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New detailed GuestOS data in vSphere 8.0 Update 2

11.02.2023 by William Lam // 5 Comments

Your workloads are constantly changing both from an application standpoint but also the underlying guest operating system (GuestOS) including patches and upgrades. While many organizations have a change management database (CMDB), it can still be a challenge to true up that information from when the workload was first deployed to what it is currently running.

Back in 2019, VMware enhanced VMware Tools to make it easier to identify applications and processes that was running within a VM and this also provided a programmatic way for retrieving this inventory information which could then be fed back into their CMDB.

Applications are not the only things that change inside of a VM, the GuestOS probably receives the most updates (patches/upgrades) and being able to accurately inventory this information without relying on an in-guest agent is still a challenge for many.

In vSphere 8.0 Update 2, we have enhanced the available GuestOS data using VMware Tools and we have also made it easier to inventory and collect this information even when the VM has been powered off.

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Quick Tip - Microsoft Windows 11 Eval Images for VMware Hypervisors

10.31.2023 by William Lam // 1 Comment

If you are interested in evaluating Microsoft Windows 11, in addition to the ISO image, you can now download a pre-configured Windows 11 image (OVF) that can run on any VMware Desktop Hypervisor (Workstation, Player and Fusion) for 90 days!

Per the documentation, the pre-built image includes the following:

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VMware Flings Update

10.26.2023 by William Lam // 25 Comments

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.

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