Calling all vExpert hopefulls!

Have you ever dreamt about becoming a vExpert? When I became one in 2016 I had no idea what was needed and the vExpert Pro’s where not around yet. Several years ago the vExpert team setup this vExpert Pro program that is aimed at enabling hopefulls to be able to create the application they need to become a vExpert. You can find more information on the vExpert site here: https://vexpert.vmware.com/

Starting next week June 27th I will be running a weekly vExpert office hour zoom call where people can come with questions or if they want to discuss their application we can also review it. Even if you’re not there yet content wise we can also give you directions on what you could do for the next round of applications. These sessions will be held between 20.00h and 21.00h ECT +1 on Thursday evenings and I will try to get multiple vExpert Pro’s in there to help you out as much as possible.

If you are interested in joining the vExpert Office Hours drop me an email at vexpertofficehours@gmail.com so I can send you a calendar invitation.

or join us on the days via zoom using these details:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://controlup.zoom.us/j/81590596106?pwd=czDDGaUqbcIZmdKnpim7bskRZdw0sb.1

Meeting ID: 815 9059 6106
Passcode: 487061

FAQ

  • How often will you run this?
    • This will be weekly untill applications close
  • How late is this in my time zone?
    • You can use this link to convert the time to your local time.
  • Are there any other options to talk to vExpert Pro’s?
    • YES! We just started a VMware Community DIscord which has a channel for applicants. For more information see the vExpert website https://vexpert.vmware.com/

New Horizon Golden Image Deployment Tool released

Today at VMware Explore I have launched a new version of the Horizon Golden Image Deployment Tool aka hgidt. This new version is a complete rewrite of the old one as I moved the code base to Python. As base I used a converted framework of the old tool (using ChatGpt :D) in Tkinter and my existing python module for Horizon.

Why the rewrite?

I decided for a rewrite as I wante dto be able to publish the tool as an app and most anti malware tools will flag an exeutable that turns out to be a powershell script as malicious. Besides that I thought it would be easier to make the tool more flexible and more important faster. I also wanted to be able to use it from a mac. While the tool itself works flawless when started as a script I did run into issues compiling it into a Mac App so for now I don’t have that yet.

Changes

  • Switch from Powershell 7 to Python
  • replaced the selector for machines to deploy a secondary image to to a dropdown and number for amount or percentage of machines
  • published as an executable
  • Credentials storing made optional
  • Moved storing of credentials to the local credentials store
  • Connect button connects and gets info for both VDI & RDS

Where can I get it?

For now a zip file with the executable (and a ton of other files, it was either that or a slower starting app.) can be found on my Github which also has my (messy) source code.

Did anything change in how I use it?

Only some tiny bits like the option that I added to store the password or not and some slight changes on the VDI/RDS but I think these will be self explanatory.

Pics or it didn’t happen

The executable among the 1000’s of other files needed for Python

The configuration page, note the checkbox to store the password.
With the popup to ask for the password
After testing the credentials

The VDI & RDS Tabs after connecting. Take note of the already selected resizing options. These will be read from the current config so you get the same size when redeploying.

After selecting a new snapshot and enabling the secondary image to be pushed to selected machines
Deploy button was hit
And after a refresh

Todo list & bugs

  • FIx the percentage of machines that sometimes fails
  • add more logging
  • find a method to package into an app for macos

Used Python Modules

These are the modules I am using in this application

  • tkinter
  • tkcalendar
  • datetime
  • configparser
  • os
  • horizon_functions (own custom module)
  • keyring
  • requests
  • threading
  • time
  • sys
  • math
  • loguru
  • ttkthemes

Getting Horizon Events using the REST API

In a previous post I described on how to configure the Horizon Event database using the REST API’s. In this post I will describe on how you can retreive those events using a script that I have created. To get the first few events is easy, just use the /external/v1/audit-events api cmdlet and you get the first batch of events in an unsorted fashion. The script that I have created will get the events since a certain date and if you want only gets the types with a certain severity.

The script is created for Powershell 7 and has been tested with 7.3.4

Parameters

I have written 4 parameters into this script, 2 are mandatory and 2 are optional

  • Credential
    • This optional parameter needs to be a credential object from get-credential. If this is not supplied you will be asked to provide credentials in domain\username and password.
  • ConnectionServerFQDN
    • This mandatory parameter needs to be a string object with the fqdn of the connection server to connetc to i.e. server.domain.dom
  • SinceDate
    • This mandatory parameter needs to be a datetime object for the earliest date to get events for. for example use (get-date).adddays(-100) to get events up to 100 days old.
  • AuditSeverityTypes
    • This optional parameter needs to be an array with SeverityTypes to get events for. Allowed types are : INFO,WARNING,ERROR,AUDIT_SUCCESS,AUDIT_FAIL,UNKNOWN.

