I have just pushed some changes to the Horizon Python module. With these changes I am more complying with the Python coding standards by initiating an object before being able to use the functions inside a class. Also I added a bunch of the api calls available in the monitor parts.
so technically you first initiate a Connection class object and than you use the hv_connect function inside that class after which the access token is stored inside the object itself.
Now to use the monitors for example you create an object for this.
In November only one new fling was released while seven other received update. One that received an update was the Horizon Session Recording fling that I blogged about at the time of release. Also it looks like the VSAN team is letting all its tools loose on the community because yet another tool for VSAN has been released (Storage Simulator Using Cellular Automata). The OS Optimization tool received some nice command-line features to improve your automated Golden images builds.
Storage Simulator Using Cellular Automata is loosely based on the principles of cellular automata (CA) to model the performance characteristics of data path in a vSAN cluster. In general, CA can used to model and study any complex system with number of elements operating in parallel having short range relationships that as whole exhibit emergent behavior. When simulating a storage stack, we are modelling transmission of data blocks across a network of hardware resources communicating with each other through various interconnects. These includes processors, caches, DRAM, SSDs HDDs, PCIe links, ethernet links etc.
When modelling an IO request such as read/write, vSAN software stack applies various functions as the data block moves through this network. These functions include, data replication, parity calculation, checksum, encryption, compression etc. Some of these can lead to IO amplification.
This Fling implements a standalone vSAN simulation utility to aid developers in getting ideal speed-of-light (SOL) performance of a given cluster. This can be used as a starting point to rapidly iterate various ideas/features by making small changes to simulator and quantifying its potential performance impact. It can also be used by customers/partners to identify potential bottlenecks of their deployment under various type of workloads.
Updates
VMware OS Optimization Tool
Always good to see the OSOT getting some new features, bug fixes but laso some nice new command line features and also very important extra knobs to use for Office.
Changelog
November, 2020, b2000
Bug Fixes
Resolved the issue that stopped automatic logon in Server and WVD edition after Sysprep process.
Resolved a reboot prompt problem which displayed in process of generalizing on Win10 1607 LTSB.
Resolved the issue of failing to disable anti-virus feature on Windows 10 2004.
Fixed issue where re-enabling Windows Update would pull down feature updates by default.
Common Options
Common options selections are now remembered between different runs of the OSOT.
For all tabs, user now can apply different Common Options settings multiple times on optimized system.
Under Update tab, introduce a new option to switch on/off update feature of Office 365, 2016, 2019
Under Store Apps tab, disable checkbox for removed built-in apps
Update
New option to defer or directly trigger feature updates
New option to defer or directly trigger quality updates
New option to skip Office Click-to-Run updates
Added commands to stop and disable the App Volumes services when re-enabling Windows Update. These are then set back to automatic when Windows Update is disabled again.
Optimizations
Added the ability to export and import selected optimization items on the Optimize page (Export Selections and Import Selections).
Changes:
Default for “Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service” is now unselected by default to resolve missed language bar issue.
Default for “Connected Devices Platform Service” is now unselected by default.
New:
Turn off account privacy notifications in Office 365 and Office 2019
Project Supernova is to build a common machine learning inference service framework by enabling machine learning inference accelerators across edge endpoint devices, edge systems and cloud, with or without hardware accelerators.
Changelog
Version 1.1 Update
Support Bitfusion
K8S and docker-compose deployment
vRealize Build Tools
vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.
Changelog
Version 2.10.0 Update
[MVN] Improvements in package installer
[vROps] Regex support in YAML definitions for vROps content
[vRLI] Regex support in YAML definitions for vRLI content
[POL] Added Polyglot and ABX support:
NodeJS, Python and PowerShell code support
new archetype: com.vmware.pscoe.polyglot.archetypes:package-polyglot-archetype
two new project types: com.vmware.pscoe.polyglot:polyglot-project; com.vmware.pscoe.serverless:serverless-project
tooling for compiling, bundling and packaging: polyglotpkg
[TS] Added support for description field for workflow inputs and outputs in the Workflow decorator
[vRA-NG] Fixed NPE error during custom resources import
Horizon Session Recording
No need to explain the Horizon Session Recording anymore, just hit the link that I have posted at the beginning of this post.
