vSphere HTML5 Web Client arrives as a VMware Fling, a glimpse at vSphere's future UI
You may recall my rejoicing over the arrival of the responsive and snappy HTML5 UI, see:
Even better, that ESXi Embedded Host Client is now baked right into ESXi 6.0U2, which happens to be a super quick and easy upgrade from any 6.x version, see:
Now, at last, we have a glimpse at that path forward we've been hoping for for years, a way to liberate ourselves from the sluggish vSphere Web Client that never achieved the snappy performance of the vSphere Client we've been used to for a decade, remember:
- vSphere 6 features previewed at VMworld 2014, including much better vSphere Web Client performance
Sep 04 2014
The clear path forward is called vSphere HTML5 Web Client.
Download
available at the VMware FLINGS site:
- vSphere HTML5 Web Client
Mar 28 2016
As far as step-by-step download and install procedures for this appliance, VMware provides a pdf, note that the reliance on the command line seen is only temporary, in this initial release:
This article with screenshots looks spot-on to get you going fast:
Closing thoughts...
This initial release is not feature complete. Also note that my own testing is by no means complete, I'm just not able to work on this currently. But I sure do look forward to it! I seriously doubt anybody will be missing Adobe Flash, along with clumsy Windows-only browser extensions and Chrome's NPAPI restrictions. This combination of Javascript and HTML5 should hopefully prove to be a much better long-term architecture choice.
To run the vSphere HTML5 Web Client VM, you will want a beefy home server with lots of RAM and many cores, since the System Requirements are a bit on the high side:
Keep in mind you still also need your VCSA, that really wants 8GB to itself, although small labs can get away with 6GB.
Apr 01 2016 Update
I did get this vSphere HTML5 client installed, preparing for my live homelab demonstration to hundreds.
I'm glad I did a snapshot of VCSA before I got started with testing this beta of this HTML5 (aka H5) client. Why? Because after a reboot, the VCSA appliance itself wouldn't come up cleanly. Got this error when trying to log in:
`503 Service Unavailable (Failed to connect to endpoint: [N7Vmacore4Http16LocalServiceSpecE:0x7f1f4405d330] _serverNamespace = /vsphere-client _isRedirect = false _port = 9090)`
Just for giggles, with VCSA in this broken state, I tried to login to the vSphere HTML5 Web Client, only to see this error:
`HTTP Status 400 - An error occurred while sending an authentication request to the vCenter Single Sign-On server - An error occurred when processing the metadata during vCenter Single Sign-On setup - Cannot connect to the VMware Component Manager https://vcenter/cm/sdk/.`
`type Status report`
`message An error occurred while sending an authentication request to the vCenter Single Sign-On server - An error occurred when processing the metadata during vCenter Single Sign-On setup - Cannot connect to the VMware Component Manager https://vcenter/cm/sdk/.`
`description The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect.`
`Apache Tomcat/7.0.53`
Once I reverted to the last snapshot of VCSA, an operation that took all of 5 seconds on SSD, I was able to reconnect the H5 appliance with the VCSA again, immediately. I then reconnected H5 client to VCSA. Sucess!
But of course, it failed again, after the next reboot of VCSA. Same exact error. I'll need to see if this has something to do with DNS, and/or manual edits of the /etc/host files.
See also
-
Supermicro's beloved iKVM Console Redirection is dumping problem-ridden Java for HTML5, yay!
Mar 08 2016 - Best parts of VMware's ESXi 5.5 free hypervisor rely on vCenter, which isn't free. Uh oh?
Sep 25 2013
See also
-
First Impressions: vSphere HTML5 Web Client #h5client
Mar 28 2016 by fgrehl at Virten.net -
New Fling: vSphere HTML5 Web Client
Mar 28 2016 by Emad Younis -
VMware has a Fling with a New HTML5-based Web Client
Mar 29 2016 by VMware at VMblog - vSphere HTML5 Web Client Tech Preview is here!
Mar 28 2016 by Matt Bradford at VM SPOT