Usage

First I get my credentials using get-credential, you cna also import them from an xml using import-clixml creds.xml for example

$credentials = get-credential

Next I get all events for the last day using:

.\Horizon_Rest_Get_Events.ps1 -ConnectionServerFQDN pod1cbr1.loft.lab -sincedate (get-date).AddDays(-1) -Credential $credentials

Or just the ERROR and INFO events using:

.\Horizon_Rest_Get_Events.ps1 -ConnectionServerFQDN pod1cbr1.loft.lab -sincedate (get-date).AddDays(-100) -Credential $credentials -auditseveritytypes "ERROR","AUDIT_FAIL"

Yes I had to get back in days some further to get error events.

The Script

The script itself can be found on my github .

My portable Lab

For a long time I have been wanting to have some kind of portable lab but I had a few requirements that where limiting me:

  • has kvm (for troubleshooting as things always break for me)
  • low power consumption
  • Does’t require a dedicated suitcase for transportation

Not so long ago I got a newer laptop from ControlUp to replace my (not that old) annoying heat and noise generating Dell Lattitude 5401. I never could get this thing even a bit quiet without hurting performance. While I found it annoying to work daily on I thought it might be a good match to turn this laptop in a portable lab.

The Host

One of the advantages was that the laptop did have an intel nic built in so I decided to see if I could get ESXi installed on it. After some tinkering I found out that the only thing required for this was to change the disk mode in the bios from raid to ahci. (Why dell? why? the thing has only one nvme…) and after that change ESXi installed without issues.

Now with the 16GB that my machine had I could run ESXi but it was far from enough for what I was going to need and neither was the storage at 512GB. I did have an intel nvme 1TB 660P nvme in one of my servers that I honestly wasn’t even using so that was swapped in quickly. I also had a Gigabite Brix box with 64GB that I had planned to run 24/7 but with the rising energy costs I never did that and it was mostly gathering dust as my regular homelab has more than enough cpu/memory. These where 2 Lexar Modules and after another quick swap you might have seen this picture on twitter.

Specs

Connectivity

Routing

So I had my host with build-in KVM & UPS, now I also needed connectivity. When using it at home it has it’s own dedicated vlan but on the go I needed some kind of router that can use the same vlan. I did not wat to go for a virtual router as I do not want to potentially connect an ESXi host to a for me unknown network. Again I had a few requirements:

  • USB powered (Requiring a single socket is already enough)
  • Small
  • 2 ports (wan and lan side)
  • gbit
  • wifi (so my regular laptop can connect)
  • Bonus : usb tethering for my phone in case all other connection options fail

In the end I decided to order the GL.iNet GL-AR300M16. While there might have been cheaper options there aren’t that many that have multi rj45 ports and also have openwrt as that is a very flexible OS for routers like these. The only thing I have had to change oimn the router was the ip addresses that it uses + I had to disablke dhcp as I wanted the domain controller to do that. It switches very easily between wired and tethering so it’s checkeng all the boxes that I needed.

Storage

Yes I know I said this machine is a mobile lab but I did want to have an option to connect shared storage in case I want to do maintenance etc. I did not want to use the built-in nic for this so I went looking for a usb to rj45 adapter that supports 2,5gbps as I have a Qnap TS-464 with 2,5gbps connectivity. The first step was to check the usb nic fling for what adapters will work. Now this list doesn’t include the speed but a quick look at amazon showed me that the RealTek 8156 will work and the images (not the text!) in this amazon CY USB-C to 2,5GBPS adapter showed that it should work. So another quick amazon order later I was able to prove it worked and I had connectivity to my NAS.

The Setup

The host

On Host level I didn’t need to make too much changes besides network configuration. The only things done so far was to install the USB NIC Fling, configure NTP, add storage and last but not least enable TPS! For a LAB this small any gain in memory availability is essential so TPS is really needed.

vCenter

I went with the smalles vCenter option available and for now it’s running ok with 2cpu’s and 14GB of ram.

The domain

The first VM to be deployed was my domain controller as that’s needed for just about everything I do. I went for a domain called LoaL.lab wich is an abbreviation for Lab On A Laptop. As always I name my vm’s with the environment name in it so the first VM to be deployed was LoaLDC which was quickly transformed into a domain controller, dns and dhcp server.

VM’s

The goal for this portable lab was to have something that can showcase ControlUp Integrated with vSphere, Horizon, App Volumes & DEM so I ended up with these VM’s. As you can see the connection server more or less is the bitch of this setup and has multiple functions:

NameFunctionCPUMemory
LoaLVCvCenter (Tiny)214
LoalDCDomain Controller26
LoaLCSVMware Horizon Connection Server, SQL Server, File server212
LoaLAPPApp Volumes Server26
LoalCUControlUp Monitor26
LoalRecVMware Horizon Session Recorder (needed for demo)24
LoalW10Static management VM, also available via Horizon28

Desktop Pools & RDS Farms

So besides the manual desktop pool for the mgmt VM I also have an Instant Clone Pool and and RDS Farm. For both I have an App Volume available with notepad ++ and one of the test users also has a writable volume. All iof this still works while I have made the desktops and rds machines as small as possible: 1 cpu and 1gb of ram! Don’t expect that you are able to do a lot but I can login and start notepad++ and that’s enough here. In the VDI pool there are 2 machines while there is a single RDS host deployed. Both Golden Images where optimized to dead with just about everything selected in the VMware OS Optimization Tool.

