With the recent announcement of VMware vSphere 6, I can finally start talking about the improvements we’ve made for vSphere 6 Web Client. Over 100 enhancements, with some user actions performing 5x faster. There are excel sheets and graphs full of performance data, but the best way to see the difference is to experience it yourself. If you’ve been wary of using vSphere Web Client in the past, you should give it another shot with vSphere 6.
In my time here I’ve heard of many tips on using Web Client that I didn’t learn during training or while using it directly. I thought it would be helpful to put all of these learnings in one place. I’m sure many of you reading this know about some of these tips, but hopefully there are some new ones in there that are helpful to you as well. This is a living document, so if there are tips and tricks not on the list, please share with the rest of us by adding it to the list. I should stress that this is not an official VMware document:
https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=VSphere_Web_Client/UI_Tips
Short url: http://tiny.cc/webclientwiki
There are also many enhancements in the vSphere 6 Web Client, some of which are highlighted below:
- Controlling “All Users’ Tasks” for performance
We know that the All Users’ Tasks view of Recent Tasks is an important feature, but it also turns out to be an incredibly “heavy” feature, which can quickly spiral out of control and impact vCenter Server performance. The focus of this version of vSphere Web Client was improving performance and giving you more control on customizing your experience. In order to achieve both of these goals, we had to make it a bit harder to get to All Users’ Tasks. This will help ensure that your systems will run smoother out of the box, with the option to enable the feature if you need it. We are also actively working on a better solution for this feature, but couldn’t get it in time for this release.
You’ll see some instructions when you first select All Users’ Tasks, and more detailed steps are in the Release Notes, but I included them here for reference. Once you’ve enabled this feature, it becomes the default view:
A) Click More Tasks in the Recent Tasks panel to view all users’ tasks.
OR
B) Edit the webclient.properties file and change the “show.allusers.tasks” setting. For large vSphere environments, changing the “show.allusers.tasks” setting can potentially impact performance.
1. Locate the webclient.properties file
For the vCenter Server Appliance, the file is located in the /etc/vmware/vsphere-client/webclient.properties directory.
For vCenter Server on Windows, the file is located in the C:ProgramDataVMwarevCenterServercfgvsphere-clientwebclient.properties directory.
2. Edit the file using a text editor and change show.allusers.tasks=false to show.allusers.tasks=true.
3. That’s it! No restart of anything should be required. Go to vSphere Web Client, select “All Users’ Tasks” and it should work.
- Many performance enhancements
Performance was the primary goal of this release of vSphere Web Client. Efforts were made to improve the performance of every portion of the interface, and you should see these improvements when you start using vSphere 6. Here are some of the major areas we worked on: Login and Home page, Summary pages, Networking pages, Related Objects lists, General Navigation, Performance Charts, Action Menus (right click), and reducing unnecessary data retrieval, which also serves to lighten load on vCenter Server.
The net result is that the vSphere 6 Web Client is an entirely new experience and easier to use than previous versions of vSphere Web Client.
- Tasks where they belong
This was shown at VMworld, but is worth another mention: The tasks pane is now back at the bottom, giving you room to see the information you need.
This comes along with the ability to move and resize panes (we call this Dockable UI), allowing you to customize it to your liking, such as below where Alarms and Work in Progress have been moved to provide a larger workspace.
- Reorganized Action menus (right click)
Action menus have been reorganized and flattened so that your actions are easier to find, and placed more familiarly. It should be much easier to pick up as you transition from the old desktop client to vSphere Web Client.
- Home menu navigation
The new and improved home button now shows a navigation menu which allows you to jump from wherever you are to one of the common views. You can now get back to any of the major inventory trees from anywhere in one click!
I hope this overview encourages you to upgrade your existing vCenter Servers to vSphere 6 so that you can experience these improvements (and more!) that we’ve made.
Edgar Anderson
Making the web client in Flash indicates a staggering contempt for the admins who have to use it.
It’s great that you’re making performance improvements, but it’s lipstick on a pig.
Call me when you rewrite the web client in HTML5.
Bob Anderson
Sing it, brother. We tell users they can’t have flash. Too risky, too many problems. One of them comes back and says “Well, you have it”. .
Yeah I have to have it because it is needed to manage our multi tens of millions of dollars in server hardware. Yeah, that’s right, the same program that lets me play “Donkey Knog” is the same one I have to use to manage our VM environment.
And I STILL CANNOT manage VUM with it…
C’mon guys, it’s like asking Stephen King to write a novel with EDLIN….
Louis
You guys aren’t anywhere near harsh enough – Vmware’s forceful drop of the C client has made daily life so painful and stressful that I think I’ve grown a third bollock from all the screaming at my monitor. It’s like trying to swim through treacle, whilst in jeans and a heavy leather jacket and DM boots on. In fact no, it’s more like trying to swim in a pool, with no arms or legs, using your head to repeatedly bang against the wall as you slowly drown in a screaming, gargling aggrevated and painful pool of your own shit and vomit.
Plus on top of all that, it’s slow.
I guess on the plus side it means we can justify our jobs more as it takes so long to work.
Dave
Imagine what it’s like for us poor SOBs that have to code up plugins for that pile of shit.
I wonder is there a market for a 3rd party .NET vsphere client?
Ian
Dear VMware,
WE DON’T WANT A FLASH WEB CLIENT.
/EVERYONE
Rui
I cannot agree more.
Dirk Traenapp
Dear VMware-Management,
stop developing in flash any further! It’s just a pain in the ass and there are a lot of other methods to build an OS-independant managementtool.
At the moment we have a crappy web tool, working completly (as one can say this) just with windows. Compared to this the old C#-Tools was way better!
What about standard web techniques? You are able to use native code or java at the serverside and html and javascript at the client side. I don’t need fancy drag&drop stuff. I need a stable universal frontend to manage the main enterprise software we need.
Ted Joffs
Dear VMware, please don’t listen to anyone that suggests using Java, Javascript, or anything with the words bean, coffee, java, espresso, latte, mocha, coca, or any other derivative of a coffee based product used to name a shitty programming language that gives administrators more hell than anything Flash ever has. In fact, if anyone even tries to suggest using Java anywhere, in any VMware office, anywhere in the world — please just shoot them. That said, please use HTML5 — like Cisco is doing with the new UCS Manager in the 3.x code base — look, if Cisco can get it right you can too. Heck, even ESX is moving the UniSphere code to HTML5…
…and NO JAVA! Just for the record.
Thomas
Javascript is *not* Java… it is comparing apples with pears 🙂
Apart from that – WE DONT WANT A FLASH BASED CLIENT!
Brent Kennedy
I hate to break it to you, but HTML5 is HEAVILY reliant on javascript. Its not Java though, which is good, cause Java is as you say, worse than flash was and will ever be.
Overand
So, this would be a bad time to tell you that the *server* components for vCenter use Java / Apache Tomcat, right? Java on the server side is “fine.” I don’t love it, but it’s fine. Java *applets* are something else entirely, and I think we can agree those are pretty un-fun.
