they are according to them. I will give a bit more explanation about them that also might include my own opinion about them.

  • The interface is everywhere
    • It is, just think of your smartphone, Google home, an Echo dot or maybe your home thermostat. Everything has an interface these days. While voice commands where hard years back it has become really mature these days on some of those devices.
  • Remove the friction
    • If something doesn’t work flawlessly users will not accept it and the product will fail. Same with doing business, if it gets hard for a customer to do business with you they will go away and take their business somewhere else.
  • Prepare for abundance
    • With this they say that we should prepare for more and more data. Everything will have a sensor in the future, from the floor you walk on, trough the shoes you walk with up to the hat you have on your head. This will need to be handled somewhere.
  • Embrace non-linearity
    • With this they try to say we shouldn’t keep thinking the same way. Change needs and will happen and if you refuse to change you will lose.
  • Be honest
    • If you are not honest this will haunt you. In a world where a single tweet can bring down companies being dishonest might result in that tweet.
  • Be curious
    • If you don’t keep pioneering and developing yourself there is no way forward. If companies keep doing the same repeatedly they will fail in the end. Same with people, if I never learned anything new or would never think outside of the box I would have been unemployed for years already.

This was a fun session to follow and while the 6 points ‘coincidentally’ are generally the direction Nutanix is going they are also what lots of people see happening in the (near) future.

[sta_anchor id=”vmwarevdi” /]

VMware VDI on Nutanix

This session was meant to be presented by Brian Suhr but he managed to brake his leg the week before so he was replaced by Kees Baggerman of Nutanix and VCDX-DTM Sean Massey. I had to sit in front because I big mouthed Angelo Luciano to sit up front and Sean made me take his place. Me always with my big mouth. While a lot of the content in this session was already known to me it was good to see some of my knowledge once more confirmed and they presented us with some figures I would never have guessed. I always knew that optimizing an image is required but up to 50% performance was new to me. Also, they gave numbers to prove that data locality is essential for VDI. I can’t remember the exact numbers but there was a big difference with or without shadow clones enabled. This was a very good session that showed the audience on how to design a good working VMware View environment on Nutanix.

[sta_anchor id=”nxfiles” /]

NX Files

Since this was an NDA session there’s not a lot I can say besides that it contained presentations about ideas and product improvements that came out of the Nutanix Internal Hackathons. Only point I have about this session that it contained code samples that where hard to read since the text was too small.

[sta_anchor id=”sos” /]

SOS Troubleshooting

To start this session had some hard to read blue titles in the PowerPoint and too small text size ssh session screens. Content wise this session was about the tools you can use to manage and troubleshoot your Nutanix Environment like the alerting services, NCC, syslog, Pulse and Prism analysis. Further it went deeper into the thought process and framework required for successful troubleshooting.

Some of the key takeaways from this session where that an admin should always run NCC before logging a case. Also, Pulse should be enabled where possible and allowed. This sends only relevant information to Nutanix that contains no IP or data. This was a great session with heaps of technical information.

[sta_anchor id=”puppet” /]

Puppet

The presenter for this session introduced himself as an engineer but the first five minutes sounded commercial. Luckily, I had an excuse to escape since Sean Massey asked me to record a podcast about automating Horizon View with PowerCLI

[sta_anchor id=”calm” /]

Calm deep dive

Again, this was a good session to follow. Some of it might have been lost on me but Calm looks to be an awesome and easy tool to use. The real nerds will be able to dig deep into it though and can connect it to any automation tool already in use and can even create the json config files automatically using other tooling. Calm itself consists of two docker systems running on Prism Central, by default it will be disabled but once enabled (and maybe the ram for the Prism Central server(s) is expanded it will give access to just about anything you want to automate ranging from PowerShell to SSH, batch or the programming language you might prefer.

Nutanix .Next Europe report Day 2

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Disclaimer: this post was written between 6 am and 7 am without having access to coffee.

So, that was the second and last day of .Next Europe 2017. The rush from day one continued with a great keynote where Nutanix launched their vision on how to handle IoT. The keynote itself started with the outtakes of yesterday’s clapping video which was funny and had a lot of beeps because of all the profanity.

Back to the IoT, within no-time there will be three billion devices but probably more that need to send their data somewhere. This will be way too much to send to the cloud. Nutanix will process this data in the edge and only send the valuable stuff to the cloud. For this even container are too big and even smaller entities will be handling that data. Sherlock is what Nutanix named this functionality and it will handle IoT devices as first-class objects and we will literally go from webscale to planet scale computing.

