Tag: horizon

The VMware Labs flings monthly for July 2020- Reach is back!

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A couple of days late but I had  good excuse: I was away on a holiday. I needed it and enjoyed it and have a week left before I start work again. This month there was one new release and nine flings received an update. Overall it’s a EUC rich overview since no less than seven of those are Horizon / App Volumes related.

New Releases

App Volumes Packaging Utility

Updated flings

HCIBench

App Volumes Migration Utility

Horizon Session Recording

Power vRA Cloud

Horizon Reach

Desktop Watermark

App Volumes Entitlement Sync

vSphere Mobile Client

VMware OS Optimization Tool

New Releases

App Volumes Packaging Utility

This App Volumes Packaging Utility helps to package applications. With this fling, packagers can add the necessary metadata to MSIX app attach VHDs so they can be used alongside existing AV format packages. The MSIX format VHDs will require App Volumes 4, version 2006 or later and Windows 10, version 2004 or later.

Updated Flings

HCIBench

HCIBench is a VMware wrapper around VdBench or Fio to test the capabilities of your HCI environement. I would recommend always to test with your own settings so you can do an honest comparison.

Changelog

Version 2.4.0

  1. Fixed tvm deployment bug when specifying host
  2. enabled easy run to support stretched cluster
  3. fixed timezone issue on pdf report, and added more vSAN info into PDF report
  4. set testname and testcase as variables in grafana
  5. added CPU workload into fio config page
  6. updated rbvmomi to support vsphere 7.0+
  7. enhanced fio and vdbench graphite dashboards

MD5 Checksum: 0cfd6cc852e33e5ce32022a66539b4c9 HCIBench_2.4.0.ova

App Volumes Migration Utility

The App Volumes Migration Utility helps the users in moving from App Volumes 2.18 to App VOlumes 4 so app stacks don’t need to be reprovisioned.

Changelog

Version 1.0.3 Update

  • Field “uniqueId” is added in the metadata JSON for migrated appstacks.

Version 1.0.2 Update

  • Fix for fling bug 983.
  • The customer bug on the fling, exposed an un handled scenario.
  • Prior to migration if the appstacks registry database contained registry keys with embedded NUL
  • (\0) chars in their name, Migration fails.
  • This scenario has now been addressed with this update.

Horizon Session Recording

The Horizon Session Recording is a usefull tool when an Horizon Admin wants to be able to record sessions and see what the users are doing exactly when a problems happens.

Changelog

Version 2.1 Update

  • Many bugfixes in agent side

Power vRA Cloud

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

Changelog

Version 1.3

  • 4 x New Cmdlets for VMC
  • 5 x New Cmdlets for AWS
  • Powershell 7 on Windows Support
  • Bugfixes

Horizon Reach

If you don’t have any other 3rd partly tooling (like ControlUp, sorry gotta plug my employer 😛 ) to manage your Horizon environment than Reach is a very useful tool. This is not an update but a re-release, read below why.

Warning: Horizon Versions 7.10 through 7.12 have a known issue which can cause Horizon Reach to trigger a low memory issue on the Horizon Connection Server.

For Horizon 7.10, ensure to deploy Horizon 7.10.2. For 7.11 and 7.12, please refer to the following document here.

Desktop Watermark

The Desktop Watermark fling gives you the option to visible and unvisible mark the desktop that you are using.

Changelog

v1.2 – Build 20200713-signed Version Update

  • Added support for multiple displays.

App Volumes Entitlement Sync

The App Volumes Entitlement Sync flings helps an APp VOlumes admin to sync various App Volumes Environments like test/dev/prod or different pod’s for example.

Changelog

Version 4.1 Update:

  • Get App Volumes version from an API value which always returns the build number.
  • App Volumes 2006 and later has a problem with version 4.0 of the Fling in returning a string value.

vSphere Mobile Client

Manage vSphere from your phone or tablet with the vSphere Mobile Client fling, do I need to say more?

Changelog

Version 1.13.2 Update:

New:

  • Datastore details page (link from VM details page)

Improvements:

  • Fixed issues related to connecting to standalone ESXi VM console
  • Fixed issues when switching between servers

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Do you build golden images or templates? Than use the VMware OS Optimization Tool to optimize them!

Changelog

August, 2020, b1170 Update

Templates

  • New combined template for all versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 and 2019. Optimizations can have optional parameters to filter the version that a setting is applied to.

