Intro

(For those of you who ever watch or used to watch WWE think: New Age Outlaws. For those who never did watch this from about 1:40.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, nerds of all ages. Retouw.nl proudly brings to you, the monthly VMware Labs updated Fliiiiings. The new, the updated change logs and all.

“And if you ain’t down with that I got two words for ya: read it!”

This month we had two new flings and six updated including a dinosaur that I even forgot it existed!

New Flings

vRealize Operations Export tool

Ever felt the need to export all of that vRops data because you don’t trust the recommendations it makes for you? This is your chance to do just that. The vRealize Operations Export Tool actually is an Open Source Fling and can be found on Github. If you want to know more about the VMware Open Source initiative visiting this site might be usefull.

Changelog

No changelog yet.

DRS Dump Insight

While DRS Lens already gives you some insight in why DRS actions might be happening the DRS Dump Insight actually uses drmdump files created on vCenter and analyses why a DRS action really happened or not and you can also run what-if scenarios to see what would happen if a threshold had been breached.

Changelog

Again no changelog yet.

Updated flings

Like I said 6 updated flings and let’s start with the Dinosaur you (like me) might have forgotten.

Visual Esxtop

WHAT? Yes Visual Esxtop has been updated! Duncan wrote about this over four years ago and I believe it might actually be older then that. The name says enough, this shows you the output from ESXtop in a graphical way and since I can never ever describe it better then Duncan head over there to read about it!

Changelog

I could copy the only changelog item but since that mentions vSphere 5.5 I think this might be an old one 🙂

ESXi Embedded Host Client

The ESXi Embedded Host client is in the GA product since 6.x but there’s still lab updates being released. Some very nice fixes have been implemented.

Changelog

Version 1.23.0 build 6360286 (Fling 18) – August 16, 2017

Minor features and bugfixes

General Display the VM List in the Host autostart settings Fix role selection in IE 11 Correct partition info portlet Better handling of unknown partition types Fix issue with fractional cores per socket in VM settings Several wizard fixes Remove persistent warning when importing VMs that include a floppy drive Fix hidden selection when using the ‘select all’ checkbox in a filtered VM list Handle OVAs with a missing description field Available NICs display correctly Default VMFS to the most recent version when formatting Security fixes



VMware OS Optimization Tool

This is THE go to application if it comes to building golden images for VDI or SBC environments. If it is Horizon or Citrix if you don’t optimize you will fail!

Changelog

August 2, 2017

New Template: App Volumes Packaging Machine – This template is intended to be used by Application Packagers who are responsible for creating AppStacks and should only be used on the ‘Packaging machine’.

vSphere HTML5 Web Client

The HTML5 client got a couple of updates with heaps of new features and bugfixes.

Changelog

Fling 3.20 – Build 6433743

New Features

Installed I/O Filters for Cluster and Host

Create and configure network resource pools in Network I/O Control v3

Bug Fixes

Fixed exception when navigating to VM summary page and configuring VM overrides: “Could not fetch query binding: com.vmware.vsphere.client.clusterui.model.services.VmFailureResponsesData”

Known Issues

If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps: If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA. If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.



Fling 3.19 – Build 6365405

New Features

Add host and client USB device to a VM

Add USB controller

Assign License action on VC/Cluster/Host

Edit/Clone VM Storage Policy

Edit Storage Policies of a VM (Actions > VM Policies > Edit VM Storage Policies…)

Storage Policy components view

Create/Delete Storage Policy components

Related VM Templates view for a Storage Policy

Mount VVOL datastore action

VVOL Capability Profiles Capacity portlet

Create and edit VM customization specifications (without custom network configurations)

Configure per disk option on Select storage page when cloning VM/template

Host lists can be sorted by consumed CPU and memory

Monitoring DRS memory utilization for clusters allows switching between active and consumed memory for the charts

Updated UI of the compatibility issues dialog in the migrate wizard – ability to sort the compatibility by VM, host or compatibility issue

Bug Fixes

The list of physical network adapters didn’t render correctly for some ESX hosts and an error message was appearing on the top of the page

Setting the DRS advanced option “PercentIdleMBInMemDemand” through the advanced settings now works for any value

Known Issues

If you see error in the vSphere Client (HTML5) similar to this – ‘getHostIsAssignLicenseActionAvailable’, then you can resolve this error by following below steps: If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then you should reregister the fling appliance by logging in to FAMI UI (or by running the config-ui CLI). Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for VCSA. If vSphere Client (HTML5) Fling appliance is pointed to a Windows vCenter Server, then reregister by downloading latest server-configure.bat from the Download section of this website. Refer the instructions document to follow the steps for configuring Fling appliance for Windows vCenter Server.

If you see this error when you click on the VM – “Could not fetch query binding: com.vmware.vsphere.client.clusterui.model.services.VmFailureResponsesData cause: java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not fetch query binding: com.vmware.vsphere.client.clusterui.model.services.VmVmcpSupportData”, collaps the HA portlet in the VM summary. We are working on fixing this.

HCIBench

HCIBench is a tool to test your hyperconverged infrastructure. No vSan required, any HCI is good as long as it runs vSphere.

Changelog

Version Version 1.6.3

Enhanced vSANPerformanceDiagnose function call

Enhanced port 443 validation

Enhanced results calculation

Added host maintenance mode validation

Added deployment validation

Horizon Toolbox

This one came out at the very last moment of August. Some bugs have been fixed and a couple of old features that had been removed have been re-added but have been marked deprecated.

Changelog

2017-Aug-31 Horizon Toolbox 7.2.1

Bugs fixed

Auditing – Export CSV failed

Console Access – Some vCenter versions were not supported. Now, almost all vCenter versions after 5.5 are supported.

Console Access – “Parent VMs” show all VMs. Now only the VMs which are (or ready to be) parent VMs are shown.

Installation sometimes failed due to Tomcat error. Now, the installation should be successful every time if the Connection Server is good.

New Features

Console Access – “Problem VMs” show the VMs with View Agent, but in abnormal status like “error”, “unavailable” or others.

The following features are added back since some customers strongly require these features, but they are marked as “deprecated”, since we suggest using the production features in Horizon or VIDM.

Management- Remote Assistance

Management- Device Access Filter