Also, the other posters are correct; there’s really no HTML5 with Javascript; anything you’re doing on the web that’s dynamic is done with Javascript.
Here’s a technical breakdown of what Javascript and Java have in common:
* The first four letters
Steve
Sorry Ted, but it’s chat like that which caused vmware to ditch the thick client. You should stick to being an enduser and stop right there. HTML5 is simply presentation you end up with something in the page that has to deal with the logic. Unfortunately that’s Javascript and the mess of shiny distracting half written frameworks popping up everyday. UCS Manager? Poor Cisco, they are late to the game releasing UCSD another Flash/Flex nightmare, but maybe they listened to another enduser and are ditching it for a, wait for it, HTML5 gui. When will people just stop using webbrowers as poorly conceived desktops and write some real desktop apps that work day to day instead of the frustrating experience of will it work today on chrome, oops maybe IE, shit what’s happened, I can no longer adminster my enterprise because of some choice made by a browser manufacture to screw up my admin tool……… grrrrrrr.
Dennis Lu
Hi all,
I understand the feedback regarding Flash. My focus is delivering the best management interface to you as quickly as possible, and sometimes that means fixing some problems at the expense of others. Please continue providing us feedback, and rest assured we do hear and consider all of it, even if we cannot act on all of it quickly.
vSphere 5.5 Web Client was not the best product ever, we understand that, but Flash is not the cause of all performance problems. Even if we just spent all of our time creating an HTML5 client, the performance problems you experience today would likely not have improved. Improving performance and usability regardless of technology was our first, second, and third priority for this release. When I say above that vSphere 6 Web Client is a new experience, it really is, and I hope you approach it with an open mind.
In the meantime if you are using Web Client 5.5, you can try the tips located in this wiki, especially the Navigation tips which will get you around your environment faster:
https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=VSphere_Web_Client/UI_Tips
Short url: http://tiny.cc/webclientwiki
Overand
I love the vSphere 6 web interface and the performance – when I can get it to work. Compatability has been a huge issue, and I’m not sure what to do about it; the guides are fairly vague. “Use firefox on windows. No, use chrome on linux. No, maybe this other thing. Install the vmware-csd handler! Wait, no, the web interface won’t load when I have that enabled…”
The interface is quite good! The performance is leaps and bounds past 5.5 in my experience. Just… please let me actually use it!
Anonymous
We are not updating until you remove the need for flash. I rather use the old windows based platform, it sucks that it is windows only but at least it’s not such a horrible disaster. I hope browsers will soon all block flash so you will be force to move your crap out.
Jinke Marina
Mr Dennis Lu,
Oh Mr Dennis Lu!!
Daryl
This this were true, “Improving performance and usability regardless of technology was our first, second, and third priority for this release”, then VMWare could have released an updated C## client that could also support all the new features. That would have been faster to release, satisfied the vm admins and given you more time to develop a working HTML5 or whatever technology client. I’m afraid sending out an updated “flash” client is like throwing salt on a very big wound. In the end we all just want a working client regardless of that technology as you say. We were just hoping that it was not flash.
Earl
Zero-day vulnerability.
Doug
Dear Mr. Dennis Lu,
With all due respect, your answer clearly means that you are not listening to your users. How very arrogant?
Bottom-line, we don’t want a Flash based client for a number of reasons! Some of those reasons should be obvious to those familiar with the real problems with the flash platform. Do you hear, no Flash!
Perhaps it is true that HTML5 may not solve some of the performance issues but, at least, it’s not Flash! At least, it is fully portable to all platforms, at least, venerability issues will be addressed in a timely manner, and finally, at least HTML5 is being steadily improved! For these reasons alone, HTML5 is a superior option, compared to Flash!
For those of us needing to manage many millions of dollars worth of hardware, the Flash based management tool is a slap in our face! Stop it! No Flash!
If Action script is all you know, I’ll be happy to buy you HTML5 coding training, my treat! LOL
Again, stop it… NO FLASH, please!
Doug
Stephen
++
The performance issues with flash are just the tip of the iceberg.
-McG-
Our 1000+ servers and workstations are UNIX based with all the desktops being Linux systems. A web GUI based on Flash is NON-FUNCTIONAL in our environment as the production of Flash clients for Linux has stopped, and the version of Flash required by vSphere is newer than the last version released. I have to keep a PoS Windows laptop around for the sole purpose of running the FAT & Web vSphere clients. THAT is our biggest issue.
I happen to agree with the others that Flash is a horrible security choice, a performance pig, and a resource hog…but the fact that I can’t use the web GUI at all from my Linux systems is ludicrous for a ‘data center’ product.
Having said all that, I applaud the move to an OS agnostic management capability…unfortunately the Flash decision was a major detour off that path to nirvana. It’s reminiscent of the Java programmers of the 90’s that used to tout Java for the ability to code once and deploy across OSes, but then they’d code in Windows specific calls/resources and effectively scuttle that ship.
Dennis Lu
Hi -McG-
Will using Chrome, and it’s native Flash plugin, work for you? This is currently technically an “unsupported” browser, but it should work with no problems. We’re working on making it an officially supported browser in the future.
RobertW
It only partially works. You cannot use the client integration plugin, which is required for some of the mandatory admin tasks, with the newer versions of Chrome. Chrome changed their extension format and the current integration plugin is NOT compatible.
I have to echo other’s comments that with all the BIG work that was done in 6.0, you could have had HTML5 in with the release. My guess is that VMware is too far in bed with Microsoft that they really do not care about all of us out there that run *NIX based desktops.
Dennis Lu
Hi RobertW,
You’re correct that the Client Integration Plugin no long works by default with Google Chrome, due to the removal of NPAPI.
vSphere 6 has no dependency on NPAPI, including the Client Integration plugin, so it will work with Chrome on Linux.
Unfortunately the reality is we could not have completed an HTML5 release in conjunction with vSphere 6. The time it would take would have been longer than that, and it also would have meant leaving any improvements we made in vSphere 6 on the way side. When we compared these two goals, we determined that the performance and usability was a much worse sticking point, since an HTML5 client that was just as slow and unusable as vSphere 5.5 Web Client would not be better.
Tim
“since an HTML5 client that was just as slow and unusable as vSphere 5.5 Web Client would not be better.”
yes it would be, because
1) It wouldn’t be Flash!
2) It would actually work on Linux!
Does anyone at VMware appreciate the irony that the old C# client is now more cross platform than the Flash client, now that Adobe dropped Linux support and Microsoft opened up . NET to run on Linux?
Hugo
Yes you are right -McG-,
VMware please support a VMware Client without the old Flash. I need a Linux Desktop at my work and we can not work with vSphere WebClient. We have a up to date Firefox. And don´t use Chrome with integrated Flash. Flash is a security hole and obsolete in modern environments.
thx
Hugo Umeras
Denis
It is somewhat staggering. Customers who deliver hundreds of millions to your doorstep are unanimously requesting that Flash should be phased out, yet you continue developing it, and giving us (the admins who manage Datacentres) tips on which browser to use, to make the experience less hideous.