On the RDS Host the app volume is published using the per user on-demand integration that was added for Horizon 2206. See this article: Revolutionize virtual apps by publishing apps on demand on generic RDSH servers – VMware End-User Computing Blog

Notepad ++ as on-demand App Volume
The login sequence
And as seen from App Volumes

Resource Consumption

So with 64GB of ram this is clearly the bottleneck for this system but how is it looking after it has been running for a few hours? I am receiving a warning about memory consumption but the current usage is 58GB but I don’t see any swapping or ballooning so that’s nice. I also like the Shared Common metric

Power Consumption

While it might be less relevant for a mobile lab I am interested in the power consumption and this is the graph for the current period. This data is coming from a Blitzwolf smart plug connected to my Homey. So the peak at boot time comes close to 80W but seems to stabalize after that.

The ControlUp setup

As a ControlUp employee one of this lab’s usecases was to display what we can do with ControlUp. This is a brand new CU environment that is mainly using Real-Time DX but for fun I have also deployed the Edge DX Agent to a few servers.

Introducing the Horizon Golden Image Deployment Tool

Intro

Some of you might have seen previews on the socials but for the last few months I have been working hard on a GUI based tool to deploy golden images to VMware Horizon Instant Clone Desktop Pools and RDS Farms. This because who isn’t sick and tired of having to go into each and every Pod admin interface to o a million clicks to deploy a few new golden images?

The work started mid December and as usual the first 75% was done pretty quickly so mid January I had a first working version. While I expected a first version that would only support Desktop Pools to be available mid February (Vmug Virtual EUC day someone?) this build actually already had most of the parts in place to support both Desktop Pools and RDS Farms. After this first build my regular work for ControlUp started picking up again so I had less time to fix the numerous bugs that I encountered. Well bugs? Most where logic errors on my part but most of them have been ironed out by now. All in all the version that you can use today has cost me ~80hrs in building & testing and many many more hours thinking about solutions.

Is the tool perfect? Definitely not but it works and it’s more than what we’ve had before and I will be looking into impriving it even more.

The Tool

I guess you got bored with the talking and would like to see the tool now. The content of thos blog post might get it’s own page later for documentation purposes. The tool itself can be downloaded from this GitHub repository. Make sure to grab both the xaml and ps1 files, put them in a single folder and you should be good. The tool entirely runs on Powershell and is using the WPF Framework for the GUI.

Quick jumps:

Requirements

There are only 2 real requirements:

  • Powershell 7.3 or later (for performance reasons I used some PS 7.3 options so the tool WILL break with an older version.)
  • Horizon 8 2206 or later (the reason for this is that otherwise the secondary images wouldn’t be available and that’s a feature I wanted in there for sure.)

Deplying a new golden Image

For normal usage you can just start the ps1 file.

This will bring you to this tab, before the first use though you need to go to the configuration page.

Fill in one of your cconnection servers, credentials and hit the test button. If you have a cloud pod setup the other pods will be automatically detected and make sure to check the Ignore Certificate Errors checkbox in case that’s needed!

If the test was successfull you are good to go to either the Desktop Pools or RDS Farms tabs. Both are almost completely the same so I will only show desktop pools

Hit the connect button and all Instant Clone Pools or Farms from all pods will be auto populated in the first pull down menu.

The second pulldown menu allows you to select a new source VM

And the third pull down the snapshot (I guess you guessed that already, I might need to add labels but they are so ugly in WPF)

To the right you have all kinds of options that you should recognize from the regular gui including add vTPM that was added in Horizon 2206. This checkbox isn’t in the RDS Farms as we currently simply don’t have the option to have Horizon add a vTPM there. If the options are valid ( like more cores that cores/socket and if those numbers will work (can’t do 3 cores and 2 cores per socket!) the Deploy Golden Image becomes available. Hit this to start the deployment, you can check the status by hitting the refresh button. (don’t tell anyone but the functions does exactly the same as a connect)

Handling Secondary Images

By default a secondary image will not be pushed to any machines. Just select the Push As Secondary Image checkbox and hit Deploy Golden Image button.

What you can also do is select one or more of the machines and deploy the Golden Images ot those machines

Once a Secondary Image has been deployed the three other buttons come available.

From top to bottom you can either cancel the secondary image completely, apply the golden image to more desktops (selecting ones that already has it won’t break anything and will just deploy it when possible) and promote the Secondary Image to the Primary golden image for the pool. The latter will cause a rebuild of ALL machines including the ones already running on the image. In the future I will also add a button to configure a machine to run the original image.

