The VMware Labs flings monthly for February 2020

First of all my excuses for not posting more last month. It was a short but very busy month so I just couldn’t find the time for that. The people behind VMware flings have bee busy though with one new fling and seven updates ones. New is Pallas (for managing edge ESXi hosts) and the following received updates: Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer, USB Network Native Driver for ESXi, vSphere HTML5 Web Client, App Volumes Entitlement Sync, App Volumes Migration Utility, vRealize Build Tools, Power vRA Cloud.

New Releases

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pallas

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

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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

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USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

The USB Network Native Driver for ESXi was specially made for homelabs that need USB ports for extra network connectivity.

Changelog

February 12, 2020 – v1.4

• Add SuperMicro/Insyde Software Corp USB Devices in the supported list
• Resolved 9K Jumbo frame issue on RTL8153 chipset devices
• Resolved invalid speed reporting for some quick devices by using the default speed

ESXi670-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-33242987-offline_bundle-15615590.zip
ESXi650-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-33268102-offline_bundle-15620342.zip

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client

And the vSphere html5 client keeps improving and improving.

Changelog

Fling 5.0 – build 15670023

New Features

• 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.

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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

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App Volumes Migration Utility

You might want to use the App Volumes Migration Utility if you are upgrading from App Volumes 2.* to App Volumes 4.

Changelog

Version 1.0.1

• 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.

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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

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Power vRA Cloud

Power vRA Cloud makes the vRA API’s more accessible for people already used to PowerCLI or PowerShell.

Changelog

Version 1.1

• Bug fixes and following new cmdlets
• Add-vRA-Project-Administrator
• Add-vRA-Project-Member
• Get-vRA-DeploymentFilters
• Get-vRA-DeploymentFilterTypes
• Get-vRA-FabricNetworksFilter
• Get-vRA-FabricImagesFilter
• Remove-vRA-Project-Administrator
• Remove-vRA-Project-Member
• Update-vRA-Project-ZoneConfig