VMworld EU 2017 Day 1

Finally the real event has begun, but before the gates opened I was already on my way to a 7am vbreakfast in La Vid. This is a small cafe just opposite of the Venue where VMworld is being held. The event was sponsored by my good friends of Runecast. For lots of people this was way to early to get up let alone to look alive or being awake. After this Hans and I managed to cross the road dry which was quite a feat because we’ve already had some pretty bad rain.

Since being in a huge room listening to keynotes isn’t my thing i decided to watch it from the vmtn bloggers area. Can’t say a lot of news was announced but it was very cool to see Pat controlling a virtual sddc in a virtual way using a virtual reality headset. After this it was time for me to do the first quick swag run on the solutions exchange to get at least the backpack only the first 100 customers would be receiving. Add a couple of shirts to that and I was off to the Inner Circle session and lunch. It wasn’t a slaughterhouse like last year but they where getting some good feedback gain on how the could and should VMware’s services. I think that there where about 60 customers and partners in the room with at least 20 people from VMware themselves who could answer their questions. It even lead to VMware people talking to other VMware people to collaborate on improvements. Some of these things should have happened years ago but hopefully things will keep getting improved.

Watching some vbrownbag sessions in the vmtn area I decided to skip my first real breakout session but did go to the other one I had scheduled. This was a live whiteboard session by Adam Eckerle and Emad Younis on how to design you’re sso domain and what possible pitfalls are. This was a really interesting session and I loved the fact that they used a live whiteboard (using an ipad) instead of powerpoint.

After this it was time to finish my first and only day of swag hunting this year. I ended up with some lego figures, fidget spinners, t-shirts, bottles and loads more as you can see in the picture below.

while being really really tired I just had to go to the benelux & vExpert parties so Hans and I took the metro, another metro and finally the lightrail to go to Cafe Del Mar club where both where being held. The vExpert one was really low key and without music so talking to people was really easy. The benelux one was more a real party with loud music and everything. Too bad ir was raining so we couldn’t use the outside area. We decided to head back early  to actually get some sleep. At the end of the day I ended up with 25000 steps of which 5000 where from walking back from the Hackathon during the night.

 

VMworld EU 2017 Day -1

Oooooh what a rush! is a good way to describe monday aka day 1 of VMworld 2017. I started out by waking up early after a night of bad sleep and not feeling well the night before BUT i really felt refreshed and good so I was totally ready to head out for my first ever vcap deploy exam (vcap6-dtm deploy). I failed it with 228 where 300 is required but afterwards I did feel good about it any now have the general idea on how these exams actually go. As others have said before time is a big issue but next time I will be even more prepared for that so I am confident I am going to ace it.

In the afternoon I did one of three scheduled UX feedback sessions for the VMware Design studio. These sessions are not on the regular schedule but you had to know people that knew people who could send out invites, something the vExpert slack channel managed to do! In these sessions they show you mockups of possible User interfaces and you are asked to think out loud about what you would expect buttons to do or where you could find something. I already did a webex session for this in the spring for the html5 client and they really appreciate whatever you say.

The end at the venue for me was a workshop on Cloud foundation where I seemed to be the only one having major performance issues. This made the experience not that good for me but I still got a good general impression of the product.

So the real rush was the Hackathon in the evening. The event was organised but VMware Code was something I was really looking forward to. I ended up with a Dutch team with Hans KraaijeveldIvan de Mes, Niels Geursen Pascal van de Bor and myself. Our target for the evening was having fun, learning new stuff, drink beers and to add some new plugins to the Horizon View vCheck.

One of the scoring points was the amount of empty beer bottles on your table. We drank quite a few of them but they kept cleaning them out so we ended up with this table at the end. That might have cost us some points! I think for the complete team we actually managed all of our goals but because we had major issues getting an environment up and running we ended up creating only two extra plugins and fixed some issues in other ones. We even did two Github pull requests by Pascal and Niels for which Niels actually had to create his account first.