Makes any sense?
Dennis Lu
Hi Denis,
I have to stress that we do hear you, and we do understand the importance of getting off Flash. The reality is that what we have today is what will be available in the very near term, and we’re trying to make it the best that it can be, regardless of technology.
Regarding the technology (Flash vs HTML5) itself, there is a story of how we got here. Years ago when Web Client was first being dreamt of, Flash was chosen because HTML5 was not close to being a standard yet, and Flash looked to be quite a good choice. Once this decision was made, and after years of development and finally deploying Web Client, we also had to shift the ecosystem of partner plugins over to Flash as well (from the desktop client). It has also taken an additional few years to reach the point where we are today, where almost everything is available. Obviously, somewhere during that period, HTML5 not only became official, it is the standard.
You could imagine that switching over to HTML5 would have to go through the same process: a few years of development, a few years of getting our partner plugins over. The question has been visited multiple times over the recent period: (1) invest all resources and jump to HTML5 over a few years or (2) improve the Flash based Web Client in multiple releases. We decided not to leave the product in it’s 5.1/5.5 state for years, and customers we spoke to agreed with this approach.
With vSphere 6 we believe we’ve reached a point where our customers can use Web Client, in its current state, as their daily interface. We may finally be approaching the place where asking “is 2 years of no improvements on the UI okay?” might start to get a different answer.
We have been looking at HTML5 transition for a while, but I can’t give more details than that, and I certainly can’t promise a date. But I assure you we are trying to make this happen as best as we can.
Eric
I totally agree you concern about using HTML5. I wish the user experience of version 6 is reasonable. But you do make a point which is very clear to my colleges and myself: version 5.5 is NOT usable. Can you image how many times we make fun of it? Wish us good luck with version 6! And, if VMware still want to listen: please start exploring the solution without flash. Don’t let the technical burden crash you few year later.
Dennis Lu
Hi Eric,
Thank you for the understanding. I do hope you get a try vSphere 6 Web Client and enjoy it. Do come back (here, in the forums, or on twitter?) and let me know if you have a good or bad experience as well.
I assure you we are definitely investigating HTML5, but I can’t give any details about it at this time.
Tim
“I assure you we are definitely investigating HTML5, but I can’t give any details about it at this time”
Why not? VMware OWES VSphere admins a concrete timeline on replacing the garbage Flash GUI with something that doesn’t use flash and is at lest as functional as the old C#. You could also explain why VMware made the GUI the only way to administer newer HW versions when by your own admission it was in an unusable state?
Gaz
When is the HTML5 UI due please?
Also why bother with a web UI when you had a working client. Didn’t have issues then.
Brandon
Were you guys smoking pot when you came up with the web client? All this pretend of being OS agnostic and still tied almost 100% to Microsoft.
Tim
The fundamental issue is that VMware made a colossal mistake to use Flash to develop the main Admin GUI for their premier product. You say that Flash seemed like a good choice at the time, but I ask compared to what? Even Cisco’s Java based ASDM is MUCH more pleasant to use than the Flash VSphere client. Why didn’t you use Java to make a new client?
“We decided not to leave the product in it’s 5.1/5.5 state for years”
Why did VMware release it at all in such an unusable state? Why did it take 3 releases to get it to a usable state? Is Flash just that bad? Could you not find competent Flash developers? Was it just a low priority for VMware?
anon
Don’t worry, CISCO is late to the party but catching up and releasing a flash based enterprise wide management applications too.
Look out for UCSD another ‘Can I administer my enterprise environment today?’ technology based application.
All the same problems you are familiar with the vsphere webui coming soon…
KAI
There was nothing wrong with the desk top vSphere client worked great for me!! Now that is abandoned and I am forced in to using crappy web Flash gui No thanks soon moving on to Hyper V. I know that is not even an option for many people I dont think it should be that big of an issue for a company like vmware to keep the Desktop client viable as well!!
Ted Joffs
Kai,
Go to Hyper-V… We will see you back here in a couple months I am certain.
Ted
Frank
Hi Dennis,
first of all i have to admit that you fixed the performance. Thank you for that, but for real the webclient is still not faster than the c# but it is so unreliable.
If you do some changes in Storage with the Webclient the 6.0 c# represent it even if you are on a different pc. The Webclient dont show the changes you made in your own session, and now you start to refresh several times to hope you can see your own changes.
You claim to place a client for cloudproviders with 10k features in it but it does not work in classroom environments of 2 students share 2 esx hosts.
Honestly if i have to refresh all five minutes to see if the clone has finished allready or if my vm runs and think of a enterprise environment i am so scared of the 6.0 release.
Additionally you create so many buttons and navigation panes and customizing submenus and redundancy that it slows me so down if i want to make my work done.
For real the most important button is the home butten to start my journey of “find the right button i found 10 years easy” again and again and so do all of my customers and students.
In my opinion you wasted 5 years of development in this webclient to give the houswife the ability to manage a cloudprovider. but let me tell you a secret “this will not happen”.
You just degraded the admin ui to systemcenter!! For real
But shure from now on i will read ten hours of “how to make the webclient run with IE ff Chrome vpostgres/sqlexpress sso 5.1 5.5 6.0” to install a simple admin ui.
For real i need more know how to install the Admin Interface and make it work than i need to run 10000 VMs.
Kind regards
Dennis Lu
Thank you for the recognition in improvement. You’re also very correct that Web Client is not faster than the Desktop client. From a performance standpoint, we’re still working on improving it so it’s on-par/faster, but that will be an ongoing process. From a UI feature standpoint, we think that many of the Web Client’s unique features (Recent Objects, Work in Progress, etc) can make working in Web Client a more productive experience overall, even if each click is still not yet on par.
Regarding your issues with the object status and updating, we know this is a problem as well. The best explanation I can give is that the way that the Desktop client manages to display this information is un-scalable, causing unacceptable performance degradation when many users are connected at the same time. Updating the status of objects and tasks has been improved in vSphere 6, and we’re working on improving it for future releases also.
Mihai
Ref ” The best explanation I can give is that the way that the Desktop client manages to display this information is un-scalable”
I am sure at least 95% of the users are very happy with the C# vSphere client scalability, you are only discussing with a few select very large customers. We have many vCenter servers, some with well over 150 hosts and 1200 VMs and lots of clients open and the C# client is running very smooth.
