Ancient VMware View Scripted Reporting

A while ago I was working on a very very old VMware View environment. Yes, you’ve read this correctly, a VMware View environment. This is even from before the product was officially called “VMware Horizon View” back in 2015.

So, the subject I was working on for the customer, but also for us since we manage it, was that we needed to know who got what session at what time of the day, and how many users logged in daily. This information would also be used for troubleshooting, since the environment wasn’t that up to date anymore, as you can probably imagine. 

So, how did we tackle this? Well the VMware View Administrator console was not really up for the task, since you can only check “Current” or “Highest” number of sessions, but nothing with names, timestamps or anything like that.

What else can we use to get this information? Well, the only thing that I actually found that worked with this ancient environment were my trusted good ol’ PowerCLI modules! The VMware View PowerCLI plugin (VMware.View.Broker) for that matter. These are HARD to find for this old environment! I actually couldn’t find any downloads anymore at all, anywhere! Luckily the plugin was still inside the installation folder on the VMware View Connection Server. I did manage to save the add-snapin.ps1 and uninstall-snapin.ps1 files for this module. But if you don’t have the installation files that include the “.dll’s” you need, you don’t have any use for this (if you do want these, just let me know!).

Let’s suppose you have the View PowerCLI modules installed, like me, how do we get the information we need? Well let’s first have a look at the commands we have available in the plugin. You can do this by executing the following piece of code:

Get-Command | ?{$_.PSSnapin.name -eq "VMware.View.Broker"}

CommandType     Name                            Definition
-----------     ----                            ----------
Cmdlet          Add-AutomaticLinkedClonePool    Add-AutomaticLinkedClonePool...
Cmdlet          Add-AutomaticPool               Add-AutomaticPool [-Pool_id ...
Cmdlet          Add-ManualPool                  Add-ManualPool [-Pool_id <St...
Cmdlet          Add-ManualUnmanagedPool         Add-ManualUnmanagedPool [-Po...
Cmdlet          Add-PoolEntitlement             Add-PoolEntitlement [-Pool_i...
Cmdlet          Add-TerminalServerPool          Add-TerminalServerPool [-Poo...
Cmdlet          Add-TransferServer              Add-TransferServer [-Vc_id <...
Cmdlet          Add-ViewVC                      Add-ViewVC [-ServerName <Str...
Cmdlet          Export-NetworkLabelSpecForFu... Export-NetworkLabelSpecForFu...
Cmdlet          Export-NetworkLabelSpecForLi... Export-NetworkLabelSpecForLi...
Cmdlet          Get-ComposerDomain              Get-ComposerDomain [-Vc_id <...
Cmdlet          Get-ConnectionBroker            Get-ConnectionBroker [[-Brok...
Cmdlet          Get-DesktopPhysicalMachine      Get-DesktopPhysicalMachine [...
Cmdlet          Get-DesktopVM                   Get-DesktopVM [-Vc_id <Strin...
Cmdlet          Get-EventReport                 Get-EventReport [-ViewName <...
Cmdlet          Get-EventReportList             Get-EventReportList [-Verbos...
Cmdlet          Get-GlobalSetting               Get-GlobalSetting [-Verbose]...
Cmdlet          Get-License                     Get-License [-Verbose] [-Deb...
Cmdlet          Get-LocalSession                Get-LocalSession [-Pool_id <...
Cmdlet          Get-Monitor                     Get-Monitor [-Monitor <Strin...
Cmdlet          Get-Pool                        Get-Pool [-Pool_id <String[]...
Cmdlet          Get-PoolEntitlement             Get-PoolEntitlement [[-Pool_...
Cmdlet          Get-ProfileDisk                 Get-ProfileDisk [-Name <Stri...
Cmdlet          Get-RemoteSession               Get-RemoteSession [-Username...
Cmdlet          Get-TerminalServer              Get-TerminalServer [-Display...
Cmdlet          Get-TransferPackage             Get-TransferPackage [-Packag...
Cmdlet          Get-TransferServer              Get-TransferServer [-Path <S...
Cmdlet          Get-TransferServerState         Get-TransferServerState [-Ts...
Cmdlet          Get-User                        Get-User [-IncludeUser] [-In...
Cmdlet          Get-ViewVC                      Get-ViewVC [-DisplayName <St...
Cmdlet          New-TransferPackage             New-TransferPackage [-Vc_id ...
Cmdlet          Remove-Pool                     Remove-Pool [-Pool_id <Strin...
Cmdlet          Remove-PoolEntitlement          Remove-PoolEntitlement [-Poo...
Cmdlet          Remove-TransferPackage          Remove-TransferPackage [[-Pa...
Cmdlet          Remove-TransferServer           Remove-TransferServer [[-Ts_...
Cmdlet          Remove-UserOwnership            Remove-UserOwnership [[-Mach...
Cmdlet          Remove-ViewVC                   Remove-ViewVC [-Vc_id <Strin...
Cmdlet          Send-LinkedCloneRebalance       Send-LinkedCloneRebalance [-...
Cmdlet          Send-LinkedCloneRecompose       Send-LinkedCloneRecompose [-...
Cmdlet          Send-LinkedCloneRefresh         Send-LinkedCloneRefresh [-Ma...
Cmdlet          Send-LocalSessionRollback       Send-LocalSessionRollback [-...
Cmdlet          Send-SessionDisconnect          Send-SessionDisconnect [[-Se...
Cmdlet          Send-SessionLogoff              Send-SessionLogoff [[-Sessio...
Cmdlet          Send-VMReset                    Send-VMReset [-Machine_id <S...
Cmdlet          Set-ImageRepository             Set-ImageRepository [-Local_...
Cmdlet          Set-License                     Set-License [-Key <String>] ...
Cmdlet          Set-TransferServerMaintMode     Set-TransferServerMaintMode ...
Cmdlet          Update-AutomaticLinkedClonePool Update-AutomaticLinkedCloneP...
Cmdlet          Update-AutomaticPool            Update-AutomaticPool [-Pool_...
Cmdlet          Update-ConnectionBroker         Update-ConnectionBroker [-Br...
Cmdlet          Update-GlobalSetting            Update-GlobalSetting [-Sessi...
Cmdlet          Update-ManualPool               Update-ManualPool [-Pool_id ...
Cmdlet          Update-ManualUnmanagedPool      Update-ManualUnmanagedPool [...
Cmdlet          Update-TerminalServerPool       Update-TerminalServerPool [-...
Cmdlet          Update-UserOwnership            Update-UserOwnership [-Machi...
Cmdlet          Update-ViewVC                   Update-ViewVC [-Vc_id <Strin...

