As the VMware Flings Program Manager, it’s been great watching the program grow and see the wonderful feedback and reactions we get from customers. As the program has matured, we have gathered valuable metrics and are seeing interesting trends. We want to share that success with you, and keep you up-to-date regarding the newest and updated Flings. Each quarter, I’ll write about the trends we’re seeing in that quarter, as well as highlighting new and updated Flings.
In 2010, the first year that Flings launched, the site had a little over 179,000 page views. Views have increased over the years, and we are now seeing over 1 million page views each year! Why did the traffic grow more than five-fold? Well, in the same time span, we went from releasing five to 25 Flings per year.
We really appreciate that you visit the site, try out Flings, and especially that you take the time to provide feedback to the Fling authors. While Flings are not supported by VMware, communication is essential with experimental tools! Our authors (the engineers that create the Flings) will try to help you, so please start a conversation with them by commenting on the Flings.
July-September 2015 saw a lot of activity on the Flings site. We released a few new Flings and made some important updates to others. We even saw a few Flings “graduate” and be integrated into VMware products.
New Flings (Third Quarter)
- ESXi Embedded Host Client – This Fling took off like wildfire! It was released on August 4th, and within two days it had over 500 downloads, and over 2,000 page views. By the end of September, it not only had been updated by the Fling engineers, but also had over 5,000 downloads. Normally, new Flings get a few hundred downloads on release. If you ever wanted to manage ESXi using a web browser without using Flash or a plugin, try it out today! Of course, you can then join in the conversations in the Feedback tab on the Fling site.
- Onyx for the Web Client – This Fling, not to be confused with the Onyx Fling that went open source some time ago, came about from the Fling Contest 2014. VMware engineers built this Fling based on a suggestion from one of our community members. This Fling provides the ability to record actions taken in the vSphere Web Client and turn these actions into PowerCLI.Net code. The resulting code can then be used to understand how VMware performs an action in the API and also better define functions. You could also input the resulting code into search engines to find the API documentation and information on how to use this area of the vSphere API.
- vCO-CLI – This Fling provides exploratory programming to the vCO ecosystem. It connects to a running vCO server and presents a JavaScript REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) to the user. All vCO plug-ins, workflows and the entire scripting API can be accessed, invoked and experimented with from the shell. This turns vCO-CLI into a powerful educational and experimentation tool.
- Extensible Debugging Tool for EPSec and NetX – This Fling helps VMware’s partners, customers and developers to troubleshoot EPSec/NetX programs which integrate multiple components and subcomponents, wherein each of those components serves specific functionalities.
- Jenkins Plugin for Codestream – This open source Jenkins plugin Fling integrates VMware vRealize CodeStream with Jenkins. The plugin requires the plugin hpi file to be installed on the Jenkins server. With this plugin you can run any vRealize CodeStream-activated pipeline.
Updated Flings
- VMware Tools for Nested ESXi – VMware Tools for Nested ESXi – New in version 1.2:
- Larger resource pool for programs started using the VIX API
- Now supports Guest Time Synchronization
- DrmDiagnose – The binary tars are created to diagnose Dumps using DrmDiagnose utility. These tar files have self-sufficient directory structures and shell scripts to run the utility. This change is comprised of the following files:
- vsphere51.tar
- vc55u3.tar
- vsphere60.tar
Flings Integrated into Products
- PowerCLI Extensions – The functionality of this Fling has been integrated into the latest PowerCLI release. Whenever possible, we recommend using the latest supported version of PowerCLI Youcan download that here.
- PowerCLI Cmdlet for NFS – The functionality of this Fling has been integrated into PowerCLI 6.0 R2. Whenever possible, we recommend using the latest supported version of PowerCLI, which can be downloaded here.
- VDSPowerCli – The functionality of this Fling has been integrated into a release of PowerCLI. Whenever possible, use the latest supported version of PowerCLI, which can be downloaded here.
- ViewDbChk – The functionality of this Fling has now been integrated into Horizon View 6.1. However, you can still download this Fling if you are using earlier versions of Horizon View.
Previous version of the above Flings are still available for customers using older versions of PowerCLI.
We want to thank the many customers who participate in the conversions about specific Flings posted on reddit.com and twitter.com as well as the Feedback tab on each Fling.
Top Flings of the 3rd Quarter
The image below shows how many downloads the top 10 Flings had in the 3rd quarter.