Settings and logs location

All settings are stored in an xml file in %appdata%\HGIDTool this includes the password configured in the Settings tab as a regular Encrypted PowerShell Credentials object. If you didn’t hit save on the settings tab this will be automatically done when closing the tool.

In case you want to borrow some of my code the log files contain every API call that I do to get date, push an image or handlke secondary images. This is the same output as you’d get when running in -verbose mode so that’s only needed when you’re troubleshooting the tool.

Configuring Horizon 8 event database using the rest api

With the recent release of Horizon 8 build 2212 one of the new api calls available was that of getting and configuring the event data base. This time I will not use powershell but do everything from the Swagger page.

First of all I the used url is /config/v1/event-database and to get the current config (default in my case I use the GET:

To configure the event data base we actually need to use PUT and not post as there always is at least some configuration.

This is the model of the json that needs to be provided

As you this also contains a setting for the period that timingprofiler data is saved, this is a setting not available in the GUI!

I am running it using this configuration (no prefix and with many changed details) make sure to check the sql port as that’s incorrect by default, took me a few minutes to find.

the response should be a 204 as that indicates everything went well.

And a new get shows the new configuration

In case you want to clear the configuration there is a POST method against /config/v1/event-database/action/clear

a 204 is again fine and a get shows the empty config

Horizon 8 (2209) REST API changelog

I have just added a page that lists the Horizon 8 2209 changes in the API’s. If you’re interested in the overall release notes, please see this link.

Some of the changes that stand out are brand new calls related to Radius & SAML settings but also options to bind to a domain, setting up unauthenticated users. licenses and pre-logon settings.

As always, a complete overview of all calls can be found in the API Explorer. But this is a list of the changes.

/config/v1/admin-users-or-groups/permissions get
/config/v1/gssapi-authenticators get
/config/v1/gssapi-authenticators/{id} get
/config/v1/licenses get
/config/v1/pre-logon-settings get
/config/v1/radius-authenticators get
/config/v1/radius-authenticators/{id} get
/config/v1/saml-authenticators get
/config/v1/saml-authenticators/{id} get
/config/v1/true-sso-enrollment-servers get
/config/v1/true-sso-enrollment-servers/{id} get
/config/v1/unauthenticated-access-users get
/config/v1/unauthenticated-access-users post
/config/v1/unauthenticated-access-users/{id} delete
/config/v1/unauthenticated-access-users/{id} get
/config/v2/connection-servers get
/config/v2/connection-servers/{id} get
/config/v2/settings/security get
/config/v3/settings get
/config/v3/settings put
/config/v3/settings/general get
/config/v3/settings/general put
/external/v1/ad-domains/action/bind post
/external/v1/ad-domains/action/update-auxiliary-accounts post
/external/v1/domains get
/external/v2/ad-users-or-groups/action/hold post
/external/v2/ad-users-or-groups/action/release-hold post
/login get
/monitor/v3/gateways get
/monitor/v3/connection-servers get
/monitor/v2/connection-servers/{id} get
/monitor/v2/gateways/{id} get

[REST]Pushing a new image Horizon 8 2206 style

With Horizon 8 2206 one of the new features is the fact that you can select a new amount of cpu’s and memory when deploying a new image.

If you know me a but you might understand that I want to know how we can do this using the api’s. As we’ve seen before we needed to do a post against /inventory/v1/desktop-pools/{id}/action/schedule-push-image for build 2206 this was changed to /inventory/v2/desktop-pools/{id}/action/schedule-push-image.

Let’s compare the content of the body that we need to send.

v1:

{
  "add_virtual_tpm": false,
  "im_stream_id": "6f85b3a5-e7d0-4ad6-a1e3-37168dd1ed51",
  "im_tag_id": "0103796c-102b-4ed3-953f-3dfe3d23e0fe",
  "logoff_policy": "WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF",
  "parent_vm_id": "vm-1",
  "snapshot_id": "snapshot-1",
  "start_time": 1587081283000,
  "stop_on_first_error": true
}

v2

{
  "add_virtual_tpm": false,
  "compute_profile_num_cores_per_socket": 1,
  "compute_profile_num_cpus": 4,
  "compute_profile_ram_mb": 4096,
  "im_stream_id": "6f85b3a5-e7d0-4ad6-a1e3-37168dd1ed51",
  "im_tag_id": "0103796c-102b-4ed3-953f-3dfe3d23e0fe",
  "logoff_policy": "WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF",
  "machine_ids": [
    "816d44cb-b486-3c97-adcb-cf3806d53657",
    "414927f3-1a3b-3e4c-81b3-d39602f634dc"
  ],
  "parent_vm_id": "vm-1",
  "selective_push_image": true,
  "snapshot_id": "snapshot-1",
  "start_time": 1587081283000,
  "stop_on_first_error": true
}