Changelog
Version 2.2.0
Server Changes:
Added the ability to import server settings easily from another running server.
Added the ability to filter searches based on farm / pool.
Added the ability to lock and unlock sessions from the session view page.
Agent Changes:
1: Misc bugfixes.
2: PowerShell API to interact with the Recording agent, to perform such tasks as:
Start a session recording.
Stop a session recording.
Troubleshoot connectivity issues.
View machine configuration
Add a trusted certificate.
Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning
With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 deployment and stand a sample data platform on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid guest cluster in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.
Changelog
Version Update 1.1
Bug fix for storage class for bitnami kafka
VMware Appliance for Folding@Home
This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software. Upon deploying the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home, the user will be prompted to enter information to configure the Folding@Home software. Once the appliance is deployed, the Folding@Home client is running and ready for Working Units. The Fling is also pre-configured to allow remote management of the Folding@Home client. For more information on the Folding@Home Project and how we can be a Force for Good against diseases like the Coronavirus, visit the website www.foldingathome.org.
Over the past several years, you’ve seen us demonstrate our virtualization technology on the Arm platform across several use cases, everything from running mission critical workloads on a windmill, to running on the SmartNIC, to running on AWS Graviton in the cloud. We realized that the resilient platform created for the datacenter can be equally valuable in non-traditional environments. We’ve learned a lot from exploratory discussions with customers and Arm Silicon Partners.
Changelog
November 30, 2020 – v1.2
Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.
UI: Disable datastore browsing when no datastores are present
PSCI: Fix missing context_id argument for CPU_ON calls
GICv2: Always enable SGIs, as GIC-500
arm64: Support for big-endian guests
Remove requirements/restrictions on initrd for UEFI-less VMs
Ok maybe it’s more me than ControlUp but the usual audience on this blogs knows that I work for ControlUp and that I love the VMware flings. Recently we received the question from several South-America based customers if we where able to start the Horizon Session Recordings using a Script Based Action. Technically we would have been able to but with the current version we would have to add the user to an ad group that was configured for this and than would be at the mercy of AD replication for the recording to actually start. Que Trentent Tye who reached out to the one and only Andrew Morgan (imho king of the VMwareHorizon related flings) if it would be possible to add an API or PowerShell module to start the recordings. I guess Andrew’s reaction was that he saw the use case for this and within no-time he had a beta version ready for us that had a Powershell module. By the time you read this the new version has been added to the flings site that includes all of these goodies and you can find it here.
<I wanted to insert a picture of Andrew here wearing a crown but that was too much>
VMware Horizon Session Recording allows administrators of a VMware Horizon environment to record their users activity in their Blast Extreme virtual desktop and application sessions. Recordings are uploaded from the agent devices to the central web service, for central storage and ease of viewing.
The Session Recordings are stored as MP4 files for watching via the web console or downloading to play in a local player.
So we have an agent> server application where the videos are stored on the server. During the setup I found that this was very easy but configuring a proper SSL certificate makes things a lot easier as you otherwise need to supply the thumbprint of the self-signed certificate during installation of the agent or in the registry.
The server interface is easy enough with the standard dashboard showing recent recordings while on the Recordings tab you can search for for specific recordings.
The agent is a plain installer that only asks for the server location and the SSL certificate thumbprint. The last one is only needed when the certificate itself is not trusted, if you used a VA signed certificate for the server there’s no need to enter the thumbprint.
Starting a recording
As said in the previous versions of the recorder it was required to configure an ad group and add users to that group to record their sessions. With this version we get a powershell module installed with the agent. It gets even better because if you copy the entire /api folder from the agent installation folder to another system you’re perfectly able to start recordings from there.
Starting a recording using powershell is a matter of importing the proper dll
And now the user can start the recording themselves if they have too many rights by using Start-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID %sessionid%. The session ID can be found as a metric in ControlUp or in the task manager if you add the column under users.
Start-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID 1
My user clearly didn’t have enough rights on the system so I got an error, actually not a bad thing so users can’t easily overload the server this way.
Update: Andrew confirmed this is by design to stop users from recording each other.
Starting the recording remote is a matter of adding the computername to the command
To integrate the Horizon session recording with ControlUp I have created two basic Script Actions. both use three arguments, besides the required SessionId I add the username and machine name in the output so it’s obvious for whom the recording was started.