Optimizations

  • Turn off NCSI is no longer selected by default as this was shown to cause issues with some applications thinking they did not have internet connectivity.
  • New Optimizations added and some removed, For details see: https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/vmware-operating-system-optimization-tool-guide#Template_Updates

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed issues with re-enabling Windows Update functionality on Server 2016 and 2019.
  • Fixed issue that was preventing Windows Antimalware from being disabled properly.

Common Options

  • Changed interface and language on the Common Options page for Windows Update to remove confusion. This option can only be used to disable Windows Update as part of an optimization task. To re-enable Windows Update functionality, use the Update button on the main menu ribbon.

Guides

[HorizonAPI] Getting started with the Horizon REST api

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Until now all of my blogging about the Horizon api’s was about consuming the SOAP api using PowerCLI. Since a couple of releases Horizon also has a REST api and since 7.12 we are also able to change some settings using that. So now it’s time for me to dive into the Horizon REST api’s. I will consume them using Powershell since I am the most comfortable using that but you can use whatever method you prefer..

The REST api is just like the soap api documented at the VMware{CODE} api explorer.

First of all we need to create an accesstoken, we can do this by using some code that I simply stole from Andrew Morgan because why would I re-invent the wheel? From his git repository I grabbed three basic functions: get-HRHeader, Open-HRConnection and close-hrconnection. there’s also a refresh-hrconnection but I won’t need that for now.

function Get-HRHeader(){
    param($accessToken)
    return @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $($accessToken.access_token)
        'Content-Type' = "application/json"
    }
}

function Open-HRConnection(){
    param(
        [string] $username,
        [string] $password,
        [string] $domain,
        [string] $url
    )

    $Credentials = New-Object psobject -Property @{
        username = $username
        password = $password
        domain = $domain
    }

    return invoke-restmethod -Method Post -uri "$url/rest/login" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($Credentials | ConvertTo-Json)
}

function Close-HRConnection(){
    param(
        $accessToken,
        $url
    )
    return Invoke-RestMethod -Method post -uri "$url/rest/logout" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($accessToken | ConvertTo-Json)
}
$accessToken = Open-HRConnection -username $username -password $password -domain $Domain -url $url

But we can’t do anything with only these functions, somehow we also need to supply username and password

$url = read-host -prompt "Connection server url"
$username = read-host -prompt "Username"
$password = read-host -prompt "Password" -AsSecureString
$Domain = read-host -Prompt "Domain"

$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password)
$UnsecurePassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)

(I am grabbing it from the command line here but when I run the scripts I have my creds hardcoded to make my life for the duration of this blog post a bit easier)

Next up is actually getting some data. The first thing that I wil do is show the connection servers. This can be done with the following API call. The part after -uri “$url/rest/ is what you can find int he api explorer. The method is the method also shown in the api explorer.

Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$url/rest/monitor/connection-servers" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)

and the result:

Since one of the few things that you can already change using the rest api’s are the general settings I will take those as the next example

Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$url/rest/config/v1/settings" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)

This works but I can’t say that it’s really usable. Now this is not the first time I do something with REST api’s (haven’t done it a lot though to be honest) so I know this can easily be converted to json to make it visible. What I will do is that I put it in a variable first.

$settings=Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$url/rest/config/v1/settings" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$settings | ConvertTo-Json

Now this DOES look usable! Let’s take a look what is under general_settings

$settings.general_settings

Let’s say I want to change the forced logoff message

$settings.general_settings.forced_logoff_message="Get lost, the Bastard Operator From Hell is here."

Now my variable has the change but I need to send this to the server. This can be done using a put method and the settings variable has to be added as json. The second line is to pull the new settings from my connection server showing it directly in a json format.

 

Invoke-RestMethod -Method Put -uri "$url/rest/config/v1/settings" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -body ($settings | ConvertTo-Json)
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$url/rest/config/v1/settings" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) | ConvertTo-Json

and in the admin interface:

That’s it for my 1ste blog post about the horizon REST api’s hopefully it’s useful! Below is an example of the script that I used.