Just make the auto-update optional (but enabled by default) if that degrades scalability and everyone should be happy
Geoff Maciolek
I almost feel bad for jumping on the “everyone hates the web client” bandwagon, but I have to jump on it. Honestly, the misery of using web-based VM management as delivered by VMWare was a significant reason my company recently pushed from managing some of our infrastructure with vCloud Director over to vSphere.
vCD 5.1, operating that reliably required pinning an old insecure version of Firefox, similarly an old insecure version of Java, with several of its security settings modified even more to allow for the vCD client to function. Plus a plugin. SERIOUSLY! Specific firefox version. Specific Java Version. Flash, AND a VMWare-specifc plugin. Yes, the situation improved somewhat in vCD 5.5, but only somewhat. (And I expect in a few years, it’ll have the same issue, as browser get incompatible with it).
I was so excited to move back to actual vSphere, having last used it at 4.1 and… what’s this? Web client… required for some features? :: headdesk ::
The free open source stuff out there is easier to manage via a web interface than yours is. There, I said it. There are at least two (and probably more) alternate paltforms easier to manage. Do I use them? No! Because VMWare is still the king… at least as long as I can use the desktop client.
Is the desktop client perfect? No. It has some issues with how things are organized, and performance problems (startup time, really?) And it’s a desktop client, of course. The idea of a web client is fantstic! Just… not with flash, and not poorly implemented.
vCD 5.1’s web interface made my sysadmins have to keep seperately configured machines (or VMs, but really you see the issue there) just to manage our vCD infrastructure. (They were unsafe to use for anything else at all). So please, please, please don’t go down this route again.
And I’m going to say this: No hate for the developers of this web product! I know the motivating factors are complicated. But flash’s day is long over; ask Adobe. Is everything replicated in HTML5? Nope. But is it “good enough?” Multiple FOSS “manage the hypervisor” projects out there not using flash say “Yes!”
Benjamin Craig
Dennis, at the 2013 Vmworld, there were a lot of promises about the much improved vSphere Web Client – despite the best intentions, the 5.5 and 6 UI is just as awful. VMware is so focused on scale for large customers that they forget that the vast majority of their customers have reduced their infrastructure as a result of virtualization – the one-size-fits-all web UI may scale, but it is hardly ergonomic and what’s the point of scaling a bad UI? Look, there’s enough margin in my licensing costs alone to continue development of the Windows client – abandoning an ergonomic, fast, and very popular UI in favor of this truly awful web-based solution is inexcusable.
As a VMUG Leader, I can say with impunity that all of my constituents loath the web-client and want to keep using the Windows client. Surely your team can think of ways to account for scale within the Windows client without abandoning the whole platform! I’m really disappointed to see the disconnect between product developers and customers – even VMware Support hates the UI! Every time we call VMware for anything, we mention how much we hate the web-client and without fail every single support engineer feels the same way – seriously, wake up, man!
Dennis Lu
Hi Benjamin,
You’re probably not wrong. In the past VMware may have lost focus with the release of the 5.1 and 5.5 Web Client, and I certainly believe you when you say all your VMUG members “load the web-client”. But I’m not lying when I say many customers have found the vSphere 6 Web Client to be a usable experience due to the performance and usability improvements.
Regarding your statement that the “UI is just awful” and “it is hardly ergonomic”, I would like to hear some more specifics, so that we can work on these for future releases. We have a strong belief that the overall design of the UI is not the problem, but it comes down more to:
1) There were drastic changes from Desktop client to Web Client. The new stuff isn’t bad/worse/nonsensical, but it is new and takes time to learn.
2) Minor differences and issues make a huge impact. Excess chrome, 3 layers of tabs that take up precious screen real-state, etc. Here is where I’d like to hear more feedback.
3) Performance has been the biggest problem by far in 5.1 and 5.5
We tried to shift things back in vSphere 6 Web Client, such as the right-click (action menus) that should look a lot more like they did in the Desktop Client. Bookmarking screens that you have trouble finding can also be a way of navigating around the UI, especially for going back to screens that may be in a different place relative to the Desktop Client.
If you’re willing to give vSphere 6 Web Client a month as your first, second, and third option in managing your environment, you may find that it works, and maybe even works better. Many users I’ve spoken to, both large and small environments, have found that some of the features (bookmarking, recent objects, work in progress) have even boosted their productivity. I can’t guarantee you will have a similar experience, but I hope you’re willing to give it a chance.
Tim
Stop trying to sell the garbage Flash Client, no one is buying. It is so clearly inferior to the C# client in every way that no sane person could ever consider it to be superior. Have you ever actually heard anyone say that the Flash Client works better than the C# client?
Benjamin Craig
Dennis, with all due respect. Stop. Just stop. You claim that many users have found the web client “capable of providing a useable experience”. What pithy politically correct kind of response is that?! I don’t know of ONE user who prefers the web client, period. You ask for specifics, but here’s the hard reality: I don’t have the time to enumerate all the ways in which the web client is awful in a forum thread – hell I didn’t even get your response from this thread and only found it several months later while searching for an explanation why the latest vCenter web client still sucks. Here is the short answer: Start with the thick client, list all the differences between that and the web client, that’s what makes the web client God awful. Yes, you’ve sped it up, big whoop, it’s still clunky and not close to ergonomic. With the overwhelming responses you’ve seen on this post, how can you insult the customer base further by continuing with this terrible UI?
And furthermore, Flash is a security NIGHTMARE, AND Java is second only to Flash, just in case you’re thinking of using any more craptastic software in future versions.
If you insist on providing a web client in addition to FULLY supporting the thick client, by all means do so, and use HTML 5 to do it. And hire the same UI team that designed the thick client to build it, but please do it quickly because this has gone on far too long.
And if you’re really serious about asking for specific help fixing this monstrosity, feel free to send me an email at craig dot ben at NRIM dot com or call at nine oh seven three three one six for seven zero.
Francis
Dennis,
I appreciate the enthusiasm for version 6 and its improvements, but it is not what we wanted. You must realize that organizations such as mine do not allow Flash in our critical environments! We’re using VMware but it means that we are still sitting on 5.1 (vmx9) with the thick client! The Federal sales rep told us to be vocal and tell VMware about this every opportunity we have, so here goes again. Please accept that fact that most of us are not pro-HTML5, just anti-Flash. It is a security nightmare and updating it every few weeks is a huge burden. Bring back the vSphere client and port it to Linux/Mac while you’re at it! Thanks.
Dennis Lu
Hi Francis,
I understand this and I guarantee you that we’re investigating options to get off of Flash. That’s all I can share at this point though.
Since the Desktop client was packaged with vSphere 6, you should be able to upgrade to vSphere 6 as well.
Tim
“Since the Desktop client was packaged with vSphere 6, you should be able to upgrade to vSphere 6 as well.”
The Desktop client cannot be used to administer newer hardware versions and VM hardware version cannot be downgraded, so upgrading to 6 could be risky for an organization that doesn’t that forbids flash completely. They could accidentally upgrade a critical VM and be unable to manage it.
Jonathan
You can actually downgrade hardware versions, it just requires a little SSH voodoo.
