Tag: horizon

New Horizon API calls in PowerCLI 10.1.1

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VMware quietly released a new version of PowerCLI last week: 10.1.1. This release is mainly an update for the Horizon View API’s. This to bring it back on level with the current Horizon release at 7.5. The release notes are not very extensive but it has a fix for some people getting time-outs when connecting to a Connection server  plus a bunch of new api calls.

I have dumped the output from the available api calls into two text files and made a comparison:

Since there’s no update yet in the API explorer I will have to make an educated guess on what the functions do:

DesktopTask

When looking at the available method’s for this call it looks like it has everything to do with Desktop task. But it also can’t do a damn thing without an vmware.hv.desktoptaskid. This will most probably bu retrievable using a query. This is something I will further investigate in the future.

DiagOperation

To be honest I have no idea yet what this one does. I have tried created a VMware.Hv.DiagOperationRequest and tried to send it but got an error that no message queue handler was found. This might be something from Horizon 7.5 since I haven’t updated my lab yet.

GatewayAccessUserOrGroup

This one is easy, it creates, deletes, gets and lists remote access users. You can expect a function for this in the near future since it looks easy to build.

JwtToken

According to my sources this is a SSO token between the flex and html5 clients.

LogonTiming

This obviously is created to pull logon timing as the name suggests. I have put a session ID in a variable but sadly the data is not usable from PowerCLI. WHat it seems to be is the api call the Helpdesk client uses to pull the logon time. I didn’t have the timing profiler turned on initially and neither the helpdesk tool or this call gave my any information. Disconnected sessions also don’t give any information and when reconnected it gives the reconnection time not the initial logontime for when the session started. This is the same behaviour as the helpdesk tool.

Apparently the output is in a json format and for now I doubt if it will be usable in a function.

While the session itself has this information.

NetworkProxyConfiguration

No idea yet why there is a networkproxy configuration in here.

Performance

This gets some performance data using a session id as also visible in the helpdesk tool.

RemoteApplication

Gives per session information on the Skype 4 Business pairing mode.

RemoteAssistantTicket

100% sure related to the remote assistance function in the helpdesk tool.

RemoteProcess

Looks like this one gets some information from a query and then kills the process, will have to dig into it some further later on. This for sure is a function in the helpdesk tool.

ViewClient

Again from the helpdesktool, this gives the client version of a session.

Conclusion

For now I only see the DesktopTask and GatewayAccessUserOrGroup ending up in a function in the vmware.hv.helper. The first one will need some digging on how it exactly works but it has the looks of a usable call. The latter on can be in there pretty fast if I find the time to do so. The other ones

 

Update

Already received some extra information about some calls.

New experimental functions for the vmware.hv.helper on github

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While working on my presentation for the 2nd vEUCtechcon event in Utrecht (The Netherlands) on may 28th I have added a list of new functions to the vmware.hv.helper module. While I haven’t had the time yet to clean them up to be proper coded scripts I have decided to already publish them on Github. All of them work but might be missing a feature or two and almost all of them are get-hv* or new-hv* type functions. Since the presentation is all about building an environment I have decided to build the remove parts later on. You might have already seen some screenshots on twitter recently:

Added functions that are not in the official module yet:

  • register-hvvirtualcenter
  • set-hveventdatabase
  • set-hvlicense
  • get-hvlicense
  • new-hvinstantcloneadministrator
  • New-HVRole
  • Get-HVRole
  • Get-HVpermission
  • New-HVPermission
  • Get-HVVirtualcenter
  • Get-HVInstantCloneAdministrator
  • Get-HVPod
  • Set-HVPod
  • Get-HVHomeSite
  • New-HVHomeSite

 

Honoured to be named VMware EUC Champion 2018

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You might have seen the announcement on the VMware EUC blog, Twitter or the new EUC Champions page already but I have been named one of the VMware End-User Computing (EUC) Champions for 2018. It is an honour to be awarded this status that only a select few receive each year. For me it feels like a true recognition for the work I have been doing with the Horizon API’s and my activity in the broader (EUC) vCommunity.

What is the EUC Champions Program?

EUC Champions is an experts-only program designed to provide a forum where the end-user computing community and VMware EUC product groups come together and share new product information and ideas through in-person meetings, networking events, industry conferences and webinars. This interaction helps ensure VMware EUC experts receive the most up-to-date information, and VMware product teams hear from industry veterans.

