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Previously I’ve 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 License. This article will now reveal how you can increase the availability and scalability of the vSphere Web Client and also for the all important vSphere License Plug-in for an enterprise environment. The design described in this article should allow you to scale to hundreds if not a few thousand concurrent vSphere Web Client Users.
Before we get started there are a few prerequisites that need to be taken care of. For this solution to work you will need to have the following:
This diagram illustrates a logical design of how you might configure the various components to improve availability and scalability of the vSphere Web Client for a large environment.
In the above design I’ve chosen to use the vCenter Virtual Appliance with the vCenter Services disabled to act as the vSphere Web Client Servers. I’ve used a F5 BIG-IP LTM VE to provide load balancing for the vSphere Web Client User access to the vSphere Web Client Servers, as well as for the vCenter Servers to access the vSphere License Plug-in. You can use any load balancer that will successfully load balance HTTPS traffic on port 9443, which is the port the vSphere Web Client uses.
You will need to ensure that you configure the correct persistence setting for client connections. For my lab configuration I chose to use cookie based persistence. This will have the effect of ensuring the browser used to authenticate will always be sent back to the same back end vSphere Web Client Servers (assuming it’s still available). If for some reason the vSphere Web Client Server that a user logged into is unavailable they will be directed to a surviving vSphere Web Client Server and be forced to log in again. This is because there is no session or connection sharing between the vSphere Web Client Server systems.
In order for vCenter to use the virtual IP on the F5 LTM to access the License Plug-in instead of an individual vSphere Web Client Server you need to be very careful with how you deploy and register the vSphere Web Client Servers. When you register the last vSphere Web Client Server to the vCenter Servers you will need to do it using the IP address that will eventually be used as the virtual IP on the load balancer. This is unless it is the Windows version of the vSphere Web Client, which allows you to specify the client URL. After the last vSphere Web Client Server is registered using the VIP of the load balancer you must change its IP address. You will need to wait until all the vSphere Web Client Servers are registered before setting up the nodes, pools, and virtual server profiles on the load balancer to prevent the possibility of an IP address conflict.
VMware Support’s stance on this configuration is as follows: If you have a fault and log a support request they may ask you to bypass the load balancer if they believe it is contributing to the problem. This is fair enough as they only support exactly what VMware have tested. The process to bypass the load balancer is very simple, you would disable the load balancer virtual server and pools, and then reconfigure one of the vSphere Web Client Servers with the IP address of the load balancer VIP. In other words the reverse of how you configured it in the final step above.
This screen shot below is an example virtual server configuration for the F5 BIG-IP LTM VE that I used to test the above design. The load balanced pool was configured to do a simple TCP healthcheck, and use least connections as the load balancing algorithm. You could write a customized healthcheck script to ensure the vSphere Web Client is really functioning as expected.
To test the vSphere License Plug-in log into one of your vCenter Servers using the full vSphere Client. Navigate to Home > Administration > Licensing. Click on the Reporting Tab. Once the Reporting Tab is completely loaded right click anywhere in the screen and click settings. You should see the Adobe Flash Player Settings dialog box appear asking you if you want to allow <VIP Address of Load Balancer> to access your camera and microphone. If you do not see the VIP address of the load balancer here the vSphere Web Client has not been registered correctly.
To test the vSphere Web Client from a broswer navigate to https://<VIP of Load Balancer>:9443/vsphere-client. The vSphere Web Client should load successfully and you should be able to log into any of the registered vCenter Servers. You should be able to manage the vCenter Server as you normally would if there were only one vSphere Web Client.
This version of the vSphere Web Client is limited to connecting to 50 vCenter Servers concurrently. Each vSphere Web Client connects to the vCenter Server with one session per user. There is no current documented limit for the number of client connections to the vSphere Web Client. But the other important limit to consider is the number of connections to the vCenter Server, which is 100 as of vSphere 5.0.
Each vSphere Web Client Server can handle hundreds of individual users and connect to many individual vCenter Servers. With the above architecture you can scale out the vSphere Web Client systems to ensure your availability, performance, and scalability needs can be met. You will be able to potentially have thousands of individual users accessing the objects to which they have been authorized to manage. This might be as simple as viewing performance statistics and a VM console, or could be provisioning new VM’s. The choice is really yours. At least with this design you know that the service your users expect will be available when they want it.