In the end we had a 90 second time slot to present about what we archived. We didn’t do any fancy powerpoint crap for this and just showed the result from the plugins we added to the check and telling a bit about it. Sadly we didn’t get first, second or third place but I did win a judges spot price in the form of an Amazon Echo Dot. That might have been because me wearing my UX design studio shirt and one of the judges being on that VMware team OR it might have been our bribes in the form of stroopwafels. This event I think might be the very best thing I do this VMworld and it hadn’t even really started!

 

VMworld EU 2017 Day -2

So while VMworld EU starts on Tuesday I already had a full day yesterday. For the Partner Exchange bootcamp day I picked something I had heard about but couldn’t find a lot about: EUC Livefire bootcamp. Livefire is a special group within VMware that helps partners in having success. In the past they had bootcamps for they SDDC and NSX but now they are also building two 4 or 5 day courses for EUC. One design and one deploy training. For me it was a full day learning about the components of Wokspace one because that’s the solution this bootcamp is about. There where some architectural principles in there besides deeper diving into the technical part. It was clear that they are still building the real livefire course but it really looks promising.

In the evening I had a ticket to go to the vRockstar party but my stomach decided it was having none of that so I decided to go to bed early but wasn’t able to catch any sleep before 1 am 🙁

New and updated VMware flings for August 2017

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

VMworld EU Hackaton join me to have some View vCheck fun!

So for a long time I have been looking forward to the VMworld EU Hackaton. The announcement has now been made and it will take place on Monday evening the 11th from 6pm to officially 10pm but my guess is that it might run a little longer 😉 It will be held at the Valkiria Hub Space and you can join as a member of mine or another team or as spectator, just schedule the right session in the schedule builder.

My Team

So I have signed up to lead a team to improve and expand the Horizon View vCheck I have been building. Since this probably also wil involve the Horizon View Community module I wouldn’t be too surprised if improvements will be made to that as well.

Who am I looking for?

For my team i don’t care how much experience you have with PowerCLI or Horizon view but it might be handy if you at least have some idea when we talk about it. Just bring your laptop and if we end up having learned something by the end of the night it has been a success for me!

Do I need something installed on my laptop?

Yes, make sure PowerCLI (at least 6.5) has been installed and your favorite script editor. I will prepare the connection brokers, composers and other vm’s on my laptop.

Anything else?

Just have fun!

New and updated VMware flings for july 2017

Intro

I decided to make this almost monthly post a bit wider and just post updates and new releases of all flings in that month. There are four flings that have been updated at least once this month.

New Flings

There has been one new release this month:

DRS Lens

During the development fase at some point DRS Lens was named DRS Goggle so if you talk to me irl it might be possible that I call it that way. What this Flings does is give you insight in DRS activity. In several dashboards it will help the user visualize why DRS did or maybe didn’t move those vm’s you are so attached to.

As VMware vSphere DRS has become more widely adopted now, more and more users are interested in knowing how it works. They need more insights into DRS activity and actions. They want to know the value that DRS provides to their clusters. DRS Lens is an attempt to provide a UI-based solution to help understand DRS better.

DRS Lens provides a simple, yet powerful interface to highlight the value proposition of vSphere DRS. Providing answers to simple questions about DRS will help quell many of the common concerns that users may have. DRS Lens provides different dashboards in the form of tabs for each cluster being monitored.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Added login compatibility to 5.5 vCenter
  • Fixed VC certificate parsing bug found with some 5.5 vCenters

Updated flings

These Flings have received one or more updates during this month.

Horizon Toolbox 2

The Horizon toolbox 2 has been updated to version 7.2 and since Horizon 7.2 itself now contains a Remote Assistance feature in the helpdesk part this has been removed from the fling. This is stil one of my favorite flings that has functionality that should be in Horizon itself!

Changelog

2017 Jul 17

New Features

  • Support Horizon 7.2. Horizon Toolbox uses the same version as the latest supported Horizon.
  • Support end users’ actions auditing (agent side), including USB storage, Client Drive Redirection and Clipboard.
  • Support vSphere Console Access to all Parent Images.

Bug Fixes

  • Fix one bug which caused the number of concurrent sessions not accurate.
  • Fix one bug which caused missed domains in login page.