Thought leadership is easier said than done. It takes hard work and an ear to the ground to stay on top of industry trends. Many of our 2018 VMware EUC Champions have been thought leaders for decades, while others are rapidly becoming the go-to experts in their respective area. Whether new or returning, this year’s champions are among the ranks of end-user computing experts, who have done the work, made the commitment and signed up for more of the same in 2018.

What are the requirements to become an EUC Champion?

Not everyone is cut out to be an EUC Champion. It takes deep VMware EUC product expertise, an ability to write about it, a willingness to voice your opinion and the talent to clearly and concisely communicate ideas. EUC Champions are respected by their peers and, most importantly, are respectful of others.

Specifically, we look for candidates that meet the following criteria:

  • Member of the vExpert Program
  • Recognized EUC expert
  • Well regarded member of the greater EUC community
  • Recommended group member

Who are the 2018 EUC Champions?

On the new page there is a nice overview of all 34 EUC Champions

https://www.vmware.com/euc-champions/current-champions.html

Pulling horizon session information using PowerCLI

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I should’ve already posted a blog about this but better late then never. At the end of february I posted about several new functions being added to the vmware.hv.helper and two out of three where about pulling session information. Recently I received some questions about using those since it’s the raw data being returned. For my Dutch vmug presentation I used several gif’s that showed what you can do with that data. I might need to update the cmdlets so all information will be shown at once but that’s for another time since it might slow down the cmdlet a lot and I don’t like that.

Usage

Since get-hvglobalsession and get-hvlocalsession show almost similar data I will only show the latter one.

As you see this only shows the methods contained inside the session. We can show the content by pipelining it to  select-object -expandproperty but I prefer the bracket method since these might go several layers deep.

Some of the returned values are logical like the username, machineorrdsservername. The desktop name though is the actual desktop pool the user is connected to. Desktoptype can be Automated, Manual or RDS depending on the type of desktop and Desktopsource can be Virtual_Center (VM’s hosted on vCenter but not managed by Horizon or Full Clone desktops), View_Composer(when using Linked Clones), Instant_Clone_engine (when using Instant Clones), Unmanaged (physical machines, non-vCenter vm’s) or RDS (Terminal Servers). Farmname will be used when it’s an RDS session. The Securitygateway will show the Connection Server the user connected to or the UAG/Security server used.

the same can be done with referencedata and sessiondata

Not a lot of directly usefull information but a bunch of id’s that you might be able to use with the api’s if needed.

A lot of information about the session itself.

The actual code

The get-hvglobalsession actually is a query repeated for all pods. First it connects to the query service and then creates a query to run against each pod and add that to a sessionlist.

The get-hvlocalsession is almost the same, it just doesn’t need to foreach since it doesn’t have multiple pods to query.

In both there is a do while because otherwise it will run into some restrictions about maximum amount of data to return.

Adding vCenter server to Horizon View using the api’s

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Yesterday Sean Massey (https://thevirtualhorizon.com/) asked me if it was possible to add a vCenter server + some other things to Horizon View using the api’s. With a quick look at the api explorer I confirmed this should be possible. The other things he asked I will put in a separate blogpost.

It looks like a simple matter of building the spec and I should be good. In the end it turned out to be a bit more work then expected. Some items are not required according to the api explorer but should at least be called in the spec (set them to something empty) while others can safely be left away. The automatic generated ssl certs in my lab also turned out to be a pita. First I copied them from a current spec and later I downloaded the certificate on the Connection server itself and read that cert. Andrew Morgan (http://andrewmorgan.ie/)from VMware helped me out with this by showing their internal script that they use. It turned out that except for the SSL certs I was on the right path. As usual I will add this functionality to the vmware.hv.helper but since that might take a while I decided to create a useful script

Looking at the output it will only ask for the vCenter user’s password and if a Composer server is set for that user’s password.

 

Added functions in vmware.hv.helper

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Last Saturday I created a pull request to add some new functionality to the VMware.hv.helper. Together with an older PR that was still open it received an okay on Sunday. This is a list of the functionality I have added:

  • Get-HVHealth
    • Shows the health information for the following services:
      • ADDomain
      • CertificateSSOConnector
      • ConnectionServer,EventDatabase
      • SAMLAuthenticator
      • SecurityServer
      • ViewComposer
      • VirtualCenter
      • Pod
  • new-hvpodfederation
    • Initiates the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • remove-hvpodfederation
    • Uninitiates the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • get-hvpodfederation
    • Shows information about the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • register-hvpod
    • Registers a new pod in the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • unregister-hvpod
    • Removes a pod from the Cloud Pod Architecture. This can either be gracefully or forced.
  • set-hvpodfederation
    • Sets the name of the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • get-hvsite
    • Retrieves information about all sites in the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • new-hvsite
    • Creates a new site in the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • set-hvsite
    • Sets site properties within the Cloud Pod Architecture.
  • remove-hvsite
    • Removes a site from the Cloud Pod Architecture.

