WilliamLam.com

  • About
    • About
    • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud
  • Tanzu
    • Application Modernization
    • Tanzu services
    • Tanzu Community Edition
    • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
    • vSphere with Tanzu
  • Home Lab
  • Nested Virtualization
  • Apple

Listing all VMware Horizon Events

08.06.2021 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

One very useful feature in the latest VMware Horizon (2106) release is the introduction of a new Audit Events API, that will finally allow users to retrieve all Horizon events in a programmatic manner. Previously, the only method of extracting the Horizon events was to unfortunately query the SQL Server database directly.

Since VMware Horizon is not a solution I normally work with, I was actually curious on how many events are produced by Horizon? Back in 2019, I shared how to retrieve and list all vCenter Server Events and ended up publishing a Github repo that folks can quickly view and search for a specific event, which is especially useful if you are using the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) solution.

After speaking with Chris Halstead, one of the most knowledgable person on VMware Horizon that I know, a list of all known Horizon events has never been published.

[Read more...]

Share this...
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Categories // Horizon View Tags // event, horizon view

Why does Deploy OVF Template operation show vpxd-extension-[uuid]?

04.26.2021 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

A question that I had received awhile ago from a customer was how to identify the specific user(s) who have deployed an OVF/OVA? Customers can easily do this by leveraging vCenter Serve Events, which are extremely rich with information that can help answer this and many other questions you might have in your vSphere enviornment.


The first challenge that you will find is that an OVF/OVA import operation is mapped to a generic vCenter TaskEvent, which will require some additional filtering. Secondly, depending on the method that was used to deploy the OVF/OVA such as the vSphere UI or using Automation tools like OVFTool or PowerCLI, you will also slightly diffrent behaviors in terms of the vCenter Server Events that are emitted.

If you deploy an OVF/OVA using the vSphere UI, you may have noticed there are actually two vCenter tasks which are displayed and running simultaneously as shown in the screenshot above. The first task is called "Import OVF package" and you will see that this task is associated with the actual user who initiated the import. The second task called "Deploy OVF template" is then associated with a vCenter system account that handles the actual deployment which will show up with a vpxd-extension-[uuid] username. This occurs because the user who is performing the import is not interacting directly with with vCenter Server, but rather through the vSphere UI which uses a system account to then communicate the operation to vCenter Server.

For this reason, when an OVF/OVA is imported through the vSphere UI, you will need to look at the TaskEvent and filter for the initial import operation. If an OVF/OVA is imported using the vSphere API using something like OVFTool, PowerCLI or any other vSphere SDK, then you will only see the Deploy OVF Template operation and the user associated with that operation is the person who initiated the import.

Using PowerCLI and the Get-VIEvent cmdlet, we can easily filter out these two types of TaskEvents.

Get-VIEvent | where {$_.GetType().Name -eq "TaskEvent" -and $_.FullFormattedMessage -eq "Task: Import OVF package"}

Info                 : VMware.Vim.TaskInfo
Key                  : 2036862
ChainId              : 2036862
CreatedTime          : 4/23/2021 9:30:36 AM
UserName             : vsphere.local\william
Datacenter           : VMware.Vim.DatacenterEventArgument
ComputeResource      : VMware.Vim.ComputeResourceEventArgument
Host                 :
Vm                   :
Ds                   :
Net                  :
Dvs                  :
FullFormattedMessage : Task: Import OVF package
ChangeTag            :

Get-VIEvent | where {$_.GetType().Name -eq "TaskEvent" -and $_.FullFormattedMessage -eq "Task: Import OVF package"}

Info                 : VMware.Vim.TaskInfo
Key                  : 2036869
ChainId              : 2036869
CreatedTime          : 4/23/2021 9:31:01 AM
UserName             : VSPHERE.LOCAL\vpxd-extension-767f8016-870d-4a98-a457-8247454fa759
Datacenter           : VMware.Vim.DatacenterEventArgument
ComputeResource      : VMware.Vim.ComputeResourceEventArgument
Host                 :
Vm                   :
Ds                   :
Net                  :
Dvs                  :
FullFormattedMessage : Task: Deploy OVF template
ChangeTag            :
Share this...
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Categories // Automation, vSphere Web Client Tags // event, ova, ovf, vsphere web client

New vCenter events for vSphere 7, VMware Cloud on AWS 1.10 and vSphere with Kubernetes

04.09.2020 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Last year I published a Github repo which lists all the vCenter Server Events for a default installation for both vSphere 6.7 Update 3 and VMware Cloud on AWS 1.9. Since every vSphere environment is going to be unique with various 2nd and 3rd party solutions, I have also included a small PowerCLI script in the blog that you can use to generate the list of events for your own deployment.

With the release of vSphere 7 and VMware Cloud on AWS 1.10, I thought it was time to update the repo to see what's new which can be useful in a number of scenarios including using these events with the popular vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling.

  • vSphere 7 has a total of 1,778 vCenter events
  • VMware Cloud on AWS 1.10 has a total of 1,775 vCenter events

One thing worth pointing out with the introduction of vSphere with Kubernetes in vSphere 7, is there are also specific vCenter events, a total of 23 that are available and I am sure more will come in the future. Below is a quick summary which is also included in the Github repo.

[Read more...]

Share this...
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Categories // Automation, VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Tanzu, vSphere 7.0 Tags // event, Kubernetes, VMware Cloud on AWS, vSphere 7

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Search

Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Connect

  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Support

Recent

  • A first look at the new vSphere+ & vSAN+ Cloud Service 07/01/2022
  • Quick Tip - Prepare VMware Photon OS for use with vSphere Guest OS Customization and cloud-init 06/29/2022
  • Using the new vSphere Guest OS Customization with cloud-init in vSphere 7.0 Update 3 06/27/2022
  • How to forcefully disconnect a vSphere VM Console session? 06/24/2022
  • Quick Tip - Using ESXi Scripted Installation (kickstart) to configure IPv6 networking 06/21/2022

Advertisment

Copyright WilliamLam.com © 2022

 

Loading Comments...