$sessionId=$args[0]
$username=$args[1]
$computer=$args[2]
try{
$InstallDir = Get-ItemPropertyValue -path "hklm:\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware Blast\SessionRecordingAgent" -Name installdir
}
catch{
write-host "Error determining the Horizon Session recording installation location. Please make sure the Horizon Sesison recording Agent is Installed."
}
try{
import-module "$($InstallDir)\api\horizon.sessionrecording.powershell.dll"
}
catch{
write-host "Error loading the Horizon Session Recording PowerShell Module. Make sure the latest vesrion of the Horizon Session Recording Agent is installed"
}
try{
Start-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID $sessionId
}
Catch{
write-host "Error starting the recording"
}
write-host "Started session recording for $username on $computer"
$sessionId=$args[0]
$username=$args[1]
$computer=$args[2]
try{
$InstallDir = Get-ItemPropertyValue -path "hklm:\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware Blast\SessionRecordingAgent" -Name installdir
}
catch{
write-host "Error determining the Horizon Session recording installation location. Please make sure the Horizon Sesison recording Agent is Installed."
}
try{
import-module "$($InstallDir)\api\horizon.sessionrecording.powershell.dll"
}
catch{
write-host "Error loading the Horizon Session Recording PowerShell Module. Make sure the latest vesrion of the Horizon Session Recording Agent is installed"
}
try{
stop-HSRSessionRecording -SessionID $sessionId
}
Catch{
write-host "Error stopping the recording"
}
write-host "Stopped session recording for $username on $computer"
Both these script will get better error handling and notifications in the future but you still see the old error in the background but with the notification that the recording was started.
And stopping the recording
And that shows how easy it is to control the Horizon Session Recording using a Script Based Action. If you combine this with a trigger, cpu usage for example you might be able to capture what is causing that spike, just remember to also create a trigger than stops it after the cpu goes down again.
Changelog
Version 2.2.0
Server Changes:
Added the ability to import server settings easily from another running server.
Added the ability to filter searches based on farm / pool.
Added the ability to lock and unlock sessions from the session view page.
Agent Changes:
1: Misc bugfixes.
2: PowerShell API to interact with the Recording agent, to perform such tasks as:
First of all I hope that everyone is staying safe en sound and keeping their social distance. Over here we’ve been back to a light lockdown again but at least most of the shops are still open. I just opened the flings site and the VMware engineers have been dam busy! This are the tabs I had after opening all of them.
If I count it right I have six new flings and another eight received updates, I can’t remember the last time we had so much activity on the flings front. The new flings include one of the most anticipated VMware products for the last years: ESXi on Arm!
Sample Data Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Provisioning
With this Fling, you will leverage your VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 deployment and stand a sample data platform on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid guest cluster in less than 20-minutes comprising of Kafka, Spark, Solr, and ELK.
Additionally, this Fling comes with a market data sample application (using real market data from dxFeed) that shows how all these data platform components work together.
vSphere Pod Autoscaler
This Fling is useful for vSphere PodVM users who want to perform auto-scaling on vSphere PodVMs based on memory utilization.
This python script is intended to implement the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler algorithm for podVM for the vSphere 7.0 with Kubernetes. The implementation follows the algorithm from the official Kubernetes documents: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/horizontal-pod-autoscale/
This script will automatically scale the number of PodVMs in the environment. The script will perform the following actions:
The script will retrieve the memory utilization of PodVMs in the environment
The script will then allow users to provide the memory threshold for PodVMs
The script will then calculate the desired number of replicas based on the memory threshold and utilization
The script will automatically scale the PodVMs to the desired number of replicas calculated in step #3
Workspace ONE Discovery
VMware Workspace ONE UEM is used to manage Windows 10 endpoints, whether it be Certificate Management, Application Deployment or Profile Management. The Discovery Fling enables you to view these from the device point of view and review the Workspace ONE related services, which applications have been successfully deployed, use the granular view to see exactly what has been configured with Profiles, view User & Machine certificates and see which Microsoft Windows Updates have been applied.
Discovery provides you a view of the Managed device and can be used to help with troubleshooting.