1. Drop the VM from your inventory.
2. SSH in to the host and edit the .vmx file with vi, changing the hardware version from 10 to 8.
3. Re-add the VM using the CLI tools.
Overand
Important note!I want to use VMWare, and I will try ti keep using VMWare; my company’s got Enterprise Plus and it’s great. This isn’t a dig on VMWare.
But? It’s kinda embarrassing that the free/open source alternatives to VCenter (and VSphere in general) offer cross-platform web management tools, including “remote desktop”
/ console support. Some of those tools are written by dev teams of less than a dozen people – a far cry from a company that’s making more than $350 million in profit per year.
But we love vSphere! We love vCenter! I just hate, hate, hate wrestling with the vSphere web client. I’ve been unable to find a browser that will Just Work Every Time. The situation is better on 6, but I keep having to pin versions of browsers, switch to less-ideal ones, reconfigure them to use / not use the weird external hook vmware-csd, etc.
I don’t care about passing a USB device from my client workstation to my VM. Heck, I don’t even need to pass a client CD. I’d gladly give up ALL of that just to be able to manage my cluster from a browser, consistently, without plugins that are being deprecated by their vendors.
Please! I want more VMWare in my life, not less, but managing my VMs with the web client is a real headache. When it works, the performance is great on 6.0, and the interface is pretty good too. When it works!
I thought these compatibility issues would go away when I switched from vCD 5.1 to 5.5, but they just changed. Same with vCenter 5.5 to 6.0 – different problems, but still problems. Help!
Sean McCreadie
I just installed vsphere 6 and immediately logged into the webclient to see where all my license and support fess had gone.
I got my answer, straight down the toilet!
What a total pile this webclient is, year after year.
Now the hardware tab is missing from the desktop client! C’mon VMware, I cant take much more.
We bought NSX last year from you guys (spent a ton of cash), and I can only manage it through the worlds worst UI.
I’m so frustrated.
Sean
Tim
One way to make lemonade from the lemon VMware is giving us in the Flash Client is to use it as motivation to learn PowerCLI. You will be glad you did.
Ubuntu
Flash sucks !
Cricket
No hardware tab on the vCenter 6 C# client? Really, who ever is making these decisions needs to share their drugs, all the admins out there are going to need them. Just stop with the web nonsense and bring back the C# client. Seriously.. I can’t even think of one nice thing to say..
Ivaylo
We are 70% Linux shop. Flash is not supported.
Shane
Hi Dennis,
You say that VMware is listening to its customers but, in the same breath, ask us to give the web client yet more months to see if we come around to it. I cannot help but envisage someone sat with their fingers in their ears whilst ignoring the same request over and over. VMware needn’t alienate customers over this, all it needs to do is continue developing the Windows client so that those of us who have no time for it or who are forbidden from deploying it can carry on using it to manage every aspect of their virtual infrastructure. Sure, it would be a monumental U-turn but, if it’s in the customer’s interests, surely it’s worth it???
Your defence of the web client focuses on usability. Can you comment on the installation of Flash Player in a server infrastructure from a security viewpoint? This might make useful reading:
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/product_id-6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html
Shane
Rob
We still have some ESXi 5.5 machines that we haven’t upgraded to 6 yet (though a few people have upgraded some servers). In addition to the Windows based client forcing us into crazy turducken situations (ie: Ubuntu dev machine running Win7 in VirtualBox to run the vSphere client), in order to use the client in 5.5, automation APIs required rolling back to obsolete versions of perl, making the APIs quite undesirable to use as well. Use case: new developer comes in and installs either a recent ubuntu or recent windows setup. Under ubuntu, it is very easy to script the installation of the development environment itself, particularly with the good amount of things that have Python bindings that are not overly sensitive about exact Python version. This is all kind of nuts because the whole point of VMware is in creating armies of clean machines without getting mired in licensing issues (windows) and manual installation caveats (brittle API bindings that get broken by environment updates more than normal code does).
I hope that version 6 alleviates some of this pain. I’d never use the GUI to do the same thing twice if the APIs were any good.
Alan Renouf
Rob, Thanks for your comments on our APIs and SDKs, I have recently taken these over and will be striving for a consistent up to date version of our SDKs, I appreciate your feedback and how hard it is to use our SDKs at the moment. If you have any further requirements please reach out to me at lastname first initial at my company dot com
Tim
Hi Alen, do you have any insight into why VMWare is so stubbornly clinging to the terrible Flash Client when it is is loud and clear that its customers don’t want it?
Edmund
I just installed vCenter and had a try at the vSphere Web Client.
Please. While it ‘looks’ nice and all that, I don’t *want* the web client. I prefer the desktop vSphere client over
the web client. I don’t want to manage my vms using my browser.
Please. Just change the desktop client to manage the whole vCenter operations.
Josef Nedved
Hi,
I have been using ESX since the early days, moving along as a user, administrator, support rep as well as being VMware Certified Instructor.
The feedback I have received from individuals and organizations is that no one wants the web client. When I train on vSphere, I am being neutral and really push the Web Client to my audience, however at the end of the week the majority really dislike using it.
I’m a bit worried that VMware doesn’t listen to the customers.
I’m aware we have the desktop client still included, however many features are missing and VMware doesn’t want to commit to supporting it for the years to come.
Can anyone find out who is responsible for the decisions in VMware in the C# / Web Client use?
Tim
“I’m a bit worried that VMware doesn’t listen to the customers.”
They are getting to be as arrogant and anti-customer as Oracle is.
Bruce Peters
I see an awful lot of confusion on some of these posts, so I’d thought I’d drop a line or two regarding the “vsphere web client”.
Only the login splash screen is using adobe flash. Probably some other small parts of the client that require animations as well. The rest of the client is a
Java servlet, hence why you see a “java.exe” process when you are logged into vcenter that uses up like 800+ megs of ram locally. Case and point. Java is GOOD. Write
the code ONCE and it works on all platforms. An obvious indication why good designers choose to use it.
What I ended up doing with our vsphere infrastructure to maximize performance: (some suggestions)
Instead of using fiber channel storage, eg. emc san’s. For storing operating system vmdk files, go solid state samsung, intel ssd’s. 256GB 40-60GB per guest. For data vmdk’s use simple 2-4TB constellation drives, raid 1 for simplicity, ease of recovery if a drive fails and WAY cheaper than raid 5. This way when or if you decide on virtualizing your vcenter server, the entire program is stored on an ssd with 5 times R/W performance. This has definitely had a significant impact on the vsphere web client performance. On top of that, your vm guest operating systems boot in 5 seconds. All this makes the client respond alot faster than dumping everything in one SAN basket.
I just wish vmware would lift the restriction on vcenter essentials to 9 hosts, instead of 3. And there essentials plus and vsphere standard are out of this world over priced. I imagine Kvm solutions like proxmox will eventually put pressure on them to lower their price, but for the web client I just wish you could remediate patches via vsphere update manager plugin. Was hoping they would address that with ver 6.
