Search Results for: horizon

New and updated VMware flings for july 2017

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Intro

I decided to make this almost monthly post a bit wider and just post updates and new releases of all flings in that month. There are four flings that have been updated at least once this month.

New Flings

There has been one new release this month:

DRS Lens

During the development fase at some point DRS Lens was named DRS Goggle so if you talk to me irl it might be possible that I call it that way. What this Flings does is give you insight in DRS activity. In several dashboards it will help the user visualize why DRS did or maybe didn’t move those vm’s you are so attached to.

As VMware vSphere DRS has become more widely adopted now, more and more users are interested in knowing how it works. They need more insights into DRS activity and actions. They want to know the value that DRS provides to their clusters. DRS Lens is an attempt to provide a UI-based solution to help understand DRS better.

DRS Lens provides a simple, yet powerful interface to highlight the value proposition of vSphere DRS. Providing answers to simple questions about DRS will help quell many of the common concerns that users may have. DRS Lens provides different dashboards in the form of tabs for each cluster being monitored.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Added login compatibility to 5.5 vCenter
  • Fixed VC certificate parsing bug found with some 5.5 vCenters

Updated flings

These Flings have received one or more updates during this month.

Horizon Toolbox 2

The Horizon toolbox 2 has been updated to version 7.2 and since Horizon 7.2 itself now contains a Remote Assistance feature in the helpdesk part this has been removed from the fling. This is stil one of my favorite flings that has functionality that should be in Horizon itself!

Changelog

2017 Jul 17

New Features

  • Support Horizon 7.2. Horizon Toolbox uses the same version as the latest supported Horizon.
  • Support end users’ actions auditing (agent side), including USB storage, Client Drive Redirection and Clipboard.
  • Support vSphere Console Access to all Parent Images.

Bug Fixes

  • Fix one bug which caused the number of concurrent sessions not accurate.
  • Fix one bug which caused missed domains in login page.

Removed Features

  • Remote Assistance is part of Horizon 7.2 production (in Help Desk). So we have removed this feature from Horizon Toolbox.

vSphere html5 web client

The updates for this really great fling don’t get a date but a build number. I could find that 3.16 was released early July so I decided to take that one as the oldest for the changelog of the vSphere html5 web client.

Changelog

Fling 3.18 – Build 6163115

Improvements

  • Upgrade distributed switch wizard now supports the upgrade of LACP to Enhanced mode and the upgrade of Network I/O Control to version 3.
  • View settings of link aggregation groups on a distributed switch

Fling 3.17 – Build 6088028

New Features

  • Create VM Storage Policy (limited)
    • Migrate Host Networking to a Distributed Switch
    • Configure default gateway address on VMkernel adapters (ESX 6.5 only)
    • Network I/O Control v3 – configure shares, reservation and limit for the different types of system traffic
    • Customize hardware options when cloning VM or deploying VM from template
    • Create VVol Storage Policies

Improvements

  • Warn when about to edit the settings or perform snapshot operations on VM managed by a solution
  • Warning message when uploading files bigger than the datastore free space

Known Issues

  • Import Item into Content Library is not working.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed the bug on import workflow in content library

Fling 3.16 – Build 5956761

New Features

  • Create VM Storage Policy (limited)
    • Create vSAN Policy (without Tags)
    • Create Policy with Tags and Common rules
  • Distributed Switch
    • Manage physical network adapters at the host level
    • LACP support – view the link aggregation groups created on a distributed switch
    • Upgrade distributed switch wizard
  • SR-IOV support – enable/disable SR-IOV on physical network adapters that support it
  • Content Library
    • Tags, notes, subscription/Publication portlet
    • Edit settings on the content library
    • Delete Content Library
    • Synchronize Library

Improvements

  • Select TCP/IP stack while creating new VMkernel network adapter

Known Issues

  • Import Item into Content Library is not working.

HCIBench

HCIBench is a tool developed for benchmarking the hyper-converged infrastructure. It not only works for VSAN but for all kinds of hyper-converged solutions. Again this tool has no build date but version but the Internet Waybackmachine found for me that 1.6.1 was released back in february.

Changelog

Version 1.6.2

  • Integrated with vSAN Performance Diagnostic of vSphere_6.5U1/vSAN_6.6.1.
  • Added DHCP Service validation.
  • Added Vdbench workload profile validation.
  • Removed the root password expiration policy.
  • Changed results display to show full file names.
  • Changed easy-run calculation from host basis to disk-group basis.

Detron bloggers

These are the blogs of my Detron co-workers (people if I missed you, you know where to reach me)
Marco Nuijens mainly (SCCM): marconuijens.com
Chris Twiest (RES VIP): workspace-guru.com
Ruben Koene (Application Delivery): rubenkoene.com
Christiaan Brinkhof (Citrix): christiaanbrinkhoff.com
Bas van Kaam (Citrix CTP, Nutanix NTC): basvankaam.com
Herman Ronk : Hermanronk.nl
Kevin Leclaire (Horizon View, VMware vSphere) : Leclmaas.nl
Rob Jager (Workspace): workspaceknowledge.com
Erwin Bierens (Skype / Teams) erwinbierens.com

 

 

 

New VMware fling: View Client Resizer

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I must have missed i during the holiday season but VMware has released a new fling: the View Client Resizer. It’s a simple fling that let’s you easily select any resolution you want to check your VMware Horizon View environment on to see how it behaves. The steps below I have done on a 2-screen setup.