$url = read-host -prompt "Connection server url" 
$username = read-host -prompt "Username" 
$password = read-host -prompt "Password" -AsSecureString 
$Domain = read-host -Prompt "Domain" 

#$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password) 
#$UnsecurePassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)

function Get-HRHeader(){
    param($accessToken)
    return @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $($accessToken.access_token)
        'Content-Type' = "application/json"
    }
}
function Open-HRConnection(){
    param(
        [string] $username,
        [string] $password,
        [string] $domain,
        [string] $url
    )

    $Credentials = New-Object psobject -Property @{
        username = $username
        password = $password
        domain = $domain
    }

    return invoke-restmethod -Method Post -uri "$url/rest/login" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($Credentials | ConvertTo-Json)
}

function Close-HRConnection(){
    param(
        $accessToken,
        $url
    )
    return Invoke-RestMethod -Method post -uri "$url/rest/logout" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($accessToken | ConvertTo-Json)
}

$accessToken = Open-HRConnection -username $username -password $password -domain $Domain -url $url

Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$url/rest/monitor/connection-servers" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)

[Update 23-04-2020]Adding vCenter server to Horizon View using the api’s

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Update

I don’t know since what version but somewhere this script stopped working because VMware change some things. In 7.8 there was a change about the thumbprint algorithm to DER_BASE64_PEM so it might have started there. Another change is that in the sslcertthumbprint field they stopped using the thumbprint but actually add the entire certificate.

What is needed to fix this?

Replace:

$spec.CertificateOverride=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.serverspec)).thumbprint

with

$spec.CertificateOverride.SslCertThumbprint=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.serverspec)).certificate
$spec.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprintAlgorithm = "DER_BASE64_PEM"

and you should be good. I have already updated the version of the script below.

A big thank you to Mark Brookfield for asking me about this

/update

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

$hvServer = $global:DefaultHVServers[0]
$services=  $hvServer.ExtensionData

# Create required objects

$spec=new-object VMware.Hv.VirtualCenterSpec
$spec.serverspec=new-object vmware.hv.serverspec
$spec.viewComposerData=new-object VMware.Hv.virtualcenterViewComposerData

$spec.Certificateoverride=new-object vmware.hv.CertificateThumbprint
$spec.limits=new-object VMware.Hv.VirtualCenterConcurrentOperationLimits
$spec.storageAcceleratorData=new-object VMware.Hv.virtualcenterStorageAcceleratorData

# vCenter Server specs

$spec.ServerSpec.servername="pod2vcr1.loft.lab"        # Required, fqdn for the vCenter server
$spec.ServerSpec.port=443                                 # Required
$spec.ServerSpec.usessl=$true                             # Required
$spec.ServerSpec.username="[email protected]"   # Required [email protected]
$vcpassword=read-host "vCenter User password?" -assecurestring
$temppw = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($vcPassword)
$PlainvcPassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($temppw)
$vcencPassword = New-Object VMware.Hv.SecureString
$enc = [system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$vcencPassword.Utf8String = $enc.GetBytes($PlainvcPassword)
$spec.ServerSpec.password=$vcencPassword
$spec.ServerSpec.servertype="VIRTUAL_CENTER"

# Description & Displayname, neither is required to be set

#$spec.description="description"              # Not Required
#$spec.displayname="virtualcenterdisplayname" # Not Required
$spec.CertificateOverride=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.serverspec)).thumbprint
$spec.CertificateOverride.SslCertThumbprint=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.serverspec)).certificate
$spec.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprintAlgorithm = "DER_BASE64_PEM"


# Limits
# Only change when you want to change the default values. It is required to set these in the spec

$spec.limits.vcProvisioningLimit=20
$spec.Limits.VcPowerOperationsLimit=50
$spec.limits.ViewComposerProvisioningLimit=12
$spec.Limits.ViewComposerMaintenanceLimit=20
$spec.Limits.InstantCloneEngineProvisioningLimit=20

# Storage Accelerator data

$spec.StorageAcceleratorData.enabled=$false
#$spec.StorageAcceleratorData.DefaultCacheSizeMB=1024   # Not Required

# Cmposer
# most can be left empty but they need to be set otherwise you'll get a xml error

$spec.ViewComposerData.viewcomposertype="STANDALONE"  # DISABLED for none, LOCAL_TO_VC for installed with the vcenter and STANDALONE for s standalone composer


if ($spec.ViewComposerData.viewcomposertype -ne "DISABLED"){
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec=new-object vmware.hv.serverspec
    $spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride=new-object VMware.Hv.CertificateThumbprint
    $cmppassword=read-host "Composer user password?" -assecurestring
    $temppw = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($cmpPassword)
    $PlaincmpPassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($temppw)
    $cmpencPassword = New-Object VMware.Hv.SecureString
    $enc = [system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
    $cmpencPassword.Utf8String = $enc.GetBytes($PlaincmpPassword)
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.password=$cmpencPassword
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.servername="pod2cmp1.loft.lab"
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.port=18443
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.usessl=$true
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.username="[email protected]"
    $spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec.servertype="VIEW_COMPOSER"

