We are excited to announce that as of July 23rd the vSphere HTML 5 UI supports vSAN 6.5. All of you who expressed willingness to experience HTML 5 on a 6.5 install base, can go ahead, and try it. Now, you can do so by simply updating to vSAN 6.6.1 Patch 05. The HTML 5 UI will be automatically enabled for you. Keep in mind that you might need to log in twice on your vSphere Client after the update in order to see the new UI.
The new vSAN HTML5 UI for vSAN 6.5 retains the functionalities of the release, while having several improvements that were introduced with the HTML 5 client for vSAN 6.7.:
• The vSAN performance views are now under Cluster > Monitor tab > vSAN section > Performance.
• There’s an overview panel added within the Virtual objects section showing the Placement and availability status of the objects in the cluster. It also filters the object list below by status and object type.
• Under Virtual Objects/ View data placement, there’s a “Group components by host placement” check box, that enables you to have better visibility of the health status of the data components and to detect potential host issues faster.
In addition to providing greater UI experience, the new HMTL 5 client helps customers running vSAN 6.5 avoid any security issues related to Adobe Flash becoming unsupported by the end of 2020. Many browser vendors will stop supporting Adobe Flash in their future releases, and they do recommend their customers migrate any existing Flash content to new open formats like HTML 5.
If you’re running vSAN 6.5 and you’re not in a position to upgrade to a next major version, we recommend that you update to vSAN 6.6.1 Patch 05 and take advantage of the new HTML 5 client. In parallel, you’ll be avoiding any issues that the old client might cause since it won’t be supported anymore. Keep in mind that once your preferred browser stops supporting Adobe Flash, your Flash vSAN 6.5. UI will become unavailable.
Here is a quick overview demo of the HTML 5 user interface for vSAN 6.5.