The next functionality on my list is to put the pod service methods from this previous post into functions.

Managing Pods in a Horizon View Cloud Pod Environment using PowerCLI & Api’s

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After Pod Federations and Sites it is time to manage the actual pods. Let’s take a look at what we can do.

Looks like a short post to me since there’s onl Get, List and Update

Pod_Get

Just like with site’s the get can be used in conjunction with a podid that might be gotten from somewhere else

This selects the first podid listed when pulling all the pods from all sites and gets the information about that pod. We’ll see the same information when doing a list but just with all pod’s listed.

Pod_List

Those endpoints are the connection servers in the pod. Let’s take a short detour and get the listing for one of those (the podendpoint service only has list and get so you will not see them separately anyway).

It might look lazy to use the select -first one and yes it is a bit but doing  a foreach to explain things also doesn’t really work in my opinion.

Pod_Update

Standard by now, first we need to connect to the podservice.

Under $podhelper we can already see how to set things.

Let’s update  the easy things.

As a result we have updated the name and description of the pod. The other thing we can do is assign the pod to another site. Thankfully I already have two of those created.

Both the lists aren’t required but I added them to show that the pods are spread over both pods now.

 

Creating and managing Sites in a Horizon View Cloud Pod Environment using PowerCLI & Api’s

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Intro

Like I said in my previous post about Pod Federations this is a separate post that will show how to handle Sites within a Pod Federation. There are only a couple of API calls that do not include assigning a pod to a site. This is done trough the podservice which I will post about in a next blog post.

Let’s take a look at the site service to see what it actually has in api call’s

So we have Site_create, Site_delete, site_get, site_list and site_update. To Make it myself easy I will use the order of List, create, get, update and delete.

Site_list

With site_list a list of all available site’s will be created, currently I have only one so let’s show that one.

Note a lot of information is shown so let’s take a look at the contents of base and pods.

so again not a lot of information since it only contains a name, description and the pod id’s of the member pods.

Site_Create

Since we already saw in the methods under the siteservice that the create needs a bit more information then just a name let’s take a look again at what is required.

An object is needed of the type vmware.hv.sitebase, we will need to take a look in the API explorer to see what this object should contain. Under Site_create we can click on sitebase.

The sitebase object has 2 properties of which only DisplayName is required. I have tried various ways to keep the description empty but haven’t succeeded so far and with it it the create also doesn’t work so how optional is it?

Let’s create the sitebase object

The $sitebase is not required but shows what the object contains. Now we have enough to create the new site.

Site_Get

In the overview we have seen that a site_get needs a bit more information.

We already know how to get this site id by using site_list, normally you would only use the site_get with an id received from another service like the pod service. For the example I will use the demo site I create in the site_create part of this post.

First I will need to get the siteid

And now we need to apply that to the site_get

Site_Update

As said before for an update method it is better to use the helper service for that service.

now what method’s do we see?

To see the difference between the sitebasehelper and siteinfohelper I will create both objects.

Now let’s compare them.

 

This is again one of those wtf moments, they both do exactly the same! I will use the sitebasehelper for now will update both the Displayname and description. For this I will need to use the getbasehelper 1 step deeper

and apply the update, since neither will generate a response I won’t put any screenshots in.

Now let’s see the result for a site_get for this site now

Site_Delete

We can take a look at it but to delete a site we only need the siteid so let’s remove that site we gave an update.

again no visual feedback but if we do a sitelist there’s only one left.

 

 

Initiating and managing the Podfederation in a Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture using PowerCLI & API’s

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One of the new cmdlets for the vmware.hv.helper that I am currently working on is initiating the Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) and more actions related to this. This blog post will show the basics about initiating, and joining a CPA using the API’s. Doing things with site’s within the CPA will be covered in a later blogpost.

If we look at the services available in the Horizon API’s you’ll see that podfederation is one of them, let’s take a look at that and what method’s are available.

So we can Eject, Get, Initialize, Join, Unintialize, Unjoin and update a podfederation. If we look at the brackets behind the methods than (un)initializing and unjoin don’t need any extra info so let’s get ahead and initialize the podfederation. To show you there’s nothing there yet I made a screenshot of the admin interface.

