34 Responses

  1. Increase vSphere Web Client Availability and Scalability for Enterprise Environments « Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] written about why the vSphere Web Client is a must when you upgrade to vSphere 5 and how to deploy the vSphere Web Client without having to purchase an additional Microsoft Windows Server Lice…. This article will now reveal how you can increase the availability and scalability of the vSphere […]

  2. vSphere Web Client is a must when you upgrade to vSphere 5 « Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] out how to deploy the vSphere Web Client without having to purchase and additional Microsoft Windows Server Lic…. Then take it to the next level and scale to a full enterprise deployment by reading Increase […]

  3. Using the vCenter Appliance for the Web Client? - Yellow Bricks

    […] Today on twitter there was a discussion around having an appliance for the vSphere Web Client. I didn’t get the question as there’s already a vCenter Appliance out there. Apparently not everyone realised that the Web Client is part of the vCenter Appliance. On top of that you could even split out the components and use the vCenter Appliance just for Web Client functionality. I remembered seeing an article from one of my colleagues not too long ago. I dug up the links and here they are. I included a short snippet so you know what to expect. These articles are by Michael Webster so all credits go to him: Deploy vSphere Web Client without Additional Windows Server License […]

  4. iggy
    iggy at |

    Thanks for the good article! But I could login to https://:9443/vsphere-client and see nothing there inside.Is it my problem that my host has the name "localhost", so I have nothing yo register ?

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Iggy, There should be no reason why you can't log into the vSphere Web client if you follow the steps in the article and attempt to login to https://VCVAIP:9443/vsphere-client. Use the IP address of the VCVA instead of "localhost". Your system should not be called localhost. If you give it a proper FQDN you should be able to use that to also access it.

      Reply
  5. iggy
    iggy at |

    OK, did it, could login into, but still see nothing special inside the web client:

    VMmware vCenter Management

    Summary Details:

    Virtual Machines 0

    Hosts 0

    In fact, I have 4 virtual machines running….

    In the section "Plug-In Management" I could see the following info:

    Name: License CIient

    Version 5.0.0

    State: Enabled

    What could be wrong ?

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Iggy, Sounds very much like the vCenter server is not registered correctly. Is the vCenter itself showing up inside the vSphere Web Client? When you registered the vCenter Server with the vSphere Web Client did it say it was successful? I would suggest that you follow the process again, unregister the vCenter server and then re-register it again. You should also check the permissions in the vCenter server for the user that you're logging into the vSphere Web Client with. If the vCenter Server is registered correctly the other thing that might stop the VM's from being visible is a permissions issue. Let me know how you get on.

      Reply
  6. iggy
    iggy at |

    Reinstalled everything from scratch – doesn't help, the same view inside web client,

    You write: "…Be sure not to configure or start the vCenter services on the VCVA…"

    Are you sure of this Michael ?

    My problem is that I could unregister the "localhost" instance succesfully, but I could not then register with vCenter FQDN without starting VCenter services on VCVA (error something like "could not connect to… while trying to register).

    If I start VCenter (and configure the database before it), I could register the new instance succesfully, but, as I wrote, see nothing inside the web client, again).

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Iggy, I think I misunderstood what you were trying to do. The article is written with the assumption you are connecting vSphere Web Client to an existing vCenter system, and not the VCVA itself. I will update the article to specifically state this. If you are wanting to use the VCVA as your vCenter Server then you don't need to unregister vSphere Web Client at all. You just set up the VCVA as per the normal instructions provided in the VMware documentation. You then turn on the vSphere Web Client service when the VCVA configuration is completed. I apologies for any inconvenience caused.

      Reply
  7. Ram
    Ram at |

    Hi,

    I installed VCVA and want to use the web client to manage the vcenter with multiple web client connections. What I observed is I can connect to web-client from 1 machine only.

    I cannot open second instance from my machine or any other machine. I get page cannot be displayed when I try to connection https://vcenterhost:9443/vsphere-client

    Is there any restriction on VCVA for number of connections?

    thx

    Ram

    Reply
  8. Ram
    Ram at |

    Hi

    I got it to work. Firewall issue on the client side was the problem.

    thanks for reading my comment.

    Ram

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Ram, Glad you got it working. There is definitely no restriction like that.

      Reply
  9. Grant
    Grant at |

    Seems like a great idea. Is it possible to dump the VCVA vCenter services to increase performance/decrease required resources? I can easily uninstall the Web client from my Windows vCenter Server system to remove that redundancy.

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Grant,

      If you don't configure or start the vCenter services on the VCVA they will remain disabled and you will get the best performance possible. The services will still take up disk space on the virtual appliance, but not much. I've suggested to some of the product people at VMware that it might be a good idea to break out the components more so you can just run the vSphere Web Client (for example) and as a result they may choose to do that in future releases. But that is by no means certain.

      Reply
  10. vCenter Server Virtual Appliance – Changing SSL Certs Made Easy « Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] Server Virtual Appliance. You might remember that I wrote about this as a means of using it as the vSphere Web Client without needing an additional Microsoft Windows License and then I used it with a load balancer to Increase vSphere Web Client Availability and […]

  11. G
    G at |

    Hi all,

    Is there a possibility to change the default Web Client URL (https://vcenterhost:9443/vsphere-client) to something like https://vcenterhost:9443 ?