  1. First you go to https://labs.vmware.com/flings/view-client-resizer and download the zip file
  2. Next unpack the zip file
  3. Start the executable
  4. Start the Horizon View client and open a VDI session
  5. Push refresh in the tool and it wil show the active sessions in the pulldown menu
  6.  
  7. Click resize and the session wil go to the top left corner of the Primary monitor in that resolution.

You can pick any of the default resolutions or make one up (smartphone resolutions for example ) as long as the x is between the digits with a minimum right now it seems of 800*600

 

VMworld 2016 US Part 4 – the last one!

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So right now it’s thursday evening and here I am in my hotel room too damn tired to even go outside. VMworld is a wrap and wow it was awesome. Yesterday I had 2 more sessions. First a quick vExpert session at the Docker booth where we got a nice vExpert embroided hat.Then it was time to get the vExpert Raspberry Pi 3 at the Datrium booth. Men they had big issues on getting them in but succeeded at last so thank you very much for that! I ended with a Rubrik session with Chris Wahl that was pretty good. In the evening it was time for the biggest party of them all at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. To be honest I think the sound of the bands sucked and the music of the dj’s wasn’t good either but I had an awesome time playing all the games, talking to people ad even made a lap in 1 of the 50! Rental cars that wil probably be going back to budget with hardly any tires left.

So today was the last day and I did only 1 session and that was about troubleshooting Horizon and killed the time by doing some labs and hanging at the vBrownbag area where I learned a lot by listening to the sessions. This space just seemed to be vExpert HQ the whole week.

All in all I think this was the best way ever to experience your first VMworld. I really want to thank all vExperts for welcoming me in the community because I don’t think I would have had such an awesome experience without you guys!

Login Monitor Script & Check MK

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Last night Paul Grevink posted a nice post about the basic setup for Check MK and i am really looking forward to the rest of the series. At my current customer we are also using Check MK so i decided to use the script I made for the VMware Login monitor fling to give output usable for Check MK. At first I was messing with the plugin folder in the check mk folder on the windows server hosting the txt files but a colleague pointed me at the local folder. The big difference is that with the local folder Check MK directly uses the output and the plugin monitor it needs another python file on the check mk server to use the data.

The script:

# This script was created by Wouter Kursten 
# contact: wouter.kursten@detron.nl or w.kursten@gmail.com or https://www.retouw.nl or @Magneet_NL on twitter
#
# Feel free to grab/copy/alter the script no need to mention me
# But if you create a better / more complete version please send me a mail so I can use that script also
#
# This script is meant to use with the VMware Logon Monitor FLing
# https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vmware-logon-monitor
# This awesome tools actually shows how long it takes to login to your systems
#
# And yes the info block is longer then the script itself
#
# There are only 5 variables you can set
#
# $filefolder for where the Logon Monitor Output files are stored
# $filefilter for when you want to filter what files are being read
# $fileage for how far back in time you want to go
# $warning for the warning value above wich Check MK will give a Warning.
# $critical Gues what, this is the value above wich Check MK will give a critical report.

#Region Variables
$filefolder= "d:\logonmonitor\"
$filefilter="*.txt"
$fileage="5"
$warning="20"
$critical="30"
#endregion

#region Run 

$filelocation="$filefolder"+"$filefilter"
$filelist=get-childitem "$filelocation" | where-object {$_.LastWriteTime -gt (get-date).addminutes(-$fileage)}
$count=($filelist).count
$timing=@()

foreach ($file in $filelist)
	{
	$duration=(get-content $file | select-string -pattern "LogSummary] Logon Time:" | %{$_ -split " "})[6]
	$timing += $duration
	}

$avg= $timing | measure-object -average  
$average = [System.Math]::Round($Avg.average,2)

if ($average -le "$warning")
	{
	write-output "0 VMware_Horizon_View_Logon_Time LogonTime=$average|Logons=$count Logon time : $average sec for $count logons in the last $fileage minutes."
	}
	elseif ($average -gt "$warning" -and $average -lt "$critical")
	{
	write-output "1 VMware_Horizon_View_Logon_Time LogonTime=$average|Logons=$count Logon time : $average sec for $count logons in the last $fileage minutes."
	}
	elseif ($average -ge "$critical")
	{
	write-output "2 VMware_Horizon_View_Logon_Time LogonTime=$average|Logons=$count Logon time : $average sec for $count logons in the last $fileage minutes."
	}
#endregion

As you can see I am not only using the average logontime as before, I also count the amount of logons in the time where we measure this time. Offcourse you can create lots more data to use in Check MK this way

The output I create:

"2 VMware_Horizon_View_Logon_Time LogonTime=$average|Logons=$count Logon time : $average sec for $count logons in the last $fileage minutes."
  • The first digit is the status, 0 for ok 1 for warning and 2 for critical.
  • After that the service name that shows in Check MK
  • The come the 2 numbers we created with their own description separated by | This is used by Check MK to create a diagram
  • then separated by a space (and after this you can use spaces) the text that wil show in Check MK.

The result:

2016-08-11 21_12_01-Beheerders Desktop

The diagram:

2016-08-11 21_14_01-Beheerders Desktop

One Comment

About

My name is Wouter Kursten, I live in the south of the Netherlands and have been involved with virtualization even since I did the course for VCP3.  Right now I am fully focussed on virtualization and specifically the EUC spectrum of things. I also love to play around with Powershell to automate tasks but also to regularly retrieve statistics and check on things. For Horizon view I have mastered the Horizon API’s and starting blogging about those. I am also a contributor to the vmware.hv.helper module and the author of the vCheck for Horizon.

Recently I switched to the Vendor site of thing by joining ControlUp as a Professional Services Engineer.

I will be blogging about anything that I think might be worthwhile sharing.