Over the past several years, you’ve seen us demonstrate our virtualization technology on the Arm platform across several use cases, everything from running mission critical workloads on a windmill, to running on the SmartNIC, to running on AWS Graviton in the cloud. We realized that the resilient platform created for the datacenter can be equally valuable in non-traditional environments. We’ve learned a lot from exploratory discussions with customers and Arm Silicon Partners.
Now we’d like to give our customers a chance to evaluate this technology in their own environments. This evaluation program is for the enterprise architects who are considering the viability of virtualizing Arm workloads, for the test/dev team looking for a way to spin up Arm environments, and for the tinkerers who simply want to explore running ESXi-Arm in a small form factor Edge environment. We’re interested to understand what features you will find most valuable, and how you will want to deploy this technology.
As there has been an update for this fling already here’s the changelog:
Changelog
October 22, 2020 – v1.1
Note: Upgrade is NOT possible, only fresh installation is supported. If you select “Preserve VMFS” option, you can re-register your existing Virtual Machines.
Fix for https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-edition/bugs/1098 (PSOD adding to VDS)
Support for Arm N1 SDP platform
Support for VMs on Neoverse N1 CPU
Pass-thru stability improvements to LS1046A and LX2160A platforms
Fix for vCenter/DRS incorrect CPU usage
Fix for VM crash when VM storage fills up
Stability fix for non-coherent DMA device support
Installer: tolerate RAM size within 4% of 4GB instead of 3.125 (for the otherwise unsupported RK3399 boards)
Serial port handling improvements (for unsupported/unknown boards, to be a bit more resilient of firmware configuration errors)
Documentation Updates:
Moved and expanded iSCSI doc for Pi doc to main ESXi-Arm Fling doc
Added LS1046ARDB docs (including ref to it from main ESXi-Arm doc and Fling website)
Fixed Ampere server name and links (its HR330A/HR350A, not SR-something)
Added Arm N1SDP document (including ref to it from main ESXi-Arm doc)
Updated GuestOSes known to work with ESXi-Arm including new “Verified” section
Horizon Peripherals Intelligence is an online self-serviced diagnosis service that can help increase the satisfaction when using peripheral devices with Horizon product by both the end users and the admin user. Currently, we support diagnosis for the following device categories – USB storage devices, USB printers, USB scanners, Cameras. We will continue to cover more device categories in the future.
Storage Performance Tester
Storage Performance Tester is a one-click storage performance test tool, which is able to collect IOPS, latency and CPU cycles per I/O for ESXi storage stack. This tool automates all the testing steps including the customized VMs deployment, I/O workload running, and storage performance analysis. It displays the performance metrics through multiple visualized graphical charts. The only thing that users need to do is enter one command and wait for the performance report of your server.
This tool is designed to be a developer-friendly tool help troubleshoot and identify storage performance issues. It could be used to validate the maximum performance of new storage hardwares/drivers and setups of vSphere/vSAN. For more details please check the guild located in the instructions
Updated Flings
VMCA Certificate Generator
The VMCA Certificate Generator is useful to create your own certificates using the VMCA in vCenter if you don’t have access to a purpose build system in your network.
Changelog
Version 1.0 Update
Added the open source license file.
vRealize Build Tools
vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.
Changelog
Version 2.8.8 Update
[MVN] Support SHA1 checksum generation for JS,TS,XML,vRA,vRANG project types.
[MVN] Include the pom.xml description content as description of the built vRO package artifact
[TS-AutoGen] Define a property for storing the version of the API for which this project is generated.
[TS-AutoGen] Store the API version as part of the vRO package description.
[vRA-NG] Adds support for import/export of custom resources and resource actions.
[TS] Typescript projects for vRO, now support syntax for specifying a description for a configuration element attribute.
[vRA-NG] Adds support for using project name when managing vRA-NG content.
[vROps] Adds support for vROps 8.1
[vROps] Change default authentication provider to Token-based Authentication
[TS] Extend vropkg tool to support Polyglot bundle
[TS] Support for skipping unmapped dependencies, e.g. –skipUnmappedDeps
[TS] Bumped up Typescript version to 3.8.3
[TS] Added support for tsconfig file override using the project option of the tsc executable.