You might also like to check out Joep Piscaer’s article Load Balancing the vSphere Web Client for some additional ideas on Geo Load Balancing for High Availability.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
So you want to run the vSphere Web Client server but you don’t want to install the Windows version, which may require you to purchase an additional Microsoft Windows Server License? Well I have good news for you. You can download and deploy the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance, which is a SUSE Enterprise Linux based appliance and use the vSphere Web Client server instance on that to manage any other vCenter system. You don’t have to use the VCVA itslef as a vCenter server. This will give you all the features and functions of a vSphere Web Client without having to purchase an additional Windows license from Microsoft. Thanks to Barrie Seed aka @vStorage for the inspiration for this article and the original idea. Let’s walk through the procedure.
Prior to running through the steps below you should have downloaded and deployed the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (VCVA) ovf version 5.0 from the VMware web site. This process assumes you already have the VCVA connected to the network and configured with the correct timezone already without any further configuration. Please be aware this process has only been validated on VCVA version 5.0, not 5.1.
This process assumes that you are not going to be using the VCVA as your vCenter Server. If you are planning to use the VCVA as your vCenter Server then you should not follow this process and should instead follow the VMware documentation for setting up and configuring VCVA. Use this to connect the vSphere Web Client that is included with the VCVA to an already existing vCenter system, without having to deploy another Windows Server and purchasing a Windows Server License.
To de-register the local embedded vCenter System and to register an existing vCenter Server with the vSphere Web Client do the following:
You have now successfully registered the vSphere Web Client server instance on the VCVA with your existing vCenter systems. You can now use this to manage your virtual machines. Be aware that if you register multiple vSphere Web Client servers with a vCenter system that the License Client Plug-in from the last vSphere Web Client registered is the one that will be used for vCenter License Reporting.
If you want to know why running the vSphere Web Client is a must when you upgrade to vSphere 5 see my previous article here. If you want to take this to the next level and scale the solution to support a full enterprise and increase high availability see my article titled Increase vSphere Web Client Availability and Scalability for Enterprise Environments.
This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
With vSphere 5 VMware has released a greatly enhanced Web Client for Virtual Machine Administrators. People who remember the old vSphere Web Access will be blown away by how good the new vSphere Web Client is. It will allow much easier and more efficient access to staff that need it, without having to install the full vSphere Client. The Virtual Machine Administration capability of the vSphere Web Client is very functionally rich. I am not talking here about the vCenter Virtual Appliance (VCVA), which is a completely new product and was also released with vSphere 5, so don’t get confused. The new vSphere Web Client works with either the VCVA or the vCenter Installable and has no problem with Cisco Nexus 1000v and Distributed Switches. You can even use it with multiple vCenter servers.
Provisioning, VM Power Operations, Interacting with the VM Console, and Monitoring, including Performance Monitoring, Tasks, Events, and Alerting are all possible. In addition to Virtual Machine Administration there are a subset of host, storage and network administration tasks that are available, such as:
The list above is by no means exhaustive.
Also very important for many customers is that the new vSphere Web Client comes with a useful License Plug-in that allows reporting of vSphere license consumption, usage, and allows automated alerting. The reporting view is available to administrators through the full vSphere Client. This will make it very easy to ensure you have the licenses you need, and allow you to manage usage effectively.
The new vSphere Web Client can only be used to connect to vCenter 5 systems, but you can configure it to administer multiple vCenter 5 systems. Each vCenter can contain any combination of supported vSphere or ESX/ESXi host versions. There is no need to deploy one vSphere Web Client system per vCenter server (but at some point you will need to scale if usage increases to many hundreds of users).
This new capability will make it very easy for organizations to allow necessary access and controls to the users that need it with a least privilege approach without the overheads of the full vSphere Client and for every organization to effectively manage their licensing. This also means it’s now possible for Administrators from Mac and Linux Desktops to have the administrative access they require, and a great user experience as well. All without having to start up a Windows VM, Log into a Windows Virtual Desktop, or go to a Windows Machine in order to do their job.
I would strongly recommend that every customer that upgrades to vSphere 5 implements the vSphere Web Client. Care should be taken to assign the necessary roles and permissions to allow access to only the necessary resources. But I can see this becoming an essential tool for organizations, especially when they need to give application teams access to view performance of their VM’s but don’t want to toll out the full vSphere Client, or when they want a platform independent (requires flash) way to manage the environment.
Find out how to deploy the vSphere Web Client without having to purchase and additional Microsoft Windows Server License. Then take it to the next level and scale to a full enterprise deployment by reading Increase vSphere Web Client Availability and Scalability for Enterprise Environments.
Another good article about the new vSphere Web Client is available on VirtualisedReality.com and Gabes Virtual World.
This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.