Edwin Fine
Well, if there’s so little reliance on Flash on the product, it should be easy to remove it and replace it with Java code, right? Who cares about a splash screen?
kjstech
I can’t see upgrading vCenter / vSphere 5.0 environment to 6.0 or anything until you get rid of the crap FLASH. Look 3 0-day flash vulnerabilities releassed just this week alone! The patch still isn’t appearing in my patch mgmt software. So were starting to roll out ActiveX filtering and other means to prevent this flash malware.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/07/third-hacking-team-flash-zero-day-found/
Get rid of the flash requirement and we’ll upgrade.
Jeremy Forguson
I manage a vSphere environment on a standalone network and would like the ability to install the Client Integration Plugin via the Web Client. Unfortunately, with vSphere 6, any attempts to do so result in a download from a VMware Internet-facing server. Since the vSphere environments I manage aren’t connected to the Internet in any way, this makes the installation impossible. I’ve tried to research to see if it’s possible to customize the download location like you can with the VMware View client, but have not found any solutions yet. I found a post where I could open up the .iso for the VMware vCenter Server appliance and the Client Integration Plugin installation software is available from there. Now I have to point users to the software location should they need to perform any actions that require it, e.g. Open Console. VMware has already done a good job of making the ability to get the software easily accessible to the users. Now you need to include the ability to make the integration plugin easily available for those of us who manage isolated environments.
Ted Joffs
All,
The vCenter solution is not horrific — completely.
Negatives:
1) Uses Flash — Security Issues.
2) Uses Java — Plain Stupid; Issues with every Java upgrade/security enhancement, security issues.
3) Uses browsers & plugins — impacted by browser changes, versions, security issues.
Positives:
1) Appliance Based — Excellent.
2) Upgrade Process — Easy! Still have to see how this pans out in 6.0 GA. Still annoyed this requires a plugin again.
3) 6.0 interface is MUCH faster, cleaner, and intuitive.
4) New platform architecture.
While I believe this should go to HTML5, I will say as an engineer that deals with many different clients at all size levels, I will say that specifically the following:
1) Those who grew up with VMware through the years — loath the web client.
2) Those who don’t know the Web Client — find it good.
3) Those who cannot change will always hate it, regardless of the platform.
Now, the good news is that 99% of everything you need to do in the vSphere environment can be done through APIs, PowerShell, and other tools. Alan Renouf, I do recognize your significant contributions to this fact and applaud you for it. With everything being API available, if the hatred is that strong why is there not a movement to capitalize on the Open Source nature of our world and develop a standalone thick client that triggers those APIs?
Brent Kennedy
Give this man a cookie! Openstack is being built this way for the same very awesome reason.
Rekon
Hi, with the recent Flash vulnerabilities I would like to reiterate how important it is for VMWare to develop an non-flash interface for their VSphere Web Client, and do so as quickly as possible. We are in the process of banning Flash in our environment as are many other IT departments. I would be great to know that I can continue to admin my VMWare servers without the reliance on what is widely considered an insecure product. Thanks!
Ryan
Flash is horrible and the web console is an even bigger piece of garbage. I am going to be able to remove it from my XenApp environment before I can remove it from my PC because of this stupid web console. I understand your client team didn’t want to develop for multiple platforms, but seriously, how many clients do you need? Windows and Mac?
Scott Silva
Chrome refuses to run the buggy POS… Firefox is sluggish… And IE is an accident waiting to happen…. Just make a C client again…
DaveR
So despite recent additional out-of-band updates, and despite this being version-several-hundred of Flash Player, Adobe have still managed to patch the following vulnerabilities today: CVE-2015-3107, CVE-2015-5124, CVE-2015-5125, CVE-2015-5127, CVE-2015-5128, CVE-2015-5129, CVE-2015-5130, CVE-2015-5131, CVE-2015-5132, CVE-2015-5133, CVE-2015-5134, CVE-2015-5539, CVE-2015-5540, CVE-2015-5541, CVE-2015-5544, CVE-2015-5545, CVE-2015-5546, CVE-2015-5547, CVE-2015-5548, CVE-2015-5549, CVE-2015-5550, CVE-2015-5551, CVE-2015-5552, CVE-2015-5553, CVE-2015-5554, CVE-2015-5555, CVE-2015-5556, CVE-2015-5557, CVE-2015-5558, CVE-2015-5559, CVE-2015-5560, CVE-2015-5561, CVE-2015-5562 and CVE-2015-5563.
34 by my count.
As the ISC puts it ” Please keep in mind that adobe flash player has been consistently insecure for the past few years. If you own a website running on this technology, perhaps you would like to explore other technologies like HTML5 and improve the security of your users.”
Finn Andersen
If VMware is to gain trust from their customers again, you need to be more open about what you are doing with the replacement of flash.
“I assure you we are definitely investigating HTML5, but I can’t give any details about it at this time.”
“We have been looking at HTML5 transition for a while, but I can’t give more details than that, and I certainly can’t promise a date. But I assure you we are trying to make this happen as best as we can”
These answers is not good enough. Why can’t you give more details?? Change your information policy ASAP. Be open about where you are and where you are headed.
I’ve attended the special tech update for the WebClient for enterprise customers on VMWorld 2015 (held on the first day – monday). Hoping that there was something new not beeing known by the public. But there was nothing new and the information given was best suited to junior admins, not enterprise customers. Please treat your enterprise customers with respect and give them decent information! Our TAM is also not allowed to give more in depth information.
Lovettcal
I love VMware it allowed me to do great things for my organization and allowed me to play with the big boys when our budget was very tight… However, over the years and especially since VMware merged with EMC (where solutions go to die) the focus have not been customer centric. You keep asking people to try your web client and I have because I want and need flexibility however, you integrated Flash and Java. Anyone on a Military network knows it is like winning the lottery to get the Security Teams to agree to allow this on the network. The Army is a major user of VMware but if you all continue down this road, you will be the next Lotus and WordPerfect solution that had big Army contracts and lost them. Do anyone even use those applications anymore. They were considered the best during their day but refusing to change killed them from Army perspective. VMware do not be next even Apple almost went away due to such arrogance. What is good for you in your lab means nothing to an organization dealing with real world issues. I started saying I love VMware but I am being pressured to consider dumping it for Windows Hyper-V, which was a joke until Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V. This is something the Army already pay for and some may consider it a major cost saving if they used it oppose to VMware. Do not be suborn, arrogant, or just plain miss the boat in the issues your loyal and dedicated customers are complaining about or you may become the next Compaq, Packard Bell, or Corel of the IT world.
Lovettcal
When I read the comments posted by all of the users of VMware, my excitement got the best of me when I posted the last Reply. The use of Flash and Java is a frequent discussion with my Security Team, Leadership, and may serve as a forcing action to migrate to Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V. I love using your product but do you know what I love even more MY JOB. Get your head out of your four point of contact and fix your application!
Gaston
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your comments and information but… I have to agree with everyone else here.
Performance of web client sucks. It is a waste of my and my team’s time.