Removed Features

  • Remote Assistance is part of Horizon 7.2 production (in Help Desk). So we have removed this feature from Horizon Toolbox.

vSphere html5 web client

The updates for this really great fling don’t get a date but a build number. I could find that 3.16 was released early July so I decided to take that one as the oldest for the changelog of the vSphere html5 web client.

Changelog

Fling 3.18 – Build 6163115

Improvements

  • Upgrade distributed switch wizard now supports the upgrade of LACP to Enhanced mode and the upgrade of Network I/O Control to version 3.
  • View settings of link aggregation groups on a distributed switch

Fling 3.17 – Build 6088028

New Features

  • Create VM Storage Policy (limited)
    • Migrate Host Networking to a Distributed Switch
    • Configure default gateway address on VMkernel adapters (ESX 6.5 only)
    • Network I/O Control v3 – configure shares, reservation and limit for the different types of system traffic
    • Customize hardware options when cloning VM or deploying VM from template
    • Create VVol Storage Policies

Improvements

  • Warn when about to edit the settings or perform snapshot operations on VM managed by a solution
  • Warning message when uploading files bigger than the datastore free space

Known Issues

  • Import Item into Content Library is not working.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed the bug on import workflow in content library

Fling 3.16 – Build 5956761

New Features

  • Create VM Storage Policy (limited)
    • Create vSAN Policy (without Tags)
    • Create Policy with Tags and Common rules
  • Distributed Switch
    • Manage physical network adapters at the host level
    • LACP support – view the link aggregation groups created on a distributed switch
    • Upgrade distributed switch wizard
  • SR-IOV support – enable/disable SR-IOV on physical network adapters that support it
  • Content Library
    • Tags, notes, subscription/Publication portlet
    • Edit settings on the content library
    • Delete Content Library
    • Synchronize Library

Improvements

  • Select TCP/IP stack while creating new VMkernel network adapter

Known Issues

  • Import Item into Content Library is not working.

HCIBench

HCIBench is a tool developed for benchmarking the hyper-converged infrastructure. It not only works for VSAN but for all kinds of hyper-converged solutions. Again this tool has no build date but version but the Internet Waybackmachine found for me that 1.6.1 was released back in february.

Changelog

Version 1.6.2

  • Integrated with vSAN Performance Diagnostic of vSphere_6.5U1/vSAN_6.6.1.
  • Added DHCP Service validation.
  • Added Vdbench workload profile validation.
  • Removed the root password expiration policy.
  • Changed results display to show full file names.
  • Changed easy-run calculation from host basis to disk-group basis.

Pulling Horizon View events with PowerCLI in a nicer way

Update: There is a new way to pull the event information without having to enter the sql password please see this post about it.

 

So in one of the first posts I did about Powercli 6.5 was a bit about pulling events from the Horizon View events database. This off course was not the crude way to pull the events. Another was was using the event dumper fling but that one is a bit to slow for my taste. I decided to create a script that leveraged and had the speed of PowerCli but actually gave some options and that dumped the results in a .csv file since reading them from the command line will be too much at some point.

What I ended up with is a 71 line script where 18 are informational, 8 blanks, 1 that pulls the information and the rest for the menus and error handling. I decided on not giving any real errors when things don’t work but just red text. A lot is done with try <> catch and a if elseif else.

There is no need to load any modules but the scripts assumes at least PowerCLI 6.5 with the vmware.hv.helper module loaded.

I have created a github repo for these smaller scripts over here.

#-------------------------------------------------
# Get the Horizon view event for the last x time and export to a csv
#
# Requires PowerCLI 6.5 or higher
# Requires vmware.hv.helper module
# Module can be found at https://github.com/vmware/PowerCLI-Example-Scripts
#
# Version 1.0
# 16-06-2017
# Created by: Wouter Kursten
#
#-------------------------------------------------

