VMware Flings Update (2024)

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.

The following short URL can be used to easily reach this blog post: https://vmwa.re/flings and for those interested, all Flings are still governed by the VMware Flings License Agreement

• ESXi-Arm - The ESXi-Arm Fling has always been hosted on VMware's Customer Connect and folks can continue to download it using:https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=ESXI-ARM (documentation also linked from download page at the very top)
• HCIBench- The HCIBench Fling has been re-hosted on Github and actually makes it easier for folks to report issues and/or contribute and the appliance can be downloaded using: https://github.com/vmware-labs/hci-benchmark-appliance
• VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) - While there are no primary downloads for the VEBA OVA, it still fully open sourced https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance and folks can still build the appliance using the instructions found here.
• End Using Computing (EUC) Flings - Most of the EUC Flings have been re-hosted on VMware TechZone which you can find using: https://techzone.vmware.com/utilities
• vSphere Diagnostic Tool (VDT) - https://kb.vmware.com/kb/83896
• SDDC Import/Export -https://github.com/vmware-samples/sddc-import-export-for-vmware-cloud-on-aws
• Python Client for VMware Cloud on AWS (pyVMC) - https://github.com/vmware/python-client-for-vmware-cloud-on-aws
• VMware Cloud Size Companion CLI - https://github.com/vmware-samples/vmware-cloud-sizer-companion-cli
• Skyline CLI - https://developer.vmware.com/samples/8235/skyline-cli-v1.0.17
• Remainder VMware Flings - Due to the short notice, the majority of VMware Flings do not have a new home and may not have a new home for the foreseeable future. Thanks to Reddit user r/Is-Not-El, who archived as many of the Flings as they could using the Internet Archive. You can still find many of the VMware Flings including mines using: https://archive.org/download/flings.vmware.com

While it is unfortunate that the the VMware Flings site has shutdown, I did want to take a moment to thank those behind the VMware Flings program and specifically the main driving force which is Dana Nourie along with her colleagues Dexter Arver, Geoff Mayes and Dave Oz!

I want to personally thank @DanaNourie for supporting & fostering the community around the @vmwflings program for the past 12 years! 🙏

I know many of our customers have greatly benefited from these innovations, many of which have turned into features/products! 🥳

— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) October 24, 2023

I joined VMware back in 2011 (just reached my 12 year anniversary this week), which was also the same time Dana took over the VMware Flings program and I have been involved since the beginning. I have also participated as a Fling Author with many of my awesome colleagues and over the years, I have published a total of 10 VMware Flings, 5 of which have been productized!

I am sure I speak for many of our users out there that the VMware Flings program has been a tremendous resource over the past 12 years and I hope to see it continue in one form or another in the future! I will continue to update this blog post with any news or updated links to Flings that have been re-hosted.

Thank you Dana, Dexter, Geoff and Dave for spear heading this innovation at VMware and fostering its community!