    $spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride=($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec)).thumbprint
    $spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprint = ($services.Certificate.Certificate_Validate($spec.ViewComposerData.ServerSpec)).certificate
    $spec.ViewComposerData.CertificateOverride.sslCertThumbprintAlgorithm = "DER_BASE64_PEM"
}


# Disk reclamation, this is required to be set to either $false or $true
$spec.SeSparseReclamationEnabled=$false 

# This will create the connection
$services.VirtualCenter.VirtualCenter_Create($spec)

 

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.

 

[HorizonAPI] Creating Entitlements

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So last week I created a blog about gathering Horizon entitlements using the api’s. At the end I promised that my next blog post would be about creating entitlements and guess what: that’s this post 🙂

First a short explanation about what UserEntitlements actually are in Horizon. When you pull the entitlement info the base property has the needed information.

So in short an entitlement is a link between the userorgroup object id and a resource object id. The resource object can be: Application, Desktop, Global Application Entitlement, Global Desktop Entitlement and URLRedirection.

Let’s first grab the id’s that we need, I use 2 queries for that bur first I put the names of the group and the desktop in variables:

$groupname = "example_group"
$poolname = "pod01_pool01"

Than I create two objects called $group and $pool using queries.

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='base.name'; 'value' = "$groupname"}
$group= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'DesktopSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='desktopSummaryData.displayName'; 'value' = "$Poolname"}
$pool= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

Next we create the object to link them together.

$userentitlement= new-object VMware.Hv.UserEntitlementBase
$userentitlement.UserOrGroup = $group.id
$userentitlement.Resource = $pool.id

And we create the actual entitlement, since the output we get from this is the id of the entitlement object I store this in a variable to show you the entitlement in the next step.

and to show the entitlement

($hvservice.UserEntitlement.UserEntitlement_Get($newentitlement)).base

If you want to create entitlements for other resource you’ll need to use the either of the following to build your query:

Name Data object property to filter on
Application ApplicationInfo data.displayName
Desktop DesktopSummaryView DesktopSummaryData.displayName
Global Application Entitlement GlobalApplicationEntitlementInfo base.displayName
Global Desktop Entitlement GlobalEntitlementInfo base.displayName

There is no query for the URLRedirection so you’ll need to use URLRedirection.URLRedirection_List() to get the entire list and select the right one from that.

This is a complete example script that you could use to create a desktop entitlement:

Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.HorizonView
Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.Core

$cs = 'pod1cbr1.loft.lab'
$groupname = "example_group"
$poolname = "pod01_pool01"

$hvServer = Connect-HVServer -Server $cs 

$HVService= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='base.name'; 'value' = "$groupname"}
$group= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'DesktopSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='desktopSummaryData.displayName'; 'value' = "$Poolname"}
$pool= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVService, $defn)).results
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($HVService)

$userentitlement= new-object VMware.Hv.UserEntitlementBase
$userentitlement.UserOrGroup = $group.id
$userentitlement.Resource = $pool.id
$hvservice.UserEntitlement.UserEntitlement_Create($userentitlement)

[HorizonAPI] Configuring the Horizon event database in code

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Last week Mark Brookfield asked the question if it is possible to configure the event database in code. My answer was that I thought it should be possible until Stephen Jesse pointed me to the the vmware.hv.helper where there is the set-hveventdatabase cmdlet for this. When looking at the code I noticed something familiar:

.NOTES
Author                      : Wouter Kursten
Author email                : [email protected]
Version                     : 1.0

===Tested Against Environment====
Horizon View Server Version : 7.4
PowerCLI Version            : PowerCLI 10
PowerShell Version          : 5.0

So that’s why I knew it was possible! A good reason to create a quick blogpost though. Mark made a nice script for himself with variables and all those fancy things but I just want to quickly show how you can do it.

