More new releases from VMware

VMware have release the new versions of VMware Workstation Pro 15, Fusion 11, Identity Manager 3.3, vRealize Network Insight 3.9 and ThinApp 5.2.4.

VMware Workstation 15 Pro

What’s new:

New Guest operating systems support

• Windows 10 1803
• Ubuntu 18.04
• Fedora 28
• RHEL 7.5
• CentOS 7.5
• Debian 9.5
• OpenSuse Leap 15.0
• FreeBSD 11.2
• ESXi 6.7

DirectX 10.1

• DirectX 10.1 is an incremental update over DirectX 10.0. It provides higher visual quality through the support of multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA). DirectX 10.1 also supports Shader Model 4.1 and Cubemap Array. 

Hardware version 16

• DirectX 10.1 support
• Graphics memory up to 3GB

REST API
You can use Workstation RESTful API to automate common virtual machine tasks using standard JSON over HTTP or HTTPS. The following virtual machine operations are supported:

• Virtual machine inventory management
• Virtual machine power management
• Virtual machine clone
• Networking management

High DPI support
High DPI related features require that the operating system of the host and virtual machine be Windows 10 version 1703 or later.

• Host level high DPI support – The Workstation interface auto detects the host level DPI change and auto adjusts the layout to meet the new DPI.
• Guest DPI synch with host – When there is a DPI change on the host side, the guest operating system adjusts its DPI to match the host DPI.
• VMware Tools 10.3.2 is required for this feature.

Hosts and Clusters view when you connect to vCenter
Workstation 15 Pro adds a new Hosts and Clusters view when you connect to remote vSphere. The inventory tree now shows a hierarchical arrangement of objects in two different views: Hosts and Clusters and VMs. You can easily toggle between these two views with a single click.

This is a Windows host only feature.

vSphere 6.7 support
Workstation 15 Pro provides seamless support for vSphere 6.7. You can connect to a remote ESXi 6.7 host or vCenter Server 6.7 from Workstation 15 Pro to manage the remote the virtual machines running on vSphere. You can also upload a local virtual machine to vSphere 6.7 or download a remote virtual machine running on vSphere 6.7 to the local desktop.

You can also deploy a VMware VCSA 6.7 (vCenter Server Appliance) OVA package to run on Workstation 15 Pro.

USB Auto connect to virtual machine
USB devices can automatically connect to a powered on virtual machine when you configure Workstation 15 Pro to remember the connection rule.

This is a Windows host only feature.

SSH login to Linux virtual machine
You can now access Linux virtual machines using SSH provided by Workstation 15 Pro.
This feature requires that the operating system of the host be Windows 10 version 1803 or later.

Enhanced User Experience

• Stretch guest display
• The stretch guest display feature is enabled for Linux guests and Windows guests earlier than Windows XP. You can use the Keep Aspect Ratio Stretch feature to stretch the virtual machine display while maintaining the user interface aspect ratio or you can use the Free Stretch feature to stretch the virtual machine display to fill the user interface.
  • This is a Windows host only feature.
• Open virtual machine directory
• You can now easily access the virtual machine directory from a Windows host by right-clicking the virtual machine in the Workstation Pro library and selecting Open VM directory.
  • Linux Workstation Pro already supports this feature.
• Linux host Wayland support
• Workstation 15 Pro can now run on a Linux host Wayland desktop. To install Workstation Pro on a Wayland desktop, you must use terminal mode installation.
• Performance improvements for virtual NVMe storage

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/15/rn/workstation-15-release-notes.html

VMware Fusion 11.0

What’s new:

New guest operating system support

• Windows 10 1803
• Ubuntu 18.04
• MacOS 10.14
• Fedora 28
• RHEL 7.5
• CentOS 7.5
• Debian 9.5
• OpenSuse Leap 15.0
• FreeBSD 11.2
• ESXi 6.7

Advanced graphics 
DirectX 10.1 support is added for Fusion 11. DirectX 10.1 is an incremental update of DirectX 10.0. It provides higher visual quality through the support of multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA).  DirectX 10.1 also supports Shader Model 4.1 and Cubemap Array.