Alright awesome! So it turns out that a lot of this actually matched up with the Horizon View PowerCLI 7 cmdlet Reference! But, back to the task at hand. Turns out there is actually only one command that was useful for me.

Get-EventReport

The rest wasn’t that useful to use for this task. The “Get-EventReport” cmdlet can give you quit some information, if you know how to use it. Before we can use this command it is useful to see what the command can deliver, you can check this by executing:

Get-EventReportList

report-name                                                                report-description
-----------                                                                ------------------
user_events                                                                User-initiated events. e.g.: login/log out of broker,launch desktop.
user_auth_failures                                                         User authentication failures e.g.: bad passwords, locked out, access de...
user_count_events                                                          Report on the maximum number of concurrent users logged in during the day
config_changes                                                             What changes were made to View Manager configuration settings (example:...

This tells us that we can get information from four categories. To get the same information that we can see in the VMware View Administrator console just execute the following piece of code:

Get-EventReport –ViewName user_count_events

report-result      : 85
eventid            : 4588106
module             : Broker
eventtype          : BROKER_DAILY_MAX_USERS
time               : 2020-02-13 23:55:02.077
source             : com.vmware.vdi.broker.events.loggers.maxsessiontracking.MaxSessionTimerTask
severity           : INFO
moduleandeventtext : Over the past 24 hours, the maximum number of users with concurrent desktop sessions was 30
usercount          : 30

Now the rest is easy, we will narrow this down to a specific number of days, because the rest isn’t needed for our use case. By doing this you will end up with the following piece of code:

Get-EventReport -ViewName user_count_events -startDate ((Get-Date).AddDays(-7)) | sort time | Select time, usercount 

time                                                                       usercount
----                                                                       ---------
2020-02-07 23:55:02.077                                                    35
2020-02-07 23:55:02.077                                                    35
2020-02-08 23:55:01.273                                                    35
2020-02-08 23:55:01.273                                                    35
2020-02-09 23:55:01.3                                                      35
2020-02-09 23:55:01.3                                                      35
2020-02-10 23:55:02.08                                                     30
2020-02-10 23:55:02.08                                                     30
2020-02-11 23:55:01.27                                                     39
2020-02-11 23:55:01.27                                                     39
2020-02-12 23:55:01.3                                                      36
2020-02-12 23:55:01.3                                                      36
2020-02-13 23:55:02.077                                                    30
2020-02-13 23:55:02.077                                                    30