    Thanks,

    G

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      There is no supported way to do that in the current version that I'm aware of. But it may be a possibility in future versions of the web client as things are going to be enhanced in future releases.

      Reply
  12. Tom
    Tom at |

    Would really appreciate your help. Got the VCVA set up but cannot register the vCenter Server, I keep getting after choosing I or A for SSL 'cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password'. I am using the same ID/password combo I use with the regular vCenter client and I used the FQDN of the vCenter client like you said…

    Upon doing C for cancel I got a message saying the vCenter server can't be registered, server's SSL certificate cannot be validated, underlying connection closed, trust relationship cannot be established for ssl/tls secure channel.

    How do I fix this?? It should not have to be this complicated. 🙂

    Thank you, Tom

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      How are you specifying your username and password? Are you using the full DOMAINUsername format? Does the account have admin rights on the vCenter? You're right that it shouldn't be that complicated.

      Reply
      1. Tom
        Tom at |

        I'll try it again with domainusername…I'm thinking instead of putting the Web Client (Server) onto our vCenter Server which would do the same thing and have one less VM to manage.

        Thank you, Tom

      2. @vcdxnz001
        @vcdxnz001 at |

        Hi Tom, That's definitely an option. Just make sure the vCenter server has enough resources (CPU/MEM) allocated and it should be fine. Having the vSphere Web Client on another system just allows you to scale out the number of users more effectively.

    2. Manoj
      Manoj at |

      That depends on the fact if you have one or muiltple vCenter Servers. If you only have 1 it is easiest to create a LUN which is presented to both clusters and simply vMotion it to the other cluster and then Storage vMotion it.

      Reply
  13. Tom
    Tom at |

    I've decided to go with putting the Web Client (Server) onto the vCenter Server, one less VM to manage etc., I've given the vCenter 3 GB, it's been running fine with 2 GB and I'll wait to see if I need to add a vCPU or not. Thank you for your help, Tom

    Reply
  14. Rahul Venu
    Rahul Venu at |

    I have recently deployed the vcenter applicance 5.1.0.5200 Build 880472 on an esxi5.0 host for testing. The appliance says to connect to https://IP:5480/ to accept the EULA.

    when I connect to that address, I am receiving "page cannot be displayed" message from internet explorer.

    When I login to the appliance using the default credentials, and running netstat it shows my client ip with a time_wait state.

    Can you help me to identify the problem?

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Rahul, have you tried a different browser? Have you tried rebooting the VCVA? Connecting to https://ip:5480/ should pop up a flash screen. Do you have flash on your machine? What troubleshooting have you tried? Have you considered logging a support request with VMware Support?

      Reply
  15. Rahul Venu
    Rahul Venu at |

    I was trying to connect to the VCVA from a different network. I tried different browsers, flash was installed, reinstalled the VCVA, I was able to ping the appliance. And finally I connected to the appliance from the same network of VCVA and configured the database. Now it is working from all my networks!!.

    Is there any such recommendations that one should connect to the appliance from the same Network(vlan) for the initial configuration?

    Thank you so much…

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Rahul, I'm not aware of any documented behavior such as you describe. It is not what I would expect. Did you raise this with VMware Support?

      Reply
  16. Rahul Venu
    Rahul Venu at |

    No, but I will.

    Reply
  17. Maldacai
    Maldacai at |

    Hi, I'm following your instructions above to unregister vcenter from the vcentre appliance and I'm getting the error "command not found"

    I've logged on to the server appliance from the console side and navigated to "cd /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/scripts" in that folder I do see admin-cmd.sh

    I then enter "admin-cmd unregister https://:9443/vsphere-client localhost root " press enter and I get "bash: admin-cmd: command not found"

    am I missing somthing?

    Thanks

    Reply
    1. Maldacai
      Maldacai at |

      I can see the contents of the admin-cmd.sh with the vi command but can't run it.

      Reply
    2. Maldacai
      Maldacai at |

      Well I'm able to running the command, but when it asks me "Do you want to unregister this vCentre Server System IP_ADDRESS" Y/N

      I get the error Cannon Connect to vsphere Web Client administration tool.

      I tried Localhost instead of IP and I get the same.

      This is a freshly deployed appliance, only accepted the EULA as mentioned above, nothing else done.

      Any thoughts.

      Reply
    3. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Maldacai, it looks like you are missing the hostname or ip address in the URL there. You need to execute the command from the correct location. Also that process was for VCVA 5.0 and may have changed with 5.1. What version are you trying to use?

      Reply
      1. Maldacai
        Maldacai at |

        Hi,

        I'm trying the lastest verson 5.1, Sorry my cut and past removed the ip

        From the command line after logging in I entered:

        /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/scripts/admin-cmd.sh unregister https://10.25.100.197:9443/vsphere-client 10.25.100.197 root vmware

        I'm then prompted with :

        “Do you want to unregister this vCentre Server System IP_ADDRESS” Y/N

        I select Y and press enter and I get the following error:

        Cannont Connect to vsphere Web Client administration tool.

      2. @vcdxnz001
        @vcdxnz001 at |

        The process here is unlikely to work with 5.1 due to the changes in that release. You should follow the product documentation and also the SSL process.

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