Not to mention the possible impact on my health (waiting gets me very very stressed).
I tried to push my team to use it, but after attempting to “lead by example” I decided it was a lost cause.
Tell you what, all my VMs are still at HW 7, and so they will remain until you guys come up with a usable web client.
Dan
I don’t get why people are now worried about java.
Sure, vcenter is a series of Java applications. But that is server side.
I hate to post this, but many, many web sites use java for web services and middleware.
There is absolutely no problem with VMware using java for the back end of vcenter. People bitching about this just look uninformed.
On the VMware web client, they clearly are ignoring customers. They say they are listening, and they were forced to use flash. VMware made the decision to abandon the c# client and only develop the web client.
Whoever made this decision was clearly tripping on LSD. As was 100% of their colleagues, peers, and managers. Where was the oversight? How did all levels at VMware fail so badly, for so many years?
VMware, I will never buy another product from your company. We are done. VSA wasn’t nice. You dropping it, and releasing the “real” VSA ( vsan) with the price tag, proves you only have customers for the purposes of extortion. And the continued subterfuge around the various clients is just a joke.
Wolfgang Scheicher
Well.
I do have Chrome, i do have Flash.
I do get this banner:
“None of your browser-OS combinations is supported. Some features might not work correctly. You don’t matter to us.” (or something like that)
After hours trying to get this Web Client to function in on of my Browsers on my Desktop i came to realize that the message has its reasons.
So i did give up and create a local Windows VM with the necessary Browser requirements on my Desktop just for being able to manage Virtual Machines.
Of course i use some other VM Technology for creating local VMs on my Desktop. And while i admit that it has not all the features, it is so much less frustrating. Makes me wonder, why do we actually pay …
Fed
I have to echo all the admins that complain about the web client / Flash issues. I was very optimistic that vSphere 6 would eliminate the current horror that the 5.x web client. I was fortunate enough to attend the 5 day VMware Install/Configure/Manage class for vSphere 6 (official VMware sanctioned class). Days before the class started I thought to myself “Perfect! I have a chance to use and play with web client 6x in a fresh clean environment and see how much better it performs!”
Class started and we didn’t make it passed the first lab (class of about 20 students) when the problems began. Screens were not reflecting the changes. Web client would freeze up, students had to completely shutdown their web browsers and log back in to get web client to work or reflect changes. I put that bias aside and pressed on. As the rest of the week continued the problems got progressively worse to the point students couldn’t even complete the labs. In a last ditch effort to keep the class moving forward the instructor caved and told us to use the C# client which many students had already decided to use on their own.
Later on we got to the VMware Update Manager portion of the class / lab where the instructor adamantly said it was fully supported in vSphere 6 web-client. Nope, after getting to the lab portion and everyone being unable to complete the tasks via web client the instructor began to investigate on his own. Reluctantly he admitted that the class text was wrong and it was not possible to use VUM in web-client.
I took this course about 3 months ago (June 2015). I am a seasoned VMware admin who’s been using its products at an enterprise level since the 3.x days.
Don’t be fooled, its not fixed and if it is “better” than the 5.x web-client it’s still complete and gutter garbage. I really tried to be open minded and unbiased but the class just solidified what all the admins are screaming. Web client is garbage.
Joe
Does it work like a daemon with some well-defined (if not publicly-documented) protocol? Seems you could make a front end a piece-at-time that doesn’t use Flash. Adding features over time would make it so that less and less of the code was in Flash, while keeping the existing code working. Or I might be talking out of my a**. 😉
Got to admit that having text interface, a graphical interface, and a HTML interface would be pretty sweet. It is on the Deluge program!
Jason Parks
This is exactly why we will be dropping vmware and moving everything to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
moneydone
agreed- the arrogance, the stupidity—the mindless arbitrary VMware enterprise level non-support will now end for my shop as well.
Eric
I need to know the EXPLICIT security settings I need to have relaxed so that the Web client will work in ANY browser. I don’t care at this point which one. Obviously Chrome is out – no support for NPAPI. Somehow – these steps need to pass a security scan – OR have explicit reason why so I can by some sort of miracle get a waiver to have the settings changed.
At this point, I can’t even logon to my environment (6 enterprise plus) with the web client. Not sure exactly what patch or security update killed the ability to do so, but since Security is key in the world I work in, I am pretty much SOL. Which REALLY sucks since I am using VSAN – I can no longer manage it.
Really sad that I want to move forward with vSphere 6 and the new features like VSAN, but cannot because there is no reliable way to manage them.
Christian
I have been using the web client in OPERA w/ flash since day one when the horror of the web client arose. I hate the web client. All of the above posts outline my issues as well. I just upgraded to vcenter 6u1 and it’s not any better. it still sucks (again, for all the reasons above.). At the very least, Opera runs NPAPI and it runs the web client very smoothly. IE is a nightmare, as is Firefox. *sigh*. I am HOPING against hope that DELL will SAVE US all from the atrocity that is this web client. I still keep the vsphere client 6 installed and use it to maintain/change EVERYTHING except managing the v.10 guests (i’ve been a vmware admin/architect for 10 years.) I can’t believe how amazingly ridiculous the navigation is in the web client for dealing with Networks, datastores, iscsi conx, and all that. mind blowing…FLASH?!?!?! so crazy.
Peace.
Nicolas MAIRE
I just had to convert some VMs to Template and I felt the need to chip in to say that it took me as much time in the Web Client to convert one VM as it took me in the C# Client to convert a dozen.
Please, please, please drop the stupid web client and go back to the good old Fat Client !
LT
I killed our vmware acquisitions when it became clear that vmware was going to stonewall on the client issue. I came to see if things have changed. They apparently haven’t.
Tom
please stop thinking “there are only Windows Clients out there” and “just use Windows with Flash” – we don’t have it but want to use vSphere6 .
Sorry by all respect – the current state is a shame
Brandon
If i was looking for a way to ruin a company, i would have built your web client and said we are going to stop working on the console (The one thing that people loved), besides the security concerns who actually likes using this. We have held off on the upgrade because no one likes it. And we are getting pressure to go to Hyper-V. Well if i have to use this crap console why not look at Hyper-V or another solution.
Why is it so hard to see that no one likes the web client, keep the windows based client functional. Before the web client, everything was great to explain with VMware, beautiful user experience, easy to find things, and managing a big environment was a breeze. And it really made our jobs easy, easy to figure out problems, easy to run, and it just worked.
As soon as you come out and say, we are reversing our decision and we will make sure the Windows console will work, please tell me. I will buy your stock, otherwise it doesn’t take a genius to see where this company is going as its worth half of what it was in 2012.
I hope soon you realize you are pushing people away from your products. Hard to sell to management that you want to continue using your products when its expensive and now hard to use.
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Alain
Wow … Adobe just released a patch that fixes 78 security vulnerabilities in Flash Player, makes me wonder how secure our installs of vSphere truly are.