The next thing we wanted to know was what user logged in at what time. This was for troubleshooting purposes because the VMware View Administrator console isn’t the fastest to display events, especially the older version of View. We started looking at the same command again and used the “user_events” ViewName type category. This resulted in many events. To sort through these it’s useful to check what type of events there are:

Get-EventReport –ViewName user_events | Select EventType –Unique

eventtype
---------
BROKER_USERLOGGEDIN
BROKER_USERLOGGEDOUT

Turns out, only two are available. This makes it easy to find out whether a user logged in succesfully or not. Just run the below command to find out when a user logged in.

Get-EventReport -ViewName user_events | ?{$_.EventType -eq "BROKER_USERLOGGEDIN" -AND $_.severity -eq "AUDIT_SUCCESS"}

So now that we have the information we need, we need to find a way to schedule this so that we can use this information, anytime we need it. Fortunately, scheduling PowerShell code is very easy. Just create a “.ps1” file and schedule it to run in Windows Task Manager. I ended up with the following script, which satisfied our needs.

#Start of script.
##########################################
# Author = Bryan van Eeden		 #
# Version = 1.0 			 #
# Date = 01/02/2020			 #
##########################################
Add-PSSnapin VMware.View.Broker

$date = get-date -uformat '%m-%d-%Y-%H%M'
$filenamelocation = $("C:\temp\Loggedinusers_day" + $date + ".txt")
Get-EventReport -ViewName user_events -startDate ((Get-Date).AddDays(-6)) | ?{$_.eventtype -eq "BROKER_USERLOGGEDIN" -AND $_.severity -eq "AUDIT_SUCCESS"} | sort time | Select time, userdisplayname -Unique >> $filenamelocation
$filenamelocation2 = $("C:\temp\Concurrent_users" + $date + ".txt")
Get-EventReport -ViewName user_count_events -startDate ((Get-Date).AddDays(-7)) | sort time | Select time, usercount >> $filenamelocation2

#End of script.

Sample content of Loggedinusers_day_02-14-2020-0000.txt

time                                    userdisplayname                        
----                                    ---------------                        
2020-02-08 04:55:40.793                 vcloudvision.com\user01                         
2020-02-08 08:57:09.933                 vcloudvision.com\user01
2020-02-08 09:32:46.127                 vcloudvision.com\user01
2020-02-08 09:34:11.737                 vcloudvision.com\user01
2020-02-08 09:51:03.68                  vcloudvision.com\user01
2020-02-08 09:51:57.667                 vcloudvision.com\user02
2020-02-08 11:09:35.55                  vcloudvision.com\user03
2020-02-08 11:28:35.917                 vcloudvision.com\user04
2020-02-08 12:31:33.997                 vcloudvision.com\user02
2020-02-08 13:09:38.157                 vcloudvision.com\user02
2020-02-08 13:09:45.233                 vcloudvision.com\user02
2020-02-08 13:29:29.833                 vcloudvision.com\user02
2020-02-08 14:06:54.623                 vcloudvision.com\user02

Sample content of Concurrent_users_02-14-2020-0000.txt

time                                    usercount                              
----                                    ---------                              
2020-02-07 23:55:02.077                 35                                     
2020-02-07 23:55:02.077                 35                                     
2020-02-08 23:55:01.273                 35                                     
2020-02-08 23:55:01.273                 35                                     
2020-02-09 23:55:01.3                   35                                     
2020-02-09 23:55:01.3                   35                                     
2020-02-10 23:55:02.08                  30                                     
2020-02-10 23:55:02.08                  30                                     
2020-02-11 23:55:01.27                  39                                     
2020-02-11 23:55:01.27                  39                                     
2020-02-12 23:55:01.3                   36                                     
2020-02-12 23:55:01.3                   36                                     
2020-02-13 23:55:02.077                 30                                     
2020-02-13 23:55:02.077                 30                                     

So there you have it. Even the ancient VMware View environment I was working on had ways to find our information that the VMware View Administrator console didn’t have. Hope you found this post useful!