With the release of vSphere 6.5.0b, we are proud to announce the first update to the vSphere Client!
Those that have been using our Flings will not be surprised by the list of functionality updates for the vSphere Client. For almost a year (March 28, 2016 – early celebration!) we’ve been releasing updates to the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling on a (roughly) weekly basis, adding support for features, new user experiences, and more. As these changes have matured due to the excellent feedback we’ve received from the Fling’s users, we’re able to make improvements and incorporate those into the generally available (and fully supported) vSphere Client included with vSphere 6.5.0b.
Faster Releases
Before we get into the details of the updated functionality, we’d like to spend some time talking about what this release means for VMware and our users. The vSphere Client team has been working on addressing customer asks faster than the normal vSphere release cycle. This is obvious in the Fling, but we’ve also been working behind the scenes to get this into the supported product as well. After the release of 6.5.0b, we hope to continue this trend of getting customer feedback, and quickly addressing that feedback in the product.
This first update to vSphere Client is being delivered within the standard vSphere patching release. We originally had a goal of being able to release asynchronously to vSphere entirely, but we’ve hit some roadblocks. We plan to keep exploring fully asynchronous releases, but believe that these vSphere based increments are still very helpful to users, and a significant step in the right direction.
New Features – Huge Jump
The online documentation for vSphere 6.5.0b is the best source for detailed documentation on what functionality is now available (http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vsphere/65/vsphere-client-65-html5-functionality-support.html), but for comparison sake, the bits are just after Fling v3.2, plus a few minor things. The only notable addition beyond v3.2 is the “Accept License” page on OVF deploy, which we specifically pushed into this patch to enable OVF deploy.
This is the list of some of the additional functionality included. Note, some of these features are presented in a partially complete manner. For example, OVF deploy in 6.5.0b will only support URL deployment (no local file). The plan is to fill out all of these features, but the more feedback we get from you regarding what is most important will help us deliver faster.
OVF Deploy
Deploy VM from Content Library
Drag and Drop
VM conversion to/from templates
Actions on multiple VMs
Register VMs
SDRS management
Dashboard
Advanced network operations – Distribute switch, Port group creation
Datastore create, mount and unmount
Storage overview
Host configuration (PCI Passthrough)
Host profiles compliance monitoring
Roles and permissions
Create Tags and categories
Some of these flows may have had minor tweaks to make them easier to use and learn. If you have feedback about any of the new behavior, or missing portions of features, of course let us know using the integrated feedback tool by clicking on the smiley face in the upper righthand corner.
Covers most of your time – Still need your feedback!
Our first goal with the vSphere Client is to replace the Windows/Desktop client. With this release, we believe we can cover almost all of your daily and weekly activities (with some limits in some places). It is vitally important that we get your feedback on this release on what the remaining high-priority gaps are so that we can get them into the next quarterly release.
If you have specific feature asks please use #h5client65b when providing comments through the feedback tool, reply to this post, or post through the Fling comments page to let us know what you think! #h5client will always help us find your comment on Twitter too. You can also receive an email every time we release a new Fling version by signing up here: http://goo.gl/forms/IqGJ5twYHf
Thank you all for your feedback so far, and thank you in advance for all the feedback to come!