$hvedbpw=read-host -AsSecureString
$temppw=[System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($hvedbpw)
$PlainevdbPassword=[System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($temppw)
$dbupassword=New-Object VMware.Hv.SecureString
$enc=[system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$dbupassword.Utf8String=$enc.GetBytes($PlainevdbPassword)
$eventservice=new-object vmware.hv.eventdatabaseservice
$eventservicehelper=$eventservice.getEventDatabaseInfoHelper()
$eventsettings=new-object VMware.Hv.EventDatabaseEventSettings
$eventdatabase=new-object VMware.Hv.EventDatabaseSettings
$eventsettings.ShowEventsForTime="TWO_WEEKS"
$eventsettings.ClassifyEventsAsNewForDays=2
$eventdatabase.Server="labsql01.magneet.lab"
$eventdatabase.type="SQLSERVER"
$eventdatabase.port=1433
$eventdatabase.name="pod1_events"
$eventdatabase.username="sa_view"
$eventdatabase.password=$dbupassword
$eventservicehelper.setDatabase($eventdatabase)
$eventservicehelper.setsettings($eventsettings)
$eventservice.update($hvservice,$eventservicehelper)

The first three line make it possible to not use a plaintext password. If you don’t care about that you can remove those and declare something for $plainevdbpassword.

For the $eventsettings.ShowEventsForTime for time there are several options (same as in the gui) these are:

ONE_WEEK,TWO_WEEKS,THREE_WEEKS,ONE_MONTH,TWO_MONTHS,THREE_MONTHS,SIX_MONTHS
Yes, they are all in capitals!

To show how this works I will first clear the current database.

$hvservice.EventDatabase.EventDatabase_Clear()
$hvservice.EventDatabase.EventDatabase_Get()

Yes this is one of those exceptions where a service_get doesn’t need an id.

Now I run the script with a new _get to show the results.

If you are interested in the details:

[HorizonAPI] Working with UAG’s

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Something that was added in the last few versions of the Horizon API is the option to handle UAG’s. Since I had to add an uag to my lab for another project I decided to find out what api calls are possible. First I’ll check what services there are.

$hvservice | Select-Object gateway*

I will ignore the GatewayAccessUserOrGroup since that was already in there so we are left with Gateway and GatewayHealth. Let’s see what methods are available under Gateway.

$hvservice.Gateway | gm

I Gateway_Get and Gateway_List will show the same information as always but with _Get you will need a gateway ID and it only shows the information about one gateway. WIth _List you will get the information about all registered gateways.

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_List()
$gw=$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_List() | select-object -First 1
$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Get($gw.id)

Let’s see what’s in that GeneralData (Spoiler: not a lot!)

$gwdata=$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Get($gw.id)
$gwdata.GeneralData

To remove a gateway we use Gateway_Unregister with the gatewayid

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Unregister($gw.id)

Now i need to register the Gateway again let’s see what we need for that.

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Register

So we need an object of the type VMware.Hv.GatewaySpec. Let’s define that and see what it looks like.

$gwspec=New-Object VMware.Hv.GatewaySpec
$gwspec

So we only need the GatewayName, please use the exact name that was used to configure the UAG otherwise it can be added but it won’t be showing any data.

$gwspec.GatewayName="pod1uag1"

Now to register the UAG

$hvservice.Gateway.Gateway_Register($gwspec)

So with this we did everything we could with the Gateway service. Next is the GatewayHealth service.

$hvservice.GatewayHealth | Get-Member

as usual there’s only a get and a list so let’s see what data is in there.

$hvservice.GatewayHealth.GatewayHealth_List()
($hvservice.GatewayHealth.GatewayHealth_List()).ConnectionData

Sadly nothing more than the admin interface gives us but enough to build an health check like I did for the vCheck already (that can be found here)

For the type there are several options and those can be found in the API Explorer.

VALUE DESCRIPTION
“AP” AP type is for UAG.
“F5” F5 type is for F5 server.
“SG” SG type is for Security Server.
“SG-cohosted” SG-cohosted type is for Cohosted CS as gateway.
“Unknown” Unknown type is for unrecognized gateway type.

I was told by a VMware employee that SG-cohosted is fancy wording for a connection server.

And that’s everything we can do with UAG’s using the Horizon API’s!

[HorizonAPI] Changing the amount of desktops or RDS hosts in a pool/farm

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Sometimes there is a need to change the amount of desktops/rds hosts in a pool/farm. Since doing this in the GUI sucks (although that seems to have gotten slightly better with 7.11) I prefer to do it using the API’s. Let’s start with a Desktop pool.

The easiest way to change pool settings is to use the helper function of a service. After connecting to the connection server we first need to query for the ID of the desktoppool that we need to change.

[VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService]$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
[VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition]$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'DesktopSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='desktopSummaryData.name'; 'value' = "Pod01_Pool01"}
[array]$queryResults= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVservice, $defn)).results
$hvpoolid=$queryResults.id

To actually change the pool it’s the best to use the helper function of a service so we first put the desktopservice into an object

$desktopservice=new-object vmware.hv.DesktopService

The next step is to read the current settings into another object.

$desktophelper=$desktopservice.read($HVservice, $HVPoolID)

If you want to see what’s in here we’ll just do this

$desktophelper | get-member

With the get helper method’s it’s possible to get things while you can change them with their set counterpart. Don’t forget to use brackets when you want to go deeper.

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper() | get-member

And we can go on and on with this but I happen to already have found where the amount of desktops is listed.

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper().getVmNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper() | get-member

Let’s take a look at the getMaxNumberOfMachines method.

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper().getVmNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper().getMaxNumberOfMachines()

And we can actually use this with setMaxNumberOfMachines

$desktophelper.getAutomatedDesktopDataHelper().getVmNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper().setMaxNumberOfMachines(10)

But nothing has changed yet (and yes I am lazy so I will show it using the vmware.hv.helper module.

(get-hvpool -PoolName pod01_pool01).automateddesktopdata.VmNamingSettings.PatternNamingSettings

To apply the change to 10 vm’s we need to apply the helper using the update method

$desktopservice.update($hvservice, $desktophelper)

And when we check this with get-hvpool.

And we can do almost the same for RDS farms just a few details that are different in the naming of various objects.

[VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService]$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
[VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition]$defn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$defn.queryEntityType = 'FarmSummaryView'
$defn.Filter = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals -property @{'memberName'='data.name'; 'value' = "pod1_rds_IC"}
[array]$queryResults= ($queryService.queryService_create($HVservice, $defn)).results
$hvfarmid=($queryResults).id
(Get-HVFarm -FarmName pod1_rds_ic).automatedfarmdata.RdsServerNamingSettings.PatternNamingSettings
[VMware.Hv.FarmService]$farmservice=new-object vmware.hv.FarmService
$farmhelper=$farmservice.read($HVservice, $HVFarmID)
$farmhelper.getAutomatedFarmDataHelper().getRdsServerNamingSettingsHelper().getPatternNamingSettingsHelper().setMaxNumberOfRDSServers(3)
$farmservice.update($HVservice, $farmhelper)

 

New Horizon API explorer posted (new queries!)

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While watching the VMworld US 2019 video of Sean Massey presenting about getting started with the Horizon API’s I decided to check if the API explorer has been updated. To my surprise it was and it is good to see that several queries have been added besides the method’s that I previously found.

The new queries that I found are:

  • DesktopAssignmentView
    • Description:
      • Desktop id + Desktop assignment data which will include desktop pool information, operation system, global entitlement.
  • DesktopHealthInfo
    • Description:
      • Desktop health Information. This data will be populated only for the desktops which support application remoting.
  • GlobalEntitlementSummaryView
    • Description:
      • Summary information about Global Entitlements.
  • MachineSummaryView
    • Description:
      • This View includes summary data of all entities related to this Machine

So the DesktopAssignmentView seems to give a lot of similar data to what the DesktopSummaryData query already gives. They both give global entitlement data plus user assignment data. The big difference is that it gives way more detailed information about the desktop pool itself like vGPU settings. The names should have been DesktopInfo in my opinion.

Desktophealthinfo is created for the new Windows 10 App remoting and the monitoring for that. The globalentitlementsummaryview and machinesummaryview are linked to GlobalEntitlementInfo and MachineDetailsView from which they give a subset of data.

I hope to have a new blog post soon with more detailed information of what the new method’s and queries will bring but I wanted to update you with the fact that the api explorer has been updated as soon as possible.

Updates to the Horizon API’s in PowerCLI 11.4

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So today PowerCLI 11.4 was released with the following updates:

  • Add support for Horizon View 7.9
  • Added new cmdlets to the Storage module
  • Updated Storage module cmdlets
  • Updated HCX module cmdlets

As usual we need to wait for API explorer to be updated before we get the exact changes to the api’s but I already grabbed s short list by comparing the methods. Later I will create a more elaborate blog post about the changes if I have an overview. What I do see are some new additions that might be added to the vCheck for Horizon.

