So I am in the middle of my summer holiday but stil it’s time for this monthly overview. I see two new flings with the Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer and Machine Learning on VMware Cloud Foundation tools. No less than six have received updates: vSphere Mobile Client, Desktop Watermark, HCIBench, Horizon Toolbox, Horizon Helpdesk Utility and Horizon Session recording. I already blogged about the updates to the Horizon Helpdesk Utility over here.

New Releases

Machine Learning on VMware Cloud Foundation

Want to do things with big data? This Fling might be able to help you with that on VCF, It could do with a proper logo though.

This Fling provides a platform for Data Scientists to quickly setup a virtualized cloud infrastructure to conduct data science experiments: Virtualized environment based on VMware cloud and Kubernetes

Currently support CPU only (but will support GPU in future)

Based on Open Source Kubeflow, Horovod Provides a set of example Notebooks and libraries for common data science tasks, including: Data collection and cleaning (extract data from various sources, and describe the data semantics using metadata)

Data cleansing and transformation (clean up collected data and transform them from its raw form to a structured form more suitable for analytic processing)

Model training (develop predictive and optimization machine learning models)

Model serving (deploy model into a run time environment where online request will be served)

Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer

I personally wouldn’t call the Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer a fling since it’s a script but it’s here.

The Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory. It will flag a VM as “YES” if it is optimized and “NO” if it is not. For non-optimized VMs, a recommendation is made that will keep the same number of vCPUs currently configured, with the optimal number of virtual cores and sockets. Note that the VMCO will not analyze whether your VMs are configured with the correct number of vCPUs based on the VM’s workload. A more in-depth analysis tool such as VMware vRealize Operations Manager can make right-sizing determinations based on workload and actual performance.

Update flings

Horizon Session Recording

The Horizon Session Recording fling gives the Horizon admin a tool to record sessions for troubleshooting reasons for example.

Changelog

Version 1.2.2

Added support for horizon 7.8 and above

Added support for recording based on group memberships

Many bug fixes in agent

Bug fixes in server

Horizon Helpdesk Utility

Like I said I already blogged about the changes in the Horizon Helpdesk Utility but here’s the changelog, just to be complete.

Changelog

Version 1.4.0.1

No longer requires a helpdesk license! Yay!

Added the ability to interact with vCenter machines

Added the ability to open vCenter VM consoles

Added the ability to perform bulk machine actions

Added the ability to perform refresh / recompose tasks directly from helpdesk.

Fixed performance issues with multiple windows open (see single instance).

Fixed a crash when logon durations could not be accessed.

Added polling to allow logon durations to be received if notavailable when the session page is requested.

Fixed a crash in the ending of processes.

Fixed a metric ton of bugs with delegated administration.

Fixed a memory leak in the tray icon menu, of all places.

Removed the logon page graphic as it was to much of a pain to change it’s colour when changing themes

Fixed some layout issues when changing themes.

Removed empty sites from the viewon the change pod tray menu.

Added preliminary support for Horizon 7.9.

Horizon Toolbox

The Horizon Toolbox is another usefull utility for the Horizon admin that doesn’t have access to the enterprise add-ons.

Changelog

July 12, 2019, 7.8.1

Added support for Horizon View 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8

Fixed some issues

HCIBench

We have seen this one quite a lot already, if you need to benchmark your HCI than the HCIBench might be your tool. Good chance though that it’s better optimized for VSAN than others.

Changelog

Version 2.2.1

Fixed docker volume moving issue

MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.2.1.ova: 1a39c9df7d1485bc06332ae0b9d92ca7

Version 2.2

Moved docker volume to sdb to avoid blowing up OS disk

Added Fio spreadsheet generator

Added DRS warning checkup

Enhanced Grafana to keep all the historical data

Added DNS exception handler

Fixed RAM and PCPU reporting issue

Fixed Vdbench spreadsheet not reporting issue

MD5 checksum of HCIBench_2.2.ova: bb2a77dcf2ecc23b1ec2c30aee9945ec

Desktop Watermark

I personally haven’t really used the Desktop Watermark fling yet but I guess it could be useful for others.

Changelog

v1.0 – Build 20190724-signed

Added a new attribute %DATETIME% to show hour and minute info on screen.

vSphere Mobile Client

The vSphere Mobile Client fling is still a work in progress but functionality keeps being added. Very useful for most VI admins.

Changelog

Version 1.2.0

New features:

Focused inventory (bookmark a VM and then enter focused mode by clicking the bullseye button in the header)

vCenter dashboard now has host and virtual machine aggregates

Swiping the VM card displays a screenshot, clicking on it displays an even larger image

Bug Fixes

Removed option to delete virtual machines

Improvements to the login page

Improvements to the events and alarms page