So besides the cpu/memory changes we obviously also have something called selective_push_image. This has to do with the added functionality of pushing a secondary image from Horizon 2111. While the example shows it as true the data model makes clear that it is not required and defaults to false. The array of machine_ids reflects the list of machines where the secondary image has to be applied.

compute_profile_num_cores_per_socket	integer($int32)
example: 1
minimum: 1
exclusiveMinimum: false
exclusiveMaximum: false
Indicates the number of cores per socket for the CPU in the compute profile to be configured on clones.
If set, both compute_profile_num_cpus and compute_profile_ram_mb need to be set.

compute_profile_num_cpus	integer($int32)
example: 4
minimum: 1
exclusiveMinimum: false
exclusiveMaximum: false
Indicates the number of CPUs in the compute profile to be configured on clones.
If set, this must be a multiple of compute_profile_num_cores_per_socket.

compute_profile_ram_mb	integer($int32)
example: 4096
minimum: 1024
exclusiveMinimum: false
exclusiveMaximum: false
Indicates the RAM in MB in the compute profile to be configured on clones.

machine_ids	[
example: List [ "816d44cb-b486-3c97-adcb-cf3806d53657", "414927f3-1a3b-3e4c-81b3-d39602f634dc" ]
Set of machines from the desktop pool on which the new image is to be applied. This can be set when selective_push_image is set to true.

selective_push_image	boolean
example: true
Indicates whether selective push image is to be applied. If set to true, the new image will be applied to specified machine_ids in the desktop pool. The image published with this option will be held as a pending image, unless it is promoted or cancelled. The default value is false.

To be able to use this I have updated my previous image deployment script for Horizon 2206.

New arguments are:

  • AddVirtualTPM
    • Boolean to add a virtual TPM or not
  • SecondaryImage
    • Boolean to define the image as secondary (required if you also supply machine_ids)
  • Machine_Ids
    • Array with machine_ids to supply the secondary image to
  • CoresPerSocket
    • Int with # of Cores per Socket
  • CPUs
    • Int for total number of cpus
  • MemoryinMB
    • Memory in mb so 4096 or 6192 for example

 

<#
    .SYNOPSIS
    Pushes a new Golden Image to a Desktop Pool

    .DESCRIPTION
    This script uses the Horizon rest api's to push a new golden image to a VMware Horizon Desktop Pool

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_Rest_Push_Image.ps1 -ConnectionServerURL https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab -Credentials $creds -vCenterURL "https://pod1vcr1.loft.lab" -DataCenterName "Datacenter_Loft" -baseVMName "W21h1-2021-09-08-15-48" -BaseSnapShotName "Demo Snapshot" -DesktopPoolName "Pod01-Pool02"

    .PARAMETER Credential
    Mandatory: No
    Type: PSCredential
    Object with credentials for the connection server with domain\username and password. If not supplied the script will ask for user and password.

    .PARAMETER ConnectionServerURL
    Mandatory: Yes
    Default: String
    URL of the connection server to connect to

    .PARAMETER vCenterURL
    Mandatory: Yes
    Username of the user to look for

    .PARAMETER DataCenterName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER BaseVMName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER BaseSnapShotName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER DesktopPoolName
    Mandatory: Yes
    Domain to look in

    .PARAMETER StoponError
    Mandatory: No
    Boolean to stop on error or not

    .PARAMETER logoff_policy
    Mandatory: No
    String FORCE_LOGOFF or WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF to set the logoff policy.

    .PARAMETER Scheduledtime
    Mandatory: No
    Time to schedule the image push in [DateTime] format.

    .PARAMETER AddVirtualTPM
    Mandatory: No
    Default: $False
    Boolean FORCE_LOGOFF or WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF to set the logoff policy.

    .PARAMETER SecondaryImage
    Mandatory: No (Yes if machine_ids is supplied)
    Default: $False
    Boolean FORCE_LOGOFF or WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF to set the logoff policy.

    .PARAMETER Machine_Ids
    Mandatory: No
    Array Array of Machine_ids to apply the secondary image to.

    .PARAMETER CoresPerSocket
    Mandatory: No (unless CPUs or MemoryinMB is supplies)
    Int Amount of cores per socket.

    .PARAMETER CPUs
    Mandatory: No (unless MemoryinMB or CoresPerSocket is supplies)
    Int Total number of cores.