# Load the required VMware modules (for PowerShell only)

Write-Host "Loading VMware PowerCLI Modules" -ForegroundColor Green
try	{
	get-module -listavailable vm* | import-module -erroraction stop
	}
catch	{
	write-host "No Powercli 6.5 or higher found" -ForegroundColor Red
		}
$version=get-powercliversion -WarningAction silentlyContinue
if ($version.build -lt 4624819)	{
	write-host "Horizon View api's require Powercli 6.5 or higher to function, please upgrade PowerCLI" -ForegroundColor Red
	exit
	}
elseif (get-module vmware.hv.helper  ) {
	write-host "VMware.hv.helper found"
	}
else {
	write-host "Please download and install the VMware.hv.helper module from https://github.com/vmware/PowerCLI-Example-Scripts" -ForegroundColor Red
	exit
	}

#Ask for connection information

$hvservername=Read-host "Welke Connection broker?"
$domain=read-host "Please enter your active directory domain?"
$username=Read-host "Please enter your useraccount"
$password=Read-host -assecurestring "Please enter your password"

#Connect to View Connection broker
write-host "Connecting to the connection broker" -ForegroundColor Green
try {
$hvserver=connect-hvserver $hvservername -domain $domain -username $username -password $password -WarningAction silentlyContinue -erroraction stop
}
catch {
	Write-host "Can't connect to the Connection server please check the credentials." -ForegroundColor Red
	exit
	}

#connect to the Event Database

$dbpassword=Read-host -assecurestring "Please enter the password of the account configured in Horizon View to access the event database."
write-host "Connecting to the database" -ForegroundColor Green
try {
	$eventdb=connect-hvevent -dbpassword $dbpassword -erroraction stop
	}
catch {
	Write-host "Can't connect to the Database server please check the password." -ForegroundColor Red
	exit
	}

#Retreive information

write-host "Please provide the following information use % as wildcard." -ForegroundColor Green
$searchuser=Read-Host "Please enter the accountname you need information on?"
$module=Read-Host "What module do you want the logs for? (Agent,Broker,Client,Tunnel,Framework,Client)"
$sevfilter=Read-Host "What is the severity level you need information on?(Audit_fail, Audit_Success,Info,Warning,Error)"
$message=Read-host "Looking for any specific text in the message?"
$maxage=Read-Host "How far do you want to look back in event history? (Day,week,month,all)"
$filelocation=Read-host "Please provide filename and location for the exported csv file"

#Export to file

$lastevent=get-hvevent -hvdbserver $eventdb -timeperiod $maxage -SeverityFilter $sevfilter -userfilter $searchuser -modulefilter $module -messagefilter $message

try {
	$lastevent.events  | export-csv $filelocation -erroraction stop
	}
catch{
	write-host "Unable to create the file, please check name and location" -ForegroundColor Red
	exit
	}
Write-host "Events have been successfully exported." -ForegroundColor Green

And how does this look in the end??

Updated flings for Horizon View in May

Yes I am a bit late but there are only two Horizon View related flings that received an update last month. First is the OS Optimization tool and second is the Ubuntu OVA for Horizon. The OSOT even already received an update in June but that’s for next month.

Ubuntu OVA for Horizon

Changelog:

v1.1.0

  • MATE Only Release
  • Increased vRAM to 128 MB instead of Automatic
  • Removed Audio Device
  • Updated default network device to VMXNET3
  • Updated repository for open-vm-tools to Ubuntu repo
  • Added Horizon 7.1 Agent Dependencies
  • Updated Dependency packages for Ubuntu 16.04 on Horizon 7.1
  • Agent installer script updated with Horizon 7.1 links
  • Updated Media Codec packages for Ubuntu 16.04
  • Updated MATE packages to Xenial
  • More reliable domain join
  • Password update optional
  • Timezone update optional
  • Option to change hostname
  • Desktop addons optional
  • Added retry attempts for failed wgets of smb and krb5 configuration files
  • Renamed ‘horizon-linux-installer.sh’ to ‘linux-agent-installer.sh

VMware OS Optimization Tool

Changelog

May 16, 2017

  • OSOT binary is now digital-signed, to make sure the integrity of distribution
  • Template update: Windows 10 – Item “Use small icons on taskbar” is unselected by default.