After this the CEO of Hyperloop came on stage to talk about the progress they have been making. Personally, I really see a future for this tech but I doubt if it can be done as cheap and as safe as what he is saying. The keynote needed with a tale about machine learning with a comparison of Big Blue beating the best chess player in the world years back by brute force to the best Go player in the world being beaten by using machine learning.

The second day of .Next I only did two break-out sessions. The first one was about troubleshooting and the tools and thought paths needed for that. The second one was a deep dive on Calm where we were shown all the bells and whistles wat can be really done with Nutanix’ new automation tool. I ended up in a 3rd session but it started with five minutes of sales crap so I was happy to escape so I could record a podcast with Sean Massey about Horizon View & PowerCLI.

The closing keynote was just awesome. There was some other thing being told but it was all about one of the good causes that Nutanix has been sponsoring during the .Next conference: Not Impossible. This is all about helping people and all started with CEO Mike Ebeling telling the family of a graffiti artist that he would make him able to draw again. Having no idea on how to tackle this he gathered a bunch of mad scientists and ended up doing it with cheap hardware and open source software; The Eyewriter. Their second project was project Daniel where he decided to create a cheap way to make artificial limps for a victim of the fighting in Sudan that had both his arms amputated. He developed techniques so the people in the refugee camps would be able to help each other with cheap 3d printers so artificial limbs went from 1000’s of dollars to 100’s of dollars.

With both these stories it was clear that Mike struck a nerve with the audience because at the end of his talk he received a well-deserved standing ovation. After this Nutanix announced the gathered a combined $11.000 for all four good causes: Not Impossible, Girls in Tech, Movember and the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Centre

Nutanix .Next Europe report Day 1

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To repeat an earlier phrase: ooooh what a rush. Yesterday was a great day in a perfectly named Acropolis where Nutanix is holding its second .Next Europe. Being one of the 2200 attendants in an atmosphere that really feels vibrant is awesome. Due to security and busses leaving late from hotels the Keynote (with my mugshot in there since I am a Nutanix Technology Champion) began 15 minutes late but made up that lost time by ending 45 minutes late. The only other point about the keynote was that it went a lightning speed. As techs, we managed to follow everything but I am 100% sure that a lot of people didn’t manage that.

In here we saw some new features of the 5.5 release, new tools and performance charts that are just unbelievable. The fact that they did demos on stage made it even better. The key thing from the keynote for me is that everything will be about simplicity. If apps/tools can’t be consumed very easily they will never be as successful as apps that are and the mantra of More Tea Less Clicks will probably appeal to everyone although some people might name it More Life Less Clicks or More Beers Less clicks.

Due to the keynote running late I missed my first session about xtract since I really wanted to visit with my fellow NTC’s at our lunch. It was good to finally meet the people behind the names with Sudheesh Nair making a surprise visit. He was almost literally pulled from the hallway by Angelo Luciano when he walked by.

My first session was from Dell about the six rules of disruption. This session told an obvious story with a little bit of product marketing in between. Nothing too much but hey a vendor has to sell so things, right? The second session I did was a Horizon View on Nutanix session. This was supposed to be done by Brian Suhr but he broke his leg last week so Sean Massey (VCDX-DTM) and Kees Baggeman had to replace him. They had some good takeaways and performance tips and tricks for the audience. Both sessions will be covered more extensively in a later post. I will not be able to do that with my last sessions since this was an NDA session with new tools and features that might or might not end up in final products presented by the engineers who created them at one of the Nutanix Hackathons.

The evening keynote started with a small fireside chat about politics and economics and how they influence each other. After this Fabian Cousteau came on stage for a very inspiring talk about the sea and how it impacts everything on our world. He had a very good tale and awesome videos to show. I visited the reception at the convention floor for a short while but did not go to the party. I was getting tired and since I am not really a party person I probably would have left early anyway. I saw some pictures that they had a big tent at the beach and that was food since there was a good thunderstorm when I left the venue.

Updated and new VMware Labs Flings for Oktober 2017

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“Listen very carefully; I shall say this only once.”