    .PARAMETER MemoryinMB
    Mandatory: No (unless CPUs or CoresPerSocket is supplies)
    Int New memory in MB

    .NOTES
    Minimum required version: VMware Horizon 8 2206
    Created by: Wouter Kursten
    First version: 03-11-2021
    Changes: 05-09-2022 -   Added resizing of cpu/memory
                        -   Added secondary image functionality
                        -   Added option to add Virtual TPM


    .COMPONENT
    Powershell Core
#>

[CmdletBinding(DefaultParameterSetName = 'Generic')]
param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    HelpMessage='Credential object as domain\username with password' )]
    [PSCredential] $Credentials,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
    HelpMessage='FQDN of the connectionserver' )]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string] $ConnectionServerURL,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "URL of the vCenter to look in i.e. https://vcenter.domain.lab")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$vCenterURL,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Datacenter to look in.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$DataCenterName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Golden Image VM.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$BaseVMName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Snapshot to use for the Golden Image.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$BaseSnapShotName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $true,
    HelpMessage = "Name of the Desktop Pool.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$DesktopPoolName,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "True or false for stop on error.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [bool]$StoponError = $true,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "Use WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF or FORCE_LOGOFF.")]
    [ValidateSet('WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF','FORCE_LOGOFF', IgnoreCase = $false)]
    [string]$logoff_policy = "WAIT_FOR_LOGOFF",

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "DateTime object for the moment of scheduling the image push.Defaults to immediately")]
    [datetime]$Scheduledtime,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "Bool for adding a Virtual TPM or not.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [bool]$AddVirtualTPM = $False,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "True or false to set this image as secondary image.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [bool]$SecondaryImage = $False,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "Array of machine_ids to apply the secondary image to.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [array]$Machine_Ids,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "New Number of cores per socket.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [int]$CoresPerSocket,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "New Number of CPU's.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [int]$CPUs,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $false,
    HelpMessage = "New amount of memory in MB.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [int]$MemoryinMB
)

if($Credentials){
    $username=($credentials.username).split("\")[1]
    $domain=($credentials.username).split("\")[0]
    $password=$credentials.password
}
else{
    $credentials = Get-Credential
    $username=($credentials.username).split("\")[1]
    $domain=($credentials.username).split("\")[0]
    $password=$credentials.password
}

$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password) 
$UnsecurePassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)

function Get-HRHeader(){
    param($accessToken)
    return @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $($accessToken.access_token)
        'Content-Type' = "application/json"
    }
}
function Open-HRConnection(){
    param(
        [string] $username,
        [string] $password,
        [string] $domain,
        [string] $url
    )

    $Credentials = New-Object psobject -Property @{
        username = $username
        password = $password
        domain = $domain
    }

    return invoke-restmethod -Method Post -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/login" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($Credentials | ConvertTo-Json)
}
function Close-HRConnection(){
    param(
        $accessToken,
        $ConnectionServerURL
    )
    return Invoke-RestMethod -Method post -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/logout" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($accessToken | ConvertTo-Json)
}

if($CPUs -AND $CoresPerSocket -AND $MemoryinMB){
    $resize = $true
}
elseif($CPUs -OR $CoresPerSocket -OR $MemoryinMB){
    throw "If either CPUs, CoresPerSOcket or MemoryinGB is supplied, all must be supplied."
}
else{
    $resize = $false
}

if($Machine_Ids -AND !($SecondaryImage)){
    throw "If either Machine_Ids is supplied SecondaryImage also needs to be supplied."
}


try{
    $accessToken = Open-HRConnection -username $username -password $UnsecurePassword -domain $Domain -url $ConnectionServerURL
}
catch{
    throw "Error Connecting: $_"
}

$vCenters = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/monitor/v2/virtual-centers" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$vcenterid = ($vCenters | where-object {$_.name -like "*$vCenterURL*"}).id
$datacenters = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/external/v1/datacenters?vcenter_id=$vcenterid" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$datacenterid = ($datacenters | where-object {$_.name -eq $DataCenterName}).id
$basevms = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/external/v1/base-vms?datacenter_id=$datacenterid&filter_incompatible_vms=false&vcenter_id=$vcenterid" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$basevmid = ($basevms | where-object {$_.name -eq $baseVMName}).id
$basesnapshots = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/external/v1/base-snapshots?base_vm_id=$basevmid&vcenter_id=$vcenterid" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$basesnapshotid = ($basesnapshots | where-object {$_.name -eq $BaseSnapShotName}).id
$desktoppools = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/inventory/v1/desktop-pools" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken)
$desktoppoolid = ($desktoppools | where-object {$_.name -eq $DesktopPoolName}).id

$datahashtable = [ordered]@{}
$datahashtable.add('add_virtual_tpm',$AddVirtualTPM)
if($resize){
    $datahashtable.add('compute_profile_num_cores_per_socket',$CoresPerSocket)
    $datahashtable.add('compute_profile_num_cpus',$CPUs)
    $datahashtable.add('compute_profile_ram_mb',$MemoryinMB)
}
$datahashtable.add('logoff_policy',$logoff_policy)
if($Machine_Ids){
    $datahashtable.add('machine_ids',$Machine_Ids)
}
$datahashtable.add('parent_vm_id',$basevmid)
if($SecondaryImage){
    $datahashtable.add('selective_push_image',$SecondaryImage)
}
$datahashtable.add('snapshot_id',$basesnapshotid)
if($Scheduledtime){
    $starttime = get-date $Scheduledtime
    $epoch = ([DateTimeOffset]$starttime).ToUnixTimeMilliseconds()
    $datahashtable.add('start_time',$epoch)
}
$datahashtable.add('stop_on_first_error',$StoponError)
$json = $datahashtable | convertto-json

Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -uri "$ConnectionServerURL/rest/inventory/v2/desktop-pools/$desktoppoolid/action/schedule-push-image" -ContentType "application/json" -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -body $json

As always the script is available on Github.