Also: even though the updates are for Horizon 7.9 there’s a good chance that a lot of this also works for previous versions, the examples below where done with 7.8.

  • Datacenter
  • DesktopHealth
  • Gateway
  • GatewayHealth
  • MessageClient
  • Monitoring
  • PersistentDiskQueryService
  • Privilege
  • SecondaryCredentials
  • SessionStatistics
  • StorageAccelerator
  • UsageStatistics
  • Validator
  • VirtualCenterStatistics

Sadly it’s late so I can only show a couple of examples:

$services.Privilege.Privilege_ListSelectablePrivileges()

 

$services.SessionStatistics.SessionStatistics_GetLocalSessionStatistics()

Finally we can reset the usage counters as well now

And some statistics from vCenter

($services.VirtualCenterStatistics.VirtualCenterStatistics_listSummaryStatistics())
($services.VirtualCenterStatistics.VirtualCenterStatistics_listSummaryStatistics()).DataStoreSummaryStatistics

[API]How to successfully logoff users in Horizon

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One of the things that annoy me about the Horizon admin interface is the fact that if you give a session the logoff command that this only works if the user is active aka when the desktop is not locked. With the api’s though (and Andrew implemented this in the helpdesk fling) it is possible to force a logoff. Let’s look at the available method’s first.

So we have a logoff and logoffForced. But there are also the logoffsessions and LofoffSessionsForced, I guess those let you logoff multiple sessions. this is what the extensiondata says about them.

So for the singular method’s we need a single id and for the sessions we need an array of ids. At first I will use get-hvglobalsession (yes, this works against sessions in other pod’s in a cloud pod architecture as well!) to get the id’s to show how it works. I have 5 sessions running from my desktop

$services1.Session.Session_Logoff((get-hvglobalsession | select -first 1).id)

Damn locked, let’s force this bastard from his desktop.

$services1.Session.Session_LogoffForced((get-hvglobalsession | select -first 1).id)

Aaaand it’s gone

And to show that it works I had to make sure the first session wasn’t locked.

And now the big bang fuck all of you!

$services1.Session.Session_LogoffSessionsForced((Get-HVGlobalSession).id)

As you can see one of my users was a but slow in logging off (nested esxi with only a couple vcpu’s for that one) I have also created a script that asks for the user whom you want to logoff and which session you want to logoff in case they have multiple. It’s not the cleanest code that I have written but it works 🙂

$hvserver1=connect-hvserver servername -user user -domain domain -password passwords
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

$username= Read-Host "Which user do you want to logoff? (no wildcards needed, part of the name is enough)"

$queryService = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryServiceService
$userdefn = New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryDefinition
$userdefn.queryEntityType = 'ADUserOrGroupSummaryView'
$userfilter1= New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterContains
$userfilter1.membername='base.name'
$userfilter1.value=$username
$userfilter2= New-Object VMware.Hv.QueryFilterEquals
$userfilter2.membername='base.group'
$userfilter2.value=$False
$userfilter=new-object vmware.hv.QueryFilterAnd
[email protected]($userfilter1, $userfilter2)
$userdefn.filter=$userfilter
$users=($queryService.QueryService_Create($Services1, $userdefn)).results

$menu = @{}
for ($i=1;$i -le $users.count; $i++){ 
    Write-Host "$i. $($users[$i-1].base.name)" 
    $menu.Add($i,($users[$i-1].id))
}
[int]$ans = read-host "Please select the correct user"
$user=$menu.Item($ans)

$GlobalSessionQueryService = new-object VMware.Hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceService
$sessionfilterspec=new-object vmware.hv.GlobalSessionQueryServiceQuerySpec
$sessionfilterspec.user=$user
$sessions=($GlobalSessionQueryService.GlobalSessionQueryService_QueryWithSpec($services1, $sessionfilterspec)).results

$menu = @{}
for ($i=1;$i -le $sessions.count; $i++){ 
    Write-Host "$i. $($sessions[$i-1].namesdata.basenames.MachineOrRDSServerName)" 
    $menu.Add($i,($sessions[$i-1].id))
}
[int]$ans = read-host "Please select the correct VDI Desktop"
$session=$menu.Item($ans)

$Services1.Session.Session_Logoffforced($session)
$queryService.QueryService_DeleteAll($services1)

This script forces the logoff for the sessions since I haven’t been able yet to find where the desktop status (locked or not) is visible.