Even after years this for me is one of the best quotes from any comedy series. Allo Allo always was so much fun to watch even though it looks pregistoric these days in video quality. For the people who don’t know Allo Allo please check out Michell from the resistance saying it herself over here. This months version of this post has two new flings and two updated ones. As almost always the vSphere HTML5 Web Client makes an appearance with the Horizon Toolbox as secondant, as you can see they have dropped the version number for the toolbox. New ones are the Blockchain on vSphere and the Desktop Watermark.

[sta_anchor id=”new” unsan=”New” /]

New Flings

[sta_anchor id=”watermark” unsan=”Watermark” /]

Desktop Watermark

Desktop Watermark is a Windows native application that adds a watermark to a desktop for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) auditing or exhibition purposes. A watermark has the ability to be visible or invisible. Invisible watermarks, seen in the screenshot, can be revealed by a tool bundled in the Fling. The tool should be configured by an administrator and enforced on the end user’s desktop.

Changelog
Build 1019
Issue Fixes
  • Windows 10 – Installation failure on some machine with domain account
  • Issue fix – Windows 10 – During uninstallation the service is not automatically stopped

[sta_anchor id=”blockchain” unsan=”Blockchain” /]

Blockchain on vSphere

Blockchain is an emerging technology which has been gaining traction globally throughout the past few years. Industries like finance, logistics, and IoT are actively working on research and pilot projects using blockchain.

Fabric is a sub project under Hyperledger (a LinuxFoundation project), it is probably the most mature blockchain solution available now for business use cases.

The mission of Blockchain on vSphere is to provide an end-to-end blockchain solution, from IaaS, to Blockchain platform and Blockchain applications. It allows organizations to quickly collaborate and evaluate the new business models and processes by using the decentralized blockchain technology.

By using BoV, blockchain developers can quickly set up an environment to build and test their blockchain applications.

Changelog

Not yet

[sta_anchor id=”updated” unsan=”Updated” /]

Updated Flings

[sta_anchor id=”toolbox” unsan=”Toolbox” /]

Horizon Toolbox

Good old Horizon toolbox as said dropped its version number but continues to give you some features that the regular View Admin doesn’t have. Auditing on client versions, snapshots, usage and others are the great additions this tool gives.

Changelog

2017 Oct 12

  • Auditing – Clients are enhanced
  • Horizon 7.3.1 is supported
  • Some bugs are fixed

[sta_anchor id=”webclient” /]

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

What do I need to say about this one? Just update you’re existing version and enjoy this almost perfect vSphere client.

Changelog
Fling 3.26 – Build 6984758

New Features

  • License Products Details
  • Add New License action

Improvements

  • Enhanced the performance of the Datastore File Browser

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.
Fling 3.25 – Build 6929189

New Features

  • Edit the properties and policies of distributed ports
  • Licenses list
  • License Products list (Read-only)
  • Rename and Remove License action
  • You can now deploy VM from a VM template by choosing New VM wizard > Deploy from template > Data center tab

Improvements

  • Rescan storage action is done in parallel when is executed on Cluster or Datacenter level
  • Replication groups can be managed through Edit VM Storage Policy action
  • Showing the number of pending upload sessions and size uploaded in Datastore File Browser

Bug Fixes

  • Template icon missing issue is resolved
  • After creating some Tags or accessing the Content Library and leaving the H5 client idle, the UI starts to spin and fails to display requested info. The following error starts to appear constantly: “The query execution timed out because of a back-end data adapter ‘com.vmware.vise.data.adapters.core.DataServiceCoreAdapter’”. This bug is fixed in this release and the time out error should no longer appear.

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.
Fling 3.24 – Build 6862396

New Features

  • Ability to customize all network properties, incl. default gateways, when applying GOS customization spec to a VM (during cloning or customizing GOS on existing VM)
  • Add NVMe controller for an existing VM or for a new VM

Improvements

  • Enhanced Compatibility details view in VM provisioning wizards

Known Issues

  • Fling appliances pointed to vCenter 6.5 seems to have timeout issues. These issues are being investigated and are not related to fling itself. In some cases, restart the Fling Appliance could solve this problem
  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.

New and updated VMware flings for September 2017

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Intro

No WWE quotes,clips or sounds this month. So here I am reporting from couch central that there have been three updated flings in September. One steady name in this monthly post has been the vSphere HTML5 Web client but don’t underestimate the VMware OS Optimization Tool that is been in here a couple of times already as well. A new name is the Horizon Migration Tool, while it’s been there for quite some time it doesn’t get a lot of updates but it gets them and that’s awesome.