[MVN] Updated vRBT infrastructure project with latest dependencies and improved installation robustness
[vROps] Fixes a problem with resource kind during alert definition import
[TS] Use fixed node package versions
[vROps] Support for policy assignment to custom groups
[vRA] Fixes a problem with vra-ng authentication always setting System Domain and users not being able to authenticate with different domain
[vROps] Removed sshHost from Installer. Use host instead.
[TS] Make dependency:go-offline execution conditional
[TS] All version of Node are supported from 10.x and above
[TS] npm repository is no longer needed [TS] Support for RequireJS imports/exports
[TS] Support for yaml configurations
[TS] Improved workflows and policy templates transpilation
[TS] Improved diagnostic messages
[TS] Improved handling of cycle references
[TS] Extended workflow support
[TS] Support for ES2017.String
USB Network Native Driver for ESXi
USB has become one the most widely adopted connection type in the world & USB network adapters are also popular among Edge computing platforms. In some platforms, there is either limited or no PCI/PCIe slots for I/O expansion & in some cases, an Ethernet port is not even available. Another advantage of a USB-based network adapter is that it can be hot-plugged into an system without a reboot which means no impact to the workload, same is true for hot-remove.
This Fling supports the most popular USB network adapter chipsets found in the market. The ASIX USB 2.0 gigabit network ASIX88178a, ASIX USB 3.0 gigabit network ASIX88179, Realtek USB 3.0 gigabit network RTL8152/RTL8153 and Aquantia AQC111U. These are relatively inexpensive devices that many of our existing vSphere customers are already using and are familiar with.
Changelog
October 26, 2020 – v1.7
Added support for ESXi 7.0 Update 1
USB NIC Bindings are now automatically persistent
5GbE USB NICs now properly show Full vs Half Duplex
Note: This is ONLY for ESXi 7.0 Update 1, for ESXi 7.0/6.7/6.5, please ensure you are using the correct version of driver.
The Workspace ONE macOS App Analyzer will determine any Privacy Permissions, Kernel Extensions, or System Extensions needed by an installed macOS application, and can be used to automatically create profiles in Workspace ONE UEM to whitelist those same settings when deploying apps to managed devices.
Changelog
Version 1.1 Update
10/27/2020 – Fixed bug that prevented Privacy Preferences from loading when default shell was set to zsh.
App Volumes Migration Utility
App Volumes Migration Utility allows admins to migrate AppStacks managed by VMware App Volumes 2.18, to the new application package format of App Volumes 4. The format of these packages in App Volumes 4 have evolved to improve performance and help simplify application management.
Changelog
1.0.6 Version Update
Create meta_json.zip in migrated appstacks.
HCIBench
HCIBench is THE tool to test the performance of your VSAN cluster. Always use your own metrics based on the actual requirements for your environment.
HCIBench stands for “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark”. It’s essentially an automation wrapper around the popular and proven open source benchmark tools: Vdbench and Fio that make it easier to automate testing across a HCI cluster. HCIBench aims to simplify and accelerate customer POC performance testing in a consistent and controlled way. The tool fully automates the end-to-end process of deploying test VMs, coordinating workload runs, aggregating test results, performance analysis and collecting necessary data for troubleshooting purposes.
HCIBench is not only a benchmark tool designed for vSAN, but also could be used to evaluate the performance of all kinds of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Storage in vSphere environment.
Changelog
Version 2.5.1 Update
Fixed non vSAN cluster testing issue
Fixed pre-validation storage policy issue
Added in-place upgrading capability, to do so, you can also upgrade HCIBench to the latest version by running the following command in HCIBench: tdnf install -y git && git clone https://github.com/cwei44/HCIBench.git && sh HCIBench/upgrade.sh
MD5 Checksum: 1d14426f92b353e90469a8623ade2bc1 HCIBench_2.5.1.ova
Version 2.5.0 Update
Added support vSAN HCI Mesh testing, now you can test both local and remote vSAN datastores at the same time
Added support local storage including VMFS and vSAN-Direct testing
Added vSAN Debug Mode, allow user to collect vm-support bundle and vmkstats automatically when running testing against vSAN
Changed guest VMs name convention to {vm_prefix}-{datastore_id}-batch_num-sequence_num
Enhanced testing report format
Allow user to specify customized IP addresses for guest VMs
Allow user to configure CPU and Memory for guest VMs
Added best practice and network troubleshooting guide in the user manual
Horizon View True SSO uses Microsoft Enterprise Certificate Servers to issue certificates that are used when the user logs on to the desktop. The Horizon View Enrollment Server (ES) is responsible for sending a certificate request to certificate servers, and for monitoring the PKI configuration settings in the Active Directory.