Usage:

I am using all the new arguments except the virtual tpm one.

D:\GIT\Various_Scripts\Horizon_Rest_Push_Image_VDI_2206.ps1 -ConnectionServerURL https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab -Credentials $creds -vCenterURL "https://pod1vcr1.loft.lab" -DataCenterName "Datacenter_Loft" -baseVMName "W21h1-gi-2022-08-19-09-36" -BaseSnapShotName "VM Snapshot 9%2f5%2f2022, 6:50:12 PM" -DesktopPoolName "Pod01-Pool03" -CPU 2 -CoresPerSocket 1 -MemoryinMB 4096 -SecondaryImage $true -Machine_Ids $array

Horizon 8 API changelog pages now available

Since several version in each VMware Horizon release notes pages there has been this mention:

This links to this page: VMware Horizon REST APIs (84155) for a while this page was updated with the latest additions to the REST api’s but I guess people didn’t want to do that anymore so that page now simply links to the API Explorer:

Since I used this changelog to decide on what I wanted to blog about I thought it was time to create a changelog myself. What I did was download all the swagger specifications and compare them. For reasons I had to do this in excel but at least I now have a nice source for this. (ping me if you would like to have the excel file). This result in a new menu item at the top of my blog with the changelog for every Horizon 8 version. Yes I know the rest api’s have been available since 7.10 but I decided to start with 8.0. Please use the menu on top of the links below to go to the changelog for the version that you would like to see.

Horizon 8.0 (2006)

Horizon 8.1 (2103)

Horizon 8.2 (2106)

Horizon 8.3 (2109)

Horizon 8.4 (2111)

Horizon 8.5 (2203) – no changes

Horizon 8.6 (2206)

 

Powershell script to gather (Global) Horizon sessions using REST api’s

This ia a rather quick one as I already had some of the basics in my last script to send messages to global sessions. I have created a script that will gather all sessions in a Horizon environment. The global sessions api call has only been available since Horizon 2111 so when trying with an older version of Horizon it will return errors. Because some of the methods I use Powershell 7 is required.

There are 4 arguments:

  1. Credential : Optional credentials object from get-credential (wil ask for credentials if not provided)
  2. ConnectionServerFQDN : name says enough, fqdn for a connection server to connect to
  3. global : switch to enable gathering of all Global sessions
  4. pod_name: name of a single pod to collect all sessions from in case of a CPA

Usage:

.\Horizon_Rest_Get_Sessions.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN "server.domain.dom"

And the other options are

.\Horizon_Rest_Get_Sessions.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN "server.domain.dom" -global
.\Horizon_Rest_Get_Sessions.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN "server.domain.dom" -global -pod_name "podname"

The Script can be found down below or on Github:

<#
    .SYNOPSIS
    Gets all (global) sessions for an Horizon environment

    .DESCRIPTION
    This script uses the Horizon rest api's to all gather alls essions in a Horizon (Cloud Pod) environment

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_Rest_Get_Sessions.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod2cbr1.loft.lab

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_Rest_Get_Sessions.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod2cbr1.loft.lab -global

    .EXAMPLE
    .\Horizon_Rest_Get_Sessions.ps1 -Credential $creds -ConnectionServerFQDN pod2cbr1.loft.lab -pod_name "Horizon_pod2"

    .PARAMETER Credential
    Mandatory: No
    Type: PSCredential
    Object with credentials for the connection server with domain\username and password

    .PARAMETER ConnectionServerFQDN
    Mandatory: Yes
    Default: String
    FQDN of the connection server to connect to

    .PARAMETER global
    Mandatory: No
    Switch to select global sessions or only sessions for the local pod (Horizon 2111 and later)

    .PARAMETER pod_name
    Mandatory: No
    String for name of the pod to get sessions for. (Horizon 2111 and later)

    .NOTES
    Created by: Wouter Kursten
    First version: 03-06-2022

    .COMPONENT
    Powershell Core

#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    HelpMessage='Credential object as domain\username with password' )]
    [PSCredential] $Credential,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,  HelpMessage='FQDN of the connectionserver' )]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string] $ConnectionServerFQDN,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    ParameterSetName="globalsessions",
    HelpMessage='Parameter to select Global Sessions' )]
    [switch] $global,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
    ParameterSetName="globalsessions",
    HelpMessage='Name of the pod to get the sessions for, needs -Global, defaults to *' )]
    [string] $pod_name
)

function Get-HRHeader(){
    param($accessToken)
    return @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $($accessToken.access_token)
        'Content-Type' = "application/json"
    }
}
function Open-HRConnection(){
    param(
        [string] $username,
        [string] $password,
        [string] $domain,
        [string] $url
    )