New Flings

None, nada, nothing, you can’t expect to have a new one every month do you?

Updated Flings

[sta_anchor id=”horizonmigrationtool” unsan=”Horizon_Migration_Tool”]Horizon Migration Tool[/sta_anchor]

The Horizon Migration Tool has been created to help companies migrate from Citrix to Horizon View.

Changelog

Version 3.0.0

  • Supports Citirx to Horizon 7.2 migration
  • Added Citrix PVS Desktop pool migration to Horizon 7.2
  • Added Citrix Dedicate MCS Desktop Pool migraiton to Horizon 7.2 as manual pool, linked-clone pool or instant clone pool
  • Fixed Bug: XenApp applications with customerized path includes spaces will migrate properly.

[sta_anchor id=”osot”]VMware OS Optimization Tool[/sta_anchor]

Like I said before the VMware OS Optimization Tool  is THE tool to use when you want (and you need to!) optimize any Golden Image. No matter if it’s build for VDI,RDS or even physical desktops this is THE go to tool for that.

Changelog

September 20, 2017

  • Supports new mode for optimization item: display-only
  • Supports more easy information retrieval. For example, installed product version, service current status

[sta_anchor id=”html5webclient”]vSPhere HTML5 Web Client[/sta_anchor]

Clearly the vSphere HTML5 Web Client is getting a lot of updates. In the August version of this post the newest was 3.20 while we’re at 3.23 at the moment. I will give all updates, fixes and known issues since then.

Changelog
Fling 3.23 – Build 6682372

New Features

  • Download folder from the File Browser

Improvements

  • DRS groups can be filtered by member.
  • Replication group are shown on the VM Storage Policy portlet

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.
Fling 3.22 – Build 6613965

New Features

  • The list of software packages installed on a host can be viewed (for ESXi version 6.5)
  • Edit Video Card information for a VM

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed few bugs related to snapshots

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.
Fling 3.21 – Build 6555866

New Features

  • Create and edit VM customization specifications with custom network configurations
  • Edit/Clone Storage Policy Component
  • Datastore capability sets (Datastore > Configure > Capability sets)
  • Create, edit and delete Link Aggregation Groups on Distributed Switches

Improvements

  • Confirmation on logout when there is upload file task in progress
  • Quick filter is introduced in the network selection dialog at Edit VM Settings > Network Adapter > Browse. It replaces the per-column filtering.
  • Enable/disable IPv6 on ESXi hosts.
  • Shares information is now available on Resource Allocation views for clusters and resource pools.
  • ESXi hardware health: when deployed against 6.5 vCenter, timestamps for sensor readings are displayed.

Bug Fixes

  • Cluster > Monitor > vSphere HA > Heartbeat now displays the actual set of datastores used by HA (used to display only the user-configured datastores)

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.

VMworld EU 2017 Day 2

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Holy Guacamole (say that loud, sounds good) what a rush VMworld has been so far for me. After the keynote I was one of the guests on the vExpert daily show which is just a chat about VMworld so far,w hat you expect and any new stuff. The most fun we had was with my answer on my favorite taste of icecream: smurfs.

I did a couple of breakouts today. Both have been about Horizon, one was a good overview about the new stuf to expect from VMware and the other a real deep dive into the Blast Extreme protocol. That one helped me a lot about understanding what happens with it. Later in the afternoon I did a quick hands on lab and a couple of vBrownbag sessions. This was before getting a tour at the Mare Nostrum Supercomputer site. This is the 13th fastest in the world and it was really nice to see how this is build. An even more fun part where the old systems they used in the past over there. I will add some pictures of that in a couple of days.

The evening it was time for the Kaiser Chiefs but after a couple of songs and more beers I decided to tap out and head back to the hotel. Stepcount for the day was 16077.

VMworld EU 2017 Day -1

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Oooooh what a rush! is a good way to describe monday aka day 1 of VMworld 2017. I started out by waking up early after a night of bad sleep and not feeling well the night before BUT i really felt refreshed and good so I was totally ready to head out for my first ever vcap deploy exam (vcap6-dtm deploy). I failed it with 228 where 300 is required but afterwards I did feel good about it any now have the general idea on how these exams actually go. As others have said before time is a big issue but next time I will be even more prepared for that so I am confident I am going to ace it.