Building a Horizon View vCheck (part 3)

So it’s time for part 3 already of building checks for Horizon View. I got some remarks after last post and thus I need to say that the checks have been created for View 7 because some commands might not work against a 6.* installation. three new plugins this time or actually two since one was already in the original uploads on github but I didn’t mention it on here yet.

11 Linked Clone Desktop Pool Information.ps166

Just like the full clone pool information but tailored for linked pools.

# Start of Settings
# End of Settings

$automatedpoolstatus=@()
foreach ($pool in $pools){
$poolname=$pool.base.name
if ($pool.type -like "*automated*" -AND $pool.source -like "*VIEW_COMPOSER*"){
$desktops=get-hvmachinesummary -pool $poolname
$automatedpoolstatus+=New-Object PSObject -Property @{"Name" = $Poolname;
								"Pool_Image" = $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.parentvmpath;
								"Pool_Snapshot" = $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath;
								"Desktop_Count" = ($desktops).count;
								"Available" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "AVAILABLE"}).count;
								"Connected" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "CONNECTED"}).count;
								"Disconnected" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "DISCONNECTED"}).count;
								"Maintenance" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "MAINTENANCE"}).count;
								"Provisioning" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "PROVISIONING"}).count;
								"Customizing" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "CUSTOMIZING"}).count;
								"Already_Used" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "ALREADY_USED"}).count;
								"Agent_Unreachable" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "AGENT_UNREACHABLE"}).count;
								"Error" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "ERROR"}).count;
								"Deleting" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "DELETING"}).count;
								"Provisioning_Error" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "PROVISIONING_ERROR"}).count;
}
}
}
$automatedpoolstatus | select Name,Pool_Image,Pool_Snapshot,Desktop_Count,Available,Connected,Disconnected,Maintenance,Provisioning,Customizing,Already_Used,Agent_Unreachable,Error,Deleting,Provisioning_Error
$Title = "Linked Clone Desktop Pool Status"
$Header = "Linked Clone Desktop Pool Status"
$Comments = "These are the pools that have floating linked clones. Not all but the most common status's are counted."
$Display = "Table"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$PluginCategory = "View"

13 Dedicated Full Clones Assignment.ps1

This plugin is targeted at the dedicated full clones (and I just realize that one can also have dedicated linked clones so will need to build one for that as well). It gives information about which desktop is assigned to which account but also with information about the host it is running on if this information is available (not in my case).

# Start of Settings
# End of Settings

$fulldesktopassignment=@()
foreach ($pool in $pools){
$poolname=$pool.base.name
if ($pool.type -like "*automated*" -AND $pool.source -like "*VIRTUAL_CENTER*"){
	$desktops=get-hvmachinesummary -pool $poolname
	foreach ($desktop in $desktops){
	if ($desktop.namesdata.username){
		$username=$desktop.namesdata.username
		}
	else{
		$username="Unassigned"
		}
$fulldesktopassignment+=New-Object PSObject -Property @{"Pool_Name" = $Poolname;
								"Desktop_Name" = $desktop.base.name;
								"Desktop_State" = $desktop.base.basicstate;
								"Desktop_Assigned_to" = $username;
								"Desktop_OperatingSystem" = $desktop.base.Operatingsystem;
								"Agent_version" = $desktop.base.agentversion;
								"Host" = $desktop.managedmachinesdata.hostname;
								"Datastore" = $desktop.ManagedMachineNamesData.datastorepaths | out-string;
}
}
}
}
$fulldesktopassignment | select Pool_Name,Desktop_Name,Desktop_State,Desktop_Assigned_to,Desktop_OperatingSystem,Agent_version,Host,Datastore
$Title = "Dedicated Desktop Pool Assignment"
$Header = "Dedicated Desktop Pool Assignment"
$Comments = "These are the dedicated desktops with their current user assignment"
$Display = "Table"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$PluginCategory = "View"

04 License Status.ps1

This plugin gives licensing information including expiration date and what techniques are allowed under this license.