Also, Adobe is pushing people toward HTML5, according to a recent blog post, “The use of open web standards and HTML5 has become the dominant standard on the web.”
Finally, with the debacle that is Windows 10, more people will probably be moving to Linux or Mac (I have) so no joy for them and vSphere Web Client.
So, VMWare is basically using old, proprietary, vulnerable, and buggy software that even its creator acknowledges should go away in favor of HTML5.
Talk about being behind the curve.
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JJman
The problem is, VMware still didn’t get it. FLASH IS A DEAD TECHNOLOGY!!!!
Stop flogging a dead horse.
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JJman
Pete
No one asked for this stupid web client when your Windows vSphere Client works so well. Not only that, your web client is flash based, great so now when new version of flash comes out, it probably breaks this like Java breaks when new ones come out.
So the web client is not natively installed with the ESXi install so when I go make a VM I can’t choose Virtual Machine Version 11. So I need vCenter Server to get the web client so I can’t create a vCenter VM that is version 11 and has the “new features and controllers”.
Dan D
Flash has been known to be terrible and incredibly insecure for more than 10 years. I worked at EMC (the parent company of VMWare) some ~10 years ago. One of the projects I worked on there was ART, which was a Flash-based tool. Flash was insecure garbage back then, but someone was hired for this project and was allowed to use it anyway.
For anyone at VMWare to ever have considered Flash, even if you first started working on that web client 10+ years ago, is asinine. It has never, ever been a reasonable choice. Support sucks and Adobe software is some of the least secure on the planet. Using a non-portable plugin like Flash also completely invalidates the purpose of having a web client at all. This is critical infrastructure support software, not a free game my users play on their lunch breaks. How dare you.
Even if you did not expect NPAPI support to be dropped years ago, you are still wrong for EVER having subjected us to this. Dennis as well as others at VMWare need to be fired so competent people can be hired to bring back the C-based client. I’m sorry if that sounds mean, but for you to be in this thread defending Flash at all shows your absolute incompetence.
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Dimo
So I am upgrading the other day to 5.5 u3e and now Mozilla cannot be used anymore. IE can’t be used for a long time, so I am left with Chrome. Hell, how slow can be everything. Unbelievable. It is probably related to the fact this is an isolated (secured) environment. Because obviously no one in VMware likes that dirty word. Security. But Flash!
Now with the new 5.5 u3e version, the web plugin needs to be updated, so at least Chrome can be used. Clicking the vCenter link.. how dare you, offline? So.. where is this plugin? On the ISO? No! Downloadable? The web plugin cannot be found by Google! VMware’s search isn’t helpful either. So I get to built a non-secure vCenter, so I can go to its web-page, patch flash, so I can click on “Download the Client Integration Plug-in”. So I can copy the rare plugin installable to the secure network, install it, which takes about 25min, because I am sure, the un-secure piece of something is trying to query some website and it finally fails. What a timeout threshold.. Then, I can finally logon to vSphere web client.
Shawn M
Just updated to 6.0 from 5.5u2b. Why remove the storage view tab? Bring it back please.
Gushi
I will comment here, as many others have, that VMware’s recent decisions are both great and terrible.
* Yes, Flash is awful. Enough said there. But if you’re married to flash, why do I still ALSO need a plugin? And why, after downloading that plugin, do I have to do weird unholy url-mapping tricks in my browser? And why, after doing all that, do I still get warnings that the default browser, on the latest version of my OS *still isn’t supported*. So when I hit some snag, I have to go find a windows machine — JUST TO REPLICATE that it’s actually brokenness in the Vcenter server.
* Installation of the vsphere 6 appliance, forces you to download an ISO that’s really a ZIP, that needs to run the vmware flash client (but ONLY under a windows machine — so why use the client at all?), to connect to an active hypervisor, to deploy a VM with 12 virtual disks, for the smallest-possible installation. Why not just offer up an OVA/OVF? This is your own tech, after all!
* Our Ops Department has been mostly mac-based, and we’ve been tired of using Windows VM’s to manage this stuff. Looking around Silicon Valley tech conferences, I see a *lot* of macs on the tables. The mac has always been a redheaded stepchild.
* Even if you could get the web client running on a mac, getting an actual console (the one thing you really need and can’t easily get with CLI tools) has always been a challenge. This is perhaps the one thing for which I might find flash or Java acceptable. That said, why not simply offer a tunneled VNC port, as a supported option?
* I was really happy to see that you had built some management capabilities into Fusion Pro. Fusion is still buggy as heck. There’s no way to refresh the list of VM’s shown on a remote host. No way to log out of a remote host and back in, short of quitting. if you let your mac fall asleep, fusion goes unresponsive. Even quitting will bring up a dialog that says “the session is not authenticated” (and then, it doesn’t even quit). I’ve seen cases where a version upgrade of Fusion would halt VM’s that were running on a hypervisor. And of course, and as of about a month ago, you’ve let the entire Fusion and Workstation teams go, so our hopes for improvement in that arena are pretty shallow.
* Even now, I’m seeing serious lacking happening in the new vcenter server. It’s incredibly slow to update or start up. For some reason, the process of cloning a VM doesn’t show up in the “tasks” display. I experienced frequent issues with several health-check statuses going from green to yellow EVERY MINUTE until I went into a seriously hard-to-find screen and told the server what its own IP address was. (communities.vmware.com/thread/520429). I’ve had issues with my hosts going unreachable unless their clocks were NTP synced (why not detect this and warn me?). Moreover, it seems that your communities and forums are the best source for support, not your own knowledge base.
* The best solution I’ve seen (GhettoVCB) for backing up VMs off to a secure datastore is written by a VMware employee, but is “totally unsupported”. Why??? To be fair, I am kind of fearful of how your product management teams would “ruin” this.
* Your licensing and pricing is still really, really broken. I currently have two “essentials” licenses, plus one more “essentials plus” license (for very different environments). What would the cost be for me to move all those under a single vcenter umbrella? Oh, about 20K. You provide no upgrade path/buyback or valuation on existing license purchases. We’re a non-profit. It barely helps.
cragmuer
I too am absolutely disgusted with VMware for choosing such a piss poor platform to develop the vSphere client on. One of the major factors in choosing a virtualization platform was the excellent desktop client VMware developed. With many smooth years of using the c# client and how well it functioned, we never in a million years envisioned that VMware would cease its development. The first day of our testing a potential upgrade to vSphere 6.0 was also the last, as all it took was one look at how bad the flash client was that the decision was easy. We’ll continue to stick with prior versions until they are no longer usable as we cannot afford to run flash. Our environment is built around high security and the powers on high make no excuses for flash. Hopefully VMware comes to their senses or they lose enough business to force further development of the desktop client (unlikely I know), but until then we’re not moving. Whoever decided on the use of flash for such a critical infrastructure management tool needs to have their head examined. Really, they do. Because that person should not be making decisions for a company the size of VMware.