In the afternoon I did one of three scheduled UX feedback sessions for the VMware Design studio. These sessions are not on the regular schedule but you had to know people that knew people who could send out invites, something the vExpert slack channel managed to do! In these sessions they show you mockups of possible User interfaces and you are asked to think out loud about what you would expect buttons to do or where you could find something. I already did a webex session for this in the spring for the html5 client and they really appreciate whatever you say.

The end at the venue for me was a workshop on Cloud foundation where I seemed to be the only one having major performance issues. This made the experience not that good for me but I still got a good general impression of the product.

So the real rush was the Hackathon in the evening. The event was organised but VMware Code was something I was really looking forward to. I ended up with a Dutch team with Hans Kraaijeveld, Ivan de Mes, Niels Geursen Pascal van de Bor and myself. Our target for the evening was having fun, learning new stuff, drink beers and to add some new plugins to the Horizon View vCheck.

One of the scoring points was the amount of empty beer bottles on your table. We drank quite a few of them but they kept cleaning them out so we ended up with this table at the end. That might have cost us some points! I think for the complete team we actually managed all of our goals but because we had major issues getting an environment up and running we ended up creating only two extra plugins and fixed some issues in other ones. We even did two Github pull requests by Pascal and Niels for which Niels actually had to create his account first.

In the end we had a 90 second time slot to present about what we archived. We didn’t do any fancy powerpoint crap for this and just showed the result from the plugins we added to the check and telling a bit about it. Sadly we didn’t get first, second or third place but I did win a judges spot price in the form of an Amazon Echo Dot. That might have been because me wearing my UX design studio shirt and one of the judges being on that VMware team OR it might have been our bribes in the form of stroopwafels. This event I think might be the very best thing I do this VMworld and it hadn’t even really started!

 

New and updated VMware flings for August 2017

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Intro

(For those of you who ever watch or used to watch WWE think: New Age Outlaws. For those who never did watch this from about 1:40.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, nerds of all ages. Retouw.nl proudly brings to you, the monthly  VMware Labs updated Fliiiiings. The new, the updated change logs and all.

“And if you ain’t down with that I got two words for ya: read it!”

This month we had two new flings and six updated including a dinosaur that I even forgot it existed!

New Flings

vRealize Operations Export tool

Ever felt the need to export all of that vRops data because you don’t trust the recommendations it makes for you? This is your chance to do just that. The vRealize Operations Export Tool actually is an Open Source Fling and can be found on Github. If you want to know more about the VMware Open Source initiative visiting this site might be usefull.

Changelog

No changelog yet.

DRS Dump Insight

While DRS Lens already gives you some insight in why DRS actions might be happening the DRS Dump Insight actually uses drmdump files created on vCenter and analyses why a DRS action really happened or not and you can also run what-if scenarios to see what would happen if a threshold had been breached.

Changelog

Again no changelog yet.

Updated flings

Like I said 6 updated flings and let’s start with the Dinosaur you (like me) might have forgotten.

Visual Esxtop

WHAT? Yes Visual Esxtop has been updated! Duncan wrote about this over four years ago and I believe it might actually be older then that. The name says enough, this shows you the output from ESXtop in a graphical way and since I can never ever describe it better then Duncan head over there to read about it!

Changelog

I could copy the only changelog item but since that mentions vSphere 5.5 I think this might be an old one 🙂

ESXi Embedded Host Client

The ESXi Embedded Host client is in the GA product since 6.x but there’s still lab updates being released. Some very nice fixes have been implemented.

Changelog

Version 1.23.0 build 6360286 (Fling 18) – August 16, 2017

Minor features and bugfixes

  • General
    • Display the VM List in the Host autostart settings
    • Fix role selection in IE 11
    • Correct partition info portlet
    • Better handling of unknown partition types
    • Fix issue with fractional cores per socket in VM settings
    • Several wizard fixes
    • Remove persistent warning when importing VMs that include a floppy drive
    • Fix hidden selection when using the ‘select all’ checkbox in a filtered VM list
    • Handle OVAs with a missing description field
    • Available NICs display correctly
    • Default VMFS to the most recent version when formatting
    • Security fixes

VMware OS Optimization Tool

This is THE go to application if it comes to building golden images for VDI or SBC environments. If it is Horizon or Citrix if you don’t optimize you will fail!

Changelog

August 2, 2017

  • New Template: App Volumes Packaging Machine – This template is intended to be used by Application Packagers who are responsible for creating AppStacks and should only be used on the ‘Packaging machine’.

