This has been a difficult week for all VMware employees due to the pending acquisition of VMware by Broadcom. Many VMware employees are still waiting to hear back from Broadcom about their employment status either before and/or after the planned acquisition close date. I wanted to provide this context before sharing a quick update regarding the VMware Flings program.
On Tuesday October 24th, VMware Fling authors was made aware that the VMware Flings site (flings.vmware.com) would be taken down and website would simply be redirected to developer.vmware.com/samples starting on Thursday October 26th.
🚨📢 PSA - Folks, if you need particular VMware Fling, please download it NOW. On Thur (10/26), the site will no longer exists & simply redirected to Sample Exchange, where you may find some but most will not be there including some of mines. Hoping this is temp. but not sure https://t.co/vdz9uWAFvy
— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) October 24, 2023
The VMware Flings program was operated and run by VMware's Office of the CTO (OCTO) and while I do not have specifics on why it needed to go down, I tried my best to share out the news as broadly and as quickly as I could so that folks could at least grab what they needed. While the original notice mentioned the site would function up until 10/26 at 5pm PST, it looks VMware IT had already made the DNS changes and the redirect has already been propagated.
As of right now, I do not know the future of the VMware Flings program, but I did want to share a few updates since the site and its downloads are no longer available.
The following short URL can be used to easily reach this blog post: https://vmwa.re/flings and for those interested, all Flings are still governed by the VMware Flings License Agreement
- ESXi-Arm - The ESXi-Arm Fling has always been hosted on VMware's Customer Connect and folks can continue to download it using: https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=ESXI-ARM (documentation also linked from download page at the very top)
- HCIBench - The HCIBench Fling has been re-hosted on Github and actually makes it easier for folks to report issues and/or contribute and the appliance can be downloaded using: https://github.com/vmware-labs/hci-benchmark-appliance
- VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) - While there are no primary downloads for the VEBA OVA, it still fully open sourced https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance and folks can still build the appliance using the instructions found here.
- End Using Computing (EUC) Flings - Most of the EUC Flings have been re-hosted on VMware TechZone which you can find using: https://techzone.vmware.com/utilities
- vSphere Diagnostic Tool (VDT) - https://kb.vmware.com/kb/83896
- SDDC Import/Export - https://github.com/vmware-samples/sddc-import-export-for-vmware-cloud-on-aws
- Python Client for VMware Cloud on AWS (pyVMC) - https://github.com/vmware/python-client-for-vmware-cloud-on-aws
- VMware Cloud Size Companion CLI - https://github.com/vmware-samples/vmware-cloud-sizer-companion-cli
- Skyline CLI - https://developer.vmware.com/samples/8235/skyline-cli-v1.0.17
- Remainder VMware Flings - Due to the short notice, the majority of VMware Flings do not have a new home and may not have a new home for the foreseeable future. Thanks to Reddit user r/Is-Not-El, who archived as many of the Flings as they could using the Internet Archive. You can still find many of the VMware Flings including mines using: https://archive.org/download/flings.vmware.com
While it is unfortunate that the the VMware Flings site has shutdown, I did want to take a moment to thank those behind the VMware Flings program and specifically the main driving force which is Dana Nourie along with her colleagues Dexter Arver, Geoff Mayes and Dave Oz!
I want to personally thank @DanaNourie for supporting & fostering the community around the @vmwflings program for the past 12 years! 🙏
I know many of our customers have greatly benefited from these innovations, many of which have turned into features/products! 🥳
— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) October 24, 2023
I joined VMware back in 2011 (just reached my 12 year anniversary this week), which was also the same time Dana took over the VMware Flings program and I have been involved since the beginning. I have also participated as a Fling Author with many of my awesome colleagues and over the years, I have published a total of 10 VMware Flings, 5 of which have been productized!
I am sure I speak for many of our users out there that the VMware Flings program has been a tremendous resource over the past 12 years and I hope to see it continue in one form or another in the future! I will continue to update this blog post with any news or updated links to Flings that have been re-hosted.
Thank you Dana, Dexter, Geoff and Dave for spear heading this innovation at VMware and fostering its community!
Thank you William Lam for all your efforts, support and contributions to the VMware Flings program. Without it a lot of people, including myself, would have had compatibility issues and I am thankful to you and the entire team behind Flings.
Fingers crossed Flings come back, as we sure need them to support more hardware and this only benefits VMware.
Also, hope that when the dust settles with Broadcom all will be well.
Thank you William for the great work you have done so far. The VMware Flings website was and hopefully is again a great source not just for downloading new software. Contributors like you show the passion they have for VMware and ultimately for customers and users like me. This is one of the the reasons why VMware customers are paying more for VMware products and solutions in comparison to other players in the market.
One word to future Broadcom managers (even if they won´t read this comment): Please do not damage VMware like you did it with Brocade!
That is very unfortunate and also worrying in my eyes.
Hello William,
So sad to close flings website, lot of useful tools for vmware.
Just in case, can you share the last usb network drivers for esx 8 please ?
I need to reinstall my lab with version 8, and I didn't download drivers before.
Thank you a lot if possible.
And have good time for next vmware explore 🙂
Did you read the blog post? You'll find your answer there
You're right, sorry I read quickly 🙁
Thank you for all
1000 thanks William.
Thanks for all the good work!
Hope to get fling back. Maybe this link helps temp.
https://archive.org/download/flings.vmware.com/Flings/USB%20Network%20Native%20Driver%20for%20ESXi/
Stupid decision of VMware!! Thanks for all. I hope there will be a new place for this great stuff.
Its a shame they are moving this. Fling was a fun name. I checked it often. It felt like google's 20% days or MS Garage, where staff could make things they thought fun.
VMware starting to act a fool. Not looking good for the future.
Thank you William & team for all the great work you have done! Hope everything works out for everyone.
HCIBench has moved here:
https://github.com/vmware-labs/hci-benchmark-appliance
I’m aware, that’s already in blog post 🙂
Doh... didn't see that it was already listed..
Thank You William for all your support as I greatly benefited from the Flings
Is the "ESXi Compatibility Checker" script anywhere to be found ?
Did you read the blog post?
I did, but I can't find it in the Archive, VMware Sample Exchange or any other place. Tried my best google skills (not much to brag about) but can't find it. All links lead to labs.vmware.com
So did I lose the opportunity to install the USB driver on my ESXi host?
No. Please read the blog post
Fucking morons. Bother to read the text you are replying to?
I'm just writing to say, yes I read the blog post. 🙂 Also brought up the Death of Flings with our reps this week hoping to at least put the bug out there that other customers are paying attention to this.
Thank you William and all, you are the Blood and the voice of US the users and VMware professionals that keep us going and interested. Never forget that VMware is the GODfather of virtualization first, and then cloud. It all starts somewhere and that is with you!!
Thanks for the kind words!