Initialize the podfederation

Now to initiate the podfederation

And if you are quick enough in switching to the admin interface will also still show it initializing

Get information about the federation

With podfederation_get() we can grab the configuration information.

Not a lot of information but there isn’t a lot more anyway in the podfederation itself.

Join a federation

I have another pod that I want to join to this federation since we’ve already seen that this needs some more input let’s check what it exactly needs.

So we need a remotepod address, presumable one of the connection servers in that pod will be enough, a username where domain\username will do just like in the admin console and a password of the type vmware.hv.securestring. The last one was new for me but thankfully it was described in one of the examples in the api explorer (https://code.vmware.com/apis/75/view and click on Data Object Types).

With this it’s easy to add the local pod to the podfederation

And again if you are fast enough this is also visible in the admin console

And now a get will also show that it has been enabled

Unjoining a Podfederation

If you are braking down a pod because of whatever reason the best way to do this is to unjoin the pod from the federation. As we saw before there’s no extra information need so you just need to connect to a connection server in that pod and do an unjoin.

this is really fast so over several tries I did not succeed in making a screenshot of the admin console.

Ejecting a pod

This is the only podfederation function not available through the admin console as far as I could see. Ejecting a pod for is for me a last option if a datacenter burned down, everything is gone and you want to get rid of the pod. I did it in my lab against an alive pod and had to uninitialize the (now unlinked) podfederation from that pod to be able to rejoin it to the correct pod. This method also requires some input so let’s see what that is.

So we need the podid of the pod to eject, this information can be get trough the pod service

I want to eject the pod from pod2cbr1

and with $pod I can check if I have the correct one

So let’s serve the eviction notice to the pod.

No feedback, nothing but if we check the pod list it’s gone.

I will show how to remove the remnants in the uninitialize chapter.

Updating a Pod Federation

This one sounds bigger then it is since there’s only one thing that we can update in a federation. To do this it is better to use the helper service then to use the podfederation_update method since that can get complicated very fast sometimes. To use the helper service we will need to create some variables first

and when we do a get method on it

After some trial and error I know we need to getdatahelper method to continue

This only show the updates that are currently in the queue to be applied with a get method it’s possible to see what can be set.

What we need to look for is a set so the only options here are setdisplayname that needs a string value and setupdates that needs a load of information and that probably might also be a way to do it but I will use the setdisplayname.

This will give no feedback and nothing will be changed yet, what needs to be done is to apply this update in the helper service to the service.

and if you now do a get on the podfederation it will show the changed name.

Uninitializing a Podfederation

To show the pod uninitialization step I will use the pod that I have ejected from the podfederation pod2cbr1. It is clear that it is a bit wonky if we look at the pod list from that connection server.

So it knows about the pod federation but doesn’t see itself in it anymore.

This is again a fast one so I couldn’t get it visible in the admin console but when checking the data from a get it shows it has been disabled.

Looking from the other pod it still shows the Podfederation as enabled.

No github scripts this time since I will be adding this functionality into the vmware.hv.helper module.

Remove desktop assignment

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In this blogpost I showed how to assign a certain vdi machine to a user. This has been made easier since in the vmware.hv.helper module. These days we can use this:

This week I got the logical question from Brandon Smith in the comments about removing the assignment. First I need to re-assign the desktop (I have been building a VMUG presentation about PowerCLI & Horizon view so things got messed up)

the result:

Now what need to be done is setting the base.user to $null. I am going to do this by connecting to the machine service and utilize the machinehelper to update the userdata.

We now need to connect to the machinehelper by doing a read on the machineservice. $machineservice.read will give us the info we need to be able to do this.

From this it becomes clear that we will need the services service and the machineid we want to edit. First let’s put the machine id into a variable.

Now I will read the properties of this machineid and put this into the $machineinfohelper variable

Since I know the user property is under the base we will need to get the base first and then set the user. This done by doing getbasehelper() on the machineinfohelper and then do .setuser(user) on that but let’s see what’s under the getbasehelper first.

A lot of information but as said the one we need is setuser. To assign a desktop we will need to set this to a userorgroupid value (and that is what the vmware.hv.helper cmdlet does). To clear it we will need to set it to $null.

At this point no changes have been made yet! We will need to apply this update first.

And if we look at the horizon console the entitlement has been removed.

And the complete script:

As usual the script can be found on github.