vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling released

Not sure how many people spent Easter Monday glued to their laptops, but I ended up receiving notification that VMware Labs had launched their vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling – the next iteration of the HTML5 Host client fling which they released last year for ESXi (I blogged about it here: New VMware Fling – HTML5 Embedded Host Client for ESXi).

The Host client fling was really well received by end-users and received a lot of feedback and suggestions (including bug reporting) – so it’s no surprise that they decided to improve on it and release it to support vCenter Server.

From what I’ve read, the GUI (written using HTML5 and Javascript) is hugely more responsive than the flash-based Web Client (which, let’s be honest was a decent improvement in 6.0 but is still dog-slow!) – plus it looks and feels great (they’ve named the new visual theme “Clarity”… nice….). Hopefully when I’m done with all my work closing out Q1, I’ll have a bit of time to deploy the vApp and take it for a spin!

PLEASE NOTE: All VMware Lab flings are not officially supported by VMware. They are pet projects by VMware engineers and they’re more ‘tech previews’ of potential tools that may be incorporated into VMware products in the future. If you encounter any bugs or issues, then please use the Feedback forms to request for help!

Point your browsers here to download the new HTML5 Web Client Fling

The new fling is not fully complete and only offers the more common views, workflows and actions. The engineers wanted to get it in front of end-users as soon as possible, and given how receptive the previous fling was I’m guessing they want as much feedback as possible to help drive improvements to the fling!

The fling only offers the following features for the time being:

  • VM Power Operations (common cases)
  • VM Edit Settings (simple CPU, Memory, Disk changes)
  • VM Console
  • VM and Host Summary pages
  • VM Migration (only to a Host)
  • Clone to Template/VM
  • Create VM on a Host (limited)
  • Additional monitoring views (Performance charts, Tasks, Events)
  • Global Views (Recent tasks, Alarms–view only)

This Fling has been designed to work with your existing vSphere 6.0 environments. The new client is deployed as a new VM from the downloadable OVA.  Currently the installation instructions are command line-based, but VMware Labs are working on a GUI installation and plan to release it as an update to this Fling once it is ready.

System Requirements

  • 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 14 GB
  • An existing VC6.0 installation (VCSA or Windows).
  • Recommended browsers: Chrome, Firefox, IE11. Others may work, with some functional or layout issues.
  • Windows vCenter: Was tested with a vCenter on Windows Server 2012 R2, but should work with other versions as well.

According to Duncan Epping the product management and engineering teams will be closely monitoring twitter, VMTN communities and the feedback function that is built in to the client itself. Here is how and where you can leave feedback:

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