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

The HTML5 client  got a couple of updates with heaps of new features and bugfixes.

Changelog

Fling 3.20 – Build 6433743

New Features

  • Installed I/O Filters for Cluster and Host
  • Create and configure network resource pools in Network I/O Control v3

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed exception when navigating to VM summary page and configuring VM overrides: “Could not fetch query binding: com.vmware.vsphere.client.clusterui.model.services.VmFailureResponsesData”

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.

Fling 3.19 – Build 6365405

New Features

  • Add host and client USB device to a VM
  • Add USB controller
  • Assign License action on VC/Cluster/Host
  • Edit/Clone VM Storage Policy
  • Edit Storage Policies of a VM (Actions > VM Policies > Edit VM Storage Policies…)
  • Storage Policy components view
  • Create/Delete Storage Policy components
  • Related VM Templates view for a Storage Policy
  • Mount VVOL datastore action
  • VVOL Capability Profiles Capacity portlet
  • Create and edit VM customization specifications (without custom network configurations)
  • Configure per disk option on Select storage page when cloning VM/template
  • Host lists can be sorted by consumed CPU and memory
  • Monitoring DRS memory utilization for clusters allows switching between active and consumed memory for the charts
  • Updated UI of the compatibility issues dialog in the migrate wizard – ability to sort the compatibility by VM, host or compatibility issue

Bug Fixes

  • The list of physical network adapters didn’t render correctly for some ESX hosts and an error message was appearing on the top of the page
  • Setting the DRS advanced option “PercentIdleMBInMemDemand” through the advanced settings now works for any value

Known Issues

  • If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps:
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA.
    • If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.
  • If you see this error when you click on the VM – “Could not fetch query binding: com.vmware.vsphere.client.clusterui.model.services.VmFailureResponsesData cause: java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not fetch query binding: com.vmware.vsphere.client.clusterui.model.services.VmVmcpSupportData”, collaps the HA portlet in the VM summary. We are working on fixing this.

HCIBench

HCIBench is a tool to test your hyperconverged infrastructure. No vSan required, any HCI is good as long as it runs vSphere.

Changelog

Version Version 1.6.3

  • Enhanced vSANPerformanceDiagnose function call
  • Enhanced port 443 validation
  • Enhanced results calculation
  • Added host maintenance mode validation
  • Added deployment validation

Horizon Toolbox

This one came out at the very last moment of August. Some bugs have been fixed and a couple of old features that had been removed have been re-added but have been marked deprecated.

Changelog

2017-Aug-31 Horizon Toolbox 7.2.1

Bugs fixed

  • Auditing – Export CSV failed
  • Console Access – Some vCenter versions were not supported. Now, almost all vCenter versions after 5.5 are supported.
  • Console Access – “Parent VMs” show all VMs. Now only the VMs which are (or ready to be) parent VMs are shown.
  • Installation sometimes failed due to Tomcat error. Now, the installation should be successful every time if the Connection Server is good.

New Features

  • Console Access – “Problem VMs” show the VMs with View Agent, but in abnormal status like “error”, “unavailable” or others.

The following features are added back since some customers strongly require these features, but they are marked as “deprecated”, since we suggest using the production features in Horizon or VIDM.

  • Management- Remote Assistance
  • Management- Device Access Filter

VMworld EU Hackaton join me to have some View vCheck fun!

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So for a long time I have been looking forward to the VMworld EU Hackaton. The announcement has now been made and it will take place on Monday evening the 11th from 6pm to officially 10pm but my guess is that it might run a little longer 😉 It will be held at the Valkiria Hub Space and you can join as a member of mine or another team or as spectator, just schedule the right session in the schedule builder.

My Team

So I have signed up to lead a team to improve and expand the Horizon View vCheck I have been building. Since this probably also wil involve the Horizon View Community module I wouldn’t be too surprised if improvements will be made to that as well.

Who am I looking for?

For my team i don’t care how much experience you have with PowerCLI or Horizon view but it might be handy if you at least have some idea when we talk about it. Just bring your laptop and if we end up having learned something by the end of the night it has been a success for me!

Do I need something installed on my laptop?

Yes, make sure PowerCLI (at least 6.5) has been installed and your favorite script editor. I will prepare the connection brokers, composers and other vm’s on my laptop.

Anything else?

Just have fun!