# Start of Settings
# End of Settings

$licensestatus=@()

$license=($services1).license.license_get()
$licensestatus+=New-Object PSObject -Property @{"Licensed" = $license.Licensed;
								"LicenseKey" = $license.LicenseKey;
								"ExpirationTime" = $license.ExpirationTime;
								"ViewComposerEnabled" = $license.ViewComposerEnabled;
								"DesktopLaunchingEnabled" = $license.DesktopLaunchingEnabled;
								"ApplicationLaunchingEnabled" = $license.ApplicationLaunchingEnabled;
								"InstantCloneEnabled" = $license.InstantCloneEnabled;
								"UsageModel" = $license.UsageModel;
}								

$licensestatus | select Licensed,LicenseKey,ExpirationTime,ViewComposerEnabled,DesktopLaunchingEnabled,ApplicationLaunchingEnabled,InstantCloneEnabled,UsageModel

$Title = "License Status"
$Header = "License Status"
$Comments = "This is the license status information"
$Display = "Table"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$PluginCategory = "View"

Welcome to my first sponsor: Vembu

I am proud to announce the first sponsor of Retouw.nl: Vembu. Vembu is the creator of the Backup & DR suite with the same name. Besides that they also have a CRM suite in their portfolio. I have created a new partner page for them.

About Vembu

Vembu is a leading provider of a portfolio of software products and cloud services to small and medium businesses for more than a decade. Vembu’s vision is to make software and cloud services very affordable for the hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses worldwide.

Vembu’s flagship offering is the BDR Suite of products meant for on-premise, offsite, cloud backup and disaster recovery across diverse IT environments including physical, virtual, applications and endpoints. Vembu CRM Suite consists of products that addresses the needs of all customer facing teams including support, sales, marketing & social media engagement.

Since 2002, Vembu’s industry-recognized data protection solutions have delivered tangible value to more than 60,000 businesses worldwide through a network of 4000+ partners (MSPs/VARs & Resellers).

The different products under Vembu BDR Suite are categorized on the basis of environments:

For Virtualized environments like VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V:

Vembu VMBackup, part of Vembu BDR Suite provides reliable, efficient, agentless VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V backups for small and medium businesses with enterprise level features at affordable pricing. With Round-the- clock Business Availability as its sole aim, Vembu VMBackup provides faster recovery options which ensures that the business continuity is not disrupted. With VM Replication for High Availability, Vembu CBT Driver for high performance incremental backups, VSS aware technology for application consistency, Automated Backup Verification, VembuHIVE File System, a File System of File Systems for efficient backup storage, Multiple migration options, Flexible & Configurable Retention Policies, Vembu VMBackup is tailor made for all Backup & DR requirements of a complete virtual Datacenter. Also, to empower small businesses to have business continuity, Vembu provides 50% discount on Vembu VMBackup for small businesses having up to 6 CPU-Sockets

For Windows IT environments:

Vembu ImageBackup, part of Vembu BDR Suite is a complete backup and disaster recovery solution for Windows IT environments. It provides an option to do entire system level backup or specific file level backup in Windows Servers and workstations. It also ensures RTO less than 15 minutes by delivering reliable recovery options like Bare Metal Recovery, Quick VM Recovery, Instant File Recovery, Partition level Recovery etc. Furthermore, Desktops/Laptops Backup is completely free.

For Applications, File Servers, Endpoints:

Vembu NetworkBackup, part of Vembu BDR Suite is designed for small medium businesses to protect business data across file servers, application servers, workstations and other endpoints. With NetworkBackup businesses can backup all their systems to a central location which is easier to manage.

Vembu OnlineBackup, part of Vembu BDR Suite provides File Server, MS Exchange, MS SQL, MS SharePoint & MS Outlook Backups directly to Vembu’s secure cloud using enterprise-grade AES 256-bit encryption with granular restores.

For SaaS applications like Microsoft Office365 and G Suite:

Vembu SaaSBackup, part of Vembu BDR Suite is designed for backing up the Mails, Drives, Calendar and Contacts of Office 365 and Google Apps. Vembu SaaSBackup’s core system will manage all backup and restore operations as per the user request. The backup data will be sent to the Vembu Cloud storage over secured network.

Free version

Vembu also offers a free version that has many great features. The paid version has even more very usable features that you can see in the comparison.