Changelog
Version 2.2
The tool has been updated to allow performance-testing of the enrollment-server.
Today I saw the question on the VMware{Code} Slack Channel if anyone ever managed to disabled Desktop Pools using PowerCLI. I was like yeah I have done that and you might need to user the helperservice for that. I offered to create q fast and quick blog post about it so here we go.
First as always I connect to my Connection Server and use a query to retrieve the Pool that I am going to disable.
Now this has not been changed yet on the desktop pool itself, to do that we need to use desktopservice.update and I also show the result of the change.
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.
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
Fixed tvm deployment bug when specifying host
enabled easy run to support stretched cluster
fixed timezone issue on pdf report, and added more vSAN info into PDF report
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
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.
I already spoiler the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home but this appliance gives you the opportunity to add your computer power in the search for a solution against Corona or other diseases.
This Fling is a vSphere Appliance that contains the Folding@Home client software. Upon deploying the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home, the user will be prompted to enter information to configure the Folding@Home software. Once the appliance is deployed, the Folding@Home client is running and ready for Working Units. The Fling is also pre-configured to allow remote management of the Folding@Home client. For more information on the Folding@Home Project and how we can be a Force for Good against diseases like the Coronavirus, visit the website www.foldingathome.org.
The Folding@Home Appliance is configured to automatically join Team VMware ID 52737. Everyone is welcome to join! Check out http://vmwa.re/fah for team and individual statistics.
Workspace ONE Mobileconfig Importer
The Workspace ONE mobileconfig Importer gives you the ability to import existing mobileconfig files directly into a Workspace ONE UEM environment as a Custom Settings profile, import app preference plist files in order to created managed preference profiles, and to create new Custom Settings profiles from scratch. When importing existing configuration profiles, the tool will attempt to separate each PayloadContent dictionary into a separate payload for the Workspace ONE profile.
Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility
In case the manual deployment is too much work or the PowerCLI based is too difficult engineers have now created Unified Access Gateway Deployment Utility for Mac or Windows to install the uag.
Unified Access Gateway (UAG) Deployment Utility assists the deployment of UAG appliances by running the utility on Windows or macOS machines. This utility provides better user interface, which is self explanatory about the next steps and better error handling through useful messages & tool tips which will make it easier for an admin to deploy single or multiple appliances.
Updated Flings
vSphere Software Asset Management Tool
Changelog
March 2020
Minor wording update to the generated software asset management report.
Desktop Watermark
Changelog
v1.1 – Build 20200302-signed
Added a new attribute %DATETIME% to show hour and minute info on screen.
vCenter Event Broker Appliance
Changelog
Too damn much so better head over to William Lam’s blogpost.
Ubuntu OVA for Horizon
Changelog
v1.2
Special thanks to Robert Guske for testing & feedback
Support for Horizon 7.11 and later
Support for vSphere 6.7+
Updated OVA base image to Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Updated Virtual Hardware to v14
Added option to configure static networking
Added support for USB 3.0 and USB Redirection (via linux-agent-installer.sh)
20.03 Release Notes:
Please Note: If you have already setup WS1 SCIM Adapter, it is possible that moving to 20.03 will create new accounts. Please consider resetting Directory Services configuation for the OG you are connecting to.
New Features:
Windows 10 OOBE Enrollment now supported
Bitnami Node.js 12.16.1-0 now supported with embedded install
Various Enterprise and Custom SCIM Schema attributes now supported (see below table)
Bugs Fixed:
Resources with special characters in immutableId do not update
vSphere Mobile Client
Changelog
Version 1.10.2
Improvements/Fixes
Better support for older devices
Fix some issues related to the back button
Fix for the annotation not defined issue
Version 1.10.1
Fixed “TypeError : Cannot read property of ‘annotation’ of undefined”
Errors causing white screen should now have more information about the cause
Infrastructure Deployer for vCloud NFV
Changelog
Version 3.2.1 Update
Updated to new version
Replaced user guide the new version
Horizon View Events Database Export Utility
Changelog
Version 2.2
Fixed the following issues:
Able to return data for All Pools
Able to return data on just user logon and logoff events
Both of these actions would cause a crash or error in previous versions
Pallas helps an admin to manage edge ESXi hosts where it’s not possible to manage them using vCenter due to security reasons.