• Hardware requirements for DirectX 10.1:Metal renderer should be supported by the macOS host
  • MacBook (early 2015 or later)
  • MacBook Air (mid 2012 or later)
  • MacBook Pro (mid 2012 or later)
  • Mac Mini (late 2012 or later)
  • iMac (late 2012 or later)
  • Mac Pro (late 2013 and later)
• Software requirements:
  • macOS 10.13.0 and later

VMware hardware version 16
The maximum amount of graphics memory is now bumped up to 3072 MB.

Hosts and Clusters view when you connect to vCenter (Fusion 11 Pro only)
Fusion 11 adds a new Hosts and Clusters view when you connect to a vCenter Server from Fusion. You can easily toggle between VM view and Hosts and Clusters view.

vSphere 6.7 support
You can now connect to a vSphere 6.7 vCenter Server or ESXi 6.7 host directly. You can also import VCSA 6.7 within Fusion 11.

New Applications menu
Fusion 11 provides a brand-new design Applications menu to do more than simply launching applications from within the guest:

• Creation of new virtual machines
• Virtual machine power operations
• Switching from different views
• Taking snapshots
• Launching virtual machine settings

REST API for networking operations 
Fusion REST API is extended to support the following networking operations

• create vmnet
• MAC address to IP binding
• get MAC address

Customizable Touch Bar support
Fusion 11 supports Touch Bar to be customizable in the following scenarios:

• Library window
• Virtual machine window

SSH login to a Linux virtual machine
You can now access a Linux virtual machine with SSH provided by Fusion 11. Fusion 11 can remember the user name and password, so virtual machine access is as easy as a mouse click.

User experience improvements

• Virtual machine title bar – With the new virtual machine toolbar, you can now navigate the virtual-machine path and quickly view the full path in a text file or terminal window on the Mac host.
• New default virtual machine location – The default virtual machine folder for new installations of Fusion 11 is your home directory/Virtual Machines.

Performance improvements for ​virtual NVMe storage

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/11/rn/fusion-11-release-notes.html

VMware Identity Manager 3.3 

What’s new:

Workspace ONE User Experience

• Enhancement to Identifier Based Login
  • We have enhanced the identifier-based login so that users are not prompted to re-enter their email address again post auto-discovery, if configured to propagate email address used for auto-discovery.
  • This feature is currently supported for user name/password-based authentication methods only.
• Managed App Configuration to Disable the Remove Account Setting
  • Admins can now disable the Remove Account option while using Workspace ONE as an app catalog for Agent-enrolled devices. Disabling this option can prevent accidental un-enrolls triggered by users trying to log out from Workspace ONE.