    $Credentials = New-Object psobject -Property @{
        username = $username
        password = $password
        domain = $domain
    }

    return invoke-restmethod -Method Post -uri "$url/rest/login" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($Credentials | ConvertTo-Json)
}

function Close-HRConnection(){
    param(
        $accessToken,
        $url
    )
    return Invoke-RestMethod -Method post -uri "$url/rest/logout" -ContentType "application/json" -Body ($accessToken | ConvertTo-Json)
}

function Get-HorizonRestData(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Array of ordered hashtables' )]
        [array] $filters,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Type of filter Options: And, Or' )]
        [ValidateSet('And','Or')]
        [string] $Filtertype,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='Page size, default = 500' )]
        [int] $pagesize = 500,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [string] $RestMethod,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="filteringandpagination",
        HelpMessage='$True for rest methods that contain pagination and filtering, default = False' )]
        [switch] $filteringandpagination,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        ParameterSetName="id",
        HelpMessage='To be used with single id based queries like /monitor/v1/connection-servers/{id}' )]
        [string] $id,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
        HelpMessage='Extra additions to the query url that comes before the paging/filtering parts like brokering_pod_id=806ca in /rest/inventory/v1/global-sessions?brokering_pod_id=806ca&page=2&size=100' )]
        [string] $urldetails
    )
    
    if($filteringandpagination){
        if ($filters){
            $filterhashtable = [ordered]@{}
            $filterhashtable.add('type',$filtertype)
            $filterhashtable.filters = @()
            foreach($filter in $filters){
                $filterhashtable.filters+=$filter
            }
            $filterflat=$filterhashtable | convertto-json -Compress
            if($urldetails){
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails+"&filter="+$filterflat+"&page="
            }
            else{
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?filter="+$filterflat+"&page="
            }
        }
        else{
            if($urldetails){
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails+"&page="
            }
            else{
                $urlstart= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?page="
            }
        }
        $results = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
        $page = 1
        $uri = $urlstart+$page+"&size=$pagesize"

        $response = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
        $response.foreach({$results.add($_)}) | out-null
        if ($responseheader.HAS_MORE_RECORDS -contains "TRUE") {
            do {
                $page++
                $uri = $urlstart+$page+"&size=$pagesize"
                $response = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
                $response.foreach({$results.add($_)}) | out-null
            } until ($responseheader.HAS_MORE_RECORDS -notcontains "TRUE")
        }
    }
    elseif($id){
        $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"/"+$id
        $results = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
    }
    else{
        if($urldetails){
            $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod+"?"+$urldetails
        }
        else{
            $uri= $ServerURL+"/rest/"+$RestMethod
        }

        $results = Invoke-RestMethod $uri -Method 'GET' -Headers (Get-HRHeader -accessToken $accessToken) -ResponseHeadersVariable responseheader
    }

    return $results
}

function get-horizonglobalsessions(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Id of the Local pod to query' )]
        [string] $podid
    )
    try{
        $results=Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/inventory/v1/global-sessions" -accessToken $accessToken -urldetails "pod_id=$podid"
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}

function Get-Pods(){
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName='None')] 
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='url to the server i.e. https://pod1cbr1.loft.lab' )]
        [string] $ServerURL,

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
        HelpMessage='Part after the url in the swagger UI i.e. /external/v1/ad-users-or-groups' )]
        [PSCustomObject] $accessToken
    )

    try{
        $results=Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/federation/v1/pods" -accessToken $accessToken
    }
    catch{
        throw $_
    }
    return $results
}


if($Credential){
    $creds = $credential
}
else{
    $creds = get-credential
}

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'

$username=($creds.username).split("\")[1]
$domain=($creds.username).split("\")[0]
$password=$creds.password

$url = "https://$ConnectionServerFQDN"

$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password) 
$UnsecurePassword = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)

$accessToken = Open-HRConnection -username $username -password $UnsecurePassword -domain $Domain -url $url


if($global){
    $pods=get-pods -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url
    if($pod_name){
        $pod = $pods | Where-Object {$_.name -eq $pod_name}
        $podid=$pod.id
        $sessions = get-horizonglobalsessions -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url -podid $podid -filteringandpagination
        return $sessions
    }
    else{
        $sessions=@()
        foreach ($pod in $pods){
            $podid=$pod.id
            $sessions += get-horizonglobalsessions -accessToken $accessToken -ServerURL $url -podid $podid -filteringandpagination
        }
        return $sessions
    }
}
else{
    $sessions = Get-HorizonRestData -ServerURL $url -RestMethod "/inventory/v1/sessions" -accessToken $accessToken -filteringandpagination
    return $sessions
}