The goal of Pallas is to provide management ability for ESXi hosts that cannot be managed by vCenter due to firewall or network issues.
Case 1: You have several ESXi hosts which running in a private network, but you have requirement to management them in the public network.
Case 2: Your ESXi host don’t wire connections and must connected through WiFi or Mobile network. For example, you use ESXi running on the oil rig, train head and you want to remote manage the ESXi securely.
Case 3: In IOT world you have the virtualized Edge devices requirements (ESXi host on Edge Device) and need remote management the ESXi(like patch, create VM etc.)
This solution includes a dominate-agent VM to provide remote management ability on the ESXi. If the ESXi has no wire connection then a pluggable network device (USB WiFi card, 3G/4G/5G sim card or other device that can provide network access ability) is needed, the pluggable network device will be pass-through directly to the dominate-agent VM. A remote manager server that accept connections either in public cloud/hybrid or private datacenter.
The dominate agent VM will talk to ESXi through ESXi SDK for workload VM management. There is no direct connection between the workload vm and dominate agent by default.
The dominate agent VM will talk to Pallas Manger though MQTT protocol, it will not allow any inbound traffic.
Updated Flings
Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer
Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer is a script that analyses vm’s and the hosts running them to see if they run in an optimized way. It does not look into the vm’s themselves, if that is needed vRealize Operations is recommended.
Changelog
Version 2.0.2
Modified Get-OptimalvCPU.ps1 to account for vCenters with no clusters
Modified Error Catches so they display the line number of the error
Code Capture new language: the recorded interaction can now be translated to Go.
PowerActions: integrating PowerCLI and the vSphere Client. The vSphere Client now provides the ability to execute PowerCLI commands and scripts, and store scripts in a library. Custom actions backed by PowerCLI scripts can be defined and executed on inventory objects.
PowerActions must be explicitly enabled on a vSphere Client Fling deployment. For setup instructions and a quick walkthrough, see the file PowerActions_documentation_Fling50.pdf .
Improvements
PowerActions: when executing a script from the context menu of an object, the context object is prepopulated, but the object selector control has to be expanded and collapsed in order for this to become visible.
Release Notes
The base operating system for the fling is changed to Photon OS.
Upgrade from previous versions to 5.0 is not supported. A new appliance has to be deployed.
Server.bat Replaced, December 3
Fix a small error where ls.url was printed twice in the resulting webclient.properties which leads to errors when trying to login to the H5 web client.
App Volumes Entitlement Sync
The App Volumes Entitlement Sync helps the App Volumes admin in copying entitlements between various App Volumes environments like from test to production.
Changelog
Version 2.4
Fixed problem with sync button being disabled
Added check for App Volumes 2.x and App Volumes 4.x managers and will pop up message that they can’t be synced
Fix for Migrated Appstack upload failure in AVM due to JSON parsing error.
Instructions doc updated to reflect the name change from “Upload Prepackaged Volume” to “Upload Template” in the AVM UI.
vRealize Build Tools
vRealize Build Tools provides tools to development and release teams implementing solutions based on vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The solution targets Virtual Infrastructure Administrators and Solution Developers working in parallel on multiple vRealize-based projects who want to use standard DevOps practices.
Changelog
Version 2.4.18
Support vRA 8 support for blueprints, custom forms, subscriptions and flavor-mapping
vRO 8 support for existing content management and import
Support vRO 8 export of WFs in a folder structure derived from WF tags
Support for running WFs on vRO using maven command
Support persisting JS Actions IDs in source to allow for actions originating in vRO first to not create conflicts
TypeScript Projects (experimental) support improvements and bug fixes
General bugs fixing an documentation updates
Power vRA Cloud
Power vRA Cloud makes the vRA API’s more accessible for people already used to PowerCLI or PowerShell.
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 : wouter@retouw.nl
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.
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:
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.
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.
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