What’s New in VMware Identity Manager Service 3.3

• Migration to Virtual App Collection
  • With this release, administrators will need to migrate their existing Virtual App and Desktop Integration such as Horizon, Citrix, Horizon Cloud and ThinApp into Virtual App Collections before they can modify existing or add new integrations with VMware Identity Manager. See Migrating Existing Configurations to Virtual Apps Collection in the VMware Identity Manager Resources Guide.
• Better Error Messaging to Troubleshoot Horizon, Horizon Cloud, and Citrix Launch Failures through VMware Identity Manager
  • Admins can now easily troubleshoot launch failures by seeing error messages about the root cause and steps to resolve right through the VMware Identity Manager console. Navigate to Dashboards -> Reports -> Audit Events Report. Set the Type as LAUNCH (or LAUNCH_ERROR). Run the report and click View Details and scroll down to the “failure message” section to see the error details and steps to troubleshoot.
• Diagnostics Improvements
  • Admins can now see the following diagnostic data on the VMware Identity Manager console.
  • RabbitMQ health status
  • Android Mobile SSO (Cert Proxy)
  • iOS Mobile SSO (KDC/Hybrid KDC health)
  • DNS access from service/connector
  • Connectivity to all required clustered ports.
• Cluster Related Enhancements
  • In multi-data centers clusters, the VMware Identity Manager console will show service nodes grouped by data centers.
• Fault Resiliency Improvements
  • Rate Limiter resiliency technique enforced on VMware Identity Manager service and connector REST API’s to protect against burst of request that can eventually bring down the VMware Identity Manager service and connector. Communication Channel (Service to Connector communication) is now network fault tolerant and protects against service becoming unresponsive when there is a network glitch.
• VMware Identity Manager service is now more resilient to Domain Controller (DC) down time during login. It can route the login requests to the next available Domain Controller. It periodically (24 hours) scans the available Domain Controllers, prepares the list of fast responding DCs and use it for next 24 hours.
• OpenID Certification
  • VMware Identity Manager is OpenID Connect certified.
• Support JIT Users for Group Based Policies
  • Currently when a group-based access policy is configured, Just-In-Time (JIT) users cannot log in because they don’t belong to any group. With this release, “ALL Users” based access policy will be applied to these users instead of group-based access policy.
• Administrator User SSO
  • VMware Identity Manager local user can do single sign-on to the Workspace ONE UEM console.
• Support for UDID in Subject DN
• iOS mobile SSO feature now supports the placement of the UDID value into the “CN” field on the subject DN.
• Set up Android Mobile SSO using the Configurator UI from the VMware Identity Manager console
• Android Mobile SSO can now be enabled and configured from the configurator UI instead of using the command line script and editing files.
• On Windows Generate Cluster file using Configurator UI of group-based access policy.
• On Windows machines, the cluster file can now be generated in the configurator UI instead of from a command line script.
• Federating Access to Amazon AppStream 2.0 from VMware Workspace ONE
• Workspace ONE admins can now configure Amazon AppStream 2.0 through VMware Identity Manager’s SaaS application catalog so that end users can single sign-on into Amazon AppStream directly through their Workspace ONE portal. See the blog for configuration details.

End of Support for VMware Identity Manager Integration with Citrix XenApp 5.x

• VMware Identity Manager will no longer support integration of XenApp 5.x versions. All other currently supported versions of XenApp and XenDesktop will continue to be supported. For more information see this knowledge base article.

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Identity-Manager/3.3/rn/VMware-Identity-Manager-33-Release-Notes.html

VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.9

What’s new:

NSX-T Support Enhancements

• Support for NSX Distributed Firewall (DFW) generated IPFIX flows and firewall rule recommendations to the micro-segmentation applications.
• Support for VM-VM path and VM underlay path for VMs for the VMs managed by NSX-T.

Pin board Enhancements

• Increased the maximum number of supported pin boards to 500
• Single step process of creating a pin board and adding pins.
• Share pin boards with other users.
• View existing pin boards in the pin board library.
• Timeline controls within pin boards.
• Customize the pin board titles and pin names.

Auto-Refresh

Pin boards and Entity dashboards can auto-refresh with configurable timers.

Support for NSX DFW Universal Artifacts

The universal artifacts can be generated and exported for the Application and the Tier groups.

Improved Scale and Performance

Increased scale limits to 30,000 VMs and 10 million flows. Refer to the System Recommendations and Requirements section in the vRealize Network Insight Installation Guide for recommended proxy and platform node sizes.

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight/3.9/rn/vrealize-network-insight-39-release-notes.html

VMware ​ThinApp 5.2.4

What’s new:

• Support for Windows 10 1709 (Fall Creators Update)
• Support for Windows 10 1803 (April 2018 Update)
• Additional modules have been added in this release. You must copy them to the deployment machine in specific cases, as desribed below. The modules are not required during application capture:
  • For 32-bit virtual applications which crash at launch on Windows 10, copy the file dummyTLS.dll to the folder C:\Windows\SysWOW64 on a 64-bit deployment machine or to the folder C:\Windows\System32 on a 32-bit deployment machine.
  • For 64-bit virtual applications which crash at launch on Windows 10, copy the file dummyTLS64.dll to the folder C:\Windows\System32 on a 64-bit deployment machine.
  • For 32-bit virtual applications which fail to start when launched from a 64-bit ThinApped application on Windows 10, copy the file dummyNt.exe to the folder C:\Windows\SysWOW64 on a 64-bit deployment machine
• One new parameter is available for inclusion in package.ini:
• ReleaseShutdownLocksEarly Setting this parameter to 1 fixes an issue that could cause a process to hang during shutdown.

See the full release notes here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/ThinApp/5.2.4/rn/releasenotes_thinapp524.html