vSphere Web client Reliability?

[RanjnaAggarwal]

How much this vSphere Web Client is reliable as compared to vSphere Client? Because this web client is flash based and there is an error that flash is crashed number of times. Anyone any views on this?

[a_p_]

I'm working with the Web Client for some time now and did not experience any major issues. I have to admit that I still use the Windows Client for a lot of tasks because it is simply way faster.

André

[Cyberfed27]

I too find myself using the client because I know exactly where things are.

Being Flash based I think is a horrible move by VMware, we work in a very security minded enviroment where we are forced to update flash as soon as updates are made. This now means we need to patch our vCenter server all the time which sucks.

Force yourself to learn the web client interface, I am. VMware is going to retire the thick client soon and it will all be web based. Might as well learn it now.

[mcowger]

Cyberfed27 wrote:

This now means we need to patch our vCenter server all the time which sucks.

What?  No it doesn't.  Flash client updates dont require vCenter updates at all.

[Josh26]

Matt wrote:

What?  No it doesn't.  Flash client updates dont require vCenter updates at all.

However, every time you logon to your vCenter server - you are prompted with a Flash update, because those updates are just about daily.

It should never be installed on a server, until someone at VMware decided otherwise.

[mcowger]

Right - you might be prompted about a client side update (which you should be automatically pushing out via WSUS or similar), but that doesn't involve anything server side.

[Sreec]

Hi,

   Vsphere Web Client works on three tier model of operation.If the flash player is getting crashed most likely it's a browser issue(Internet Explorer, on MicrosoftWindows–based operating systems, and Firefox).Web client does have lot of advantages ,please refer http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vCenter-Server-50-Technical-Whitepaper.pd...

[Josh26]

Matt wrote:

Right - you might be prompted about a client side update (which you should be automatically pushing out via WSUS or similar), but that doesn't involve anything server side.

WSUS can't push flash updates.

[mcowger]

OK, but most decent tools can.

[srwsol]

Besides being much slower than the vsphere client, there are three other issues to be aware of with the web flash client:

1).   Unsoliciated updates to the status of VMs and information stops after a few minutes, with the exception of if you have a monotoring screen up (e.g. CPU, disk ,etc.).  If you start or stop a VM it will apparently poll the VM for a few minutes and accurately reflect the fact that the VM evenually started or stopped; however, if you have the running VMs up and showing, and you shutdown the VM through some other method other than initiating it from the flash client, it will not show the change of status until you manually refresh the screen.  Therefore, you can't just leave it sitting say on your second monitor and expect it to have up to date information like the vsphere client does.   This is a significant loss of functionality versus the vsphere client.

2).  You will get logged off for inactivity and there is no way to turn that off.  The vsphere client stays connected indefinately.

3).  The flash client appears to eat up a lot of memory within vcenter server and it looks like there may be memory leaks in vcenter server as I see the swap file size usage keep going up the longer you use the flash client (especially the monitoring features), and this space isn't reclaimed if the client logs off.  This has gotten somewhat better under the current release that came out in December, but it's still present.

[AKostur]

And the web client still doesn't fully work on OS X.

[vmrulz]

I've grown to prefer the web client over the moldy oldy client but too have been experiencing more and more flash crashes. Obviously this is not all on VMware as anyone knows supporting the growing list of browsers is a nearly insane accomplishment. I've found that Firefox seems to work the best, but I don't know what version of flash works best or even what version of windoze. MacOS works for some things but not all (like vm consoles). The current Windoze 2008r2 svr I'm running the client on has two flash components, I wonder if they are stepping on each other?

I have noticed in my case if I'm in the midst of doing configuration changes on a host per se, when I move to another window outside the vcenter client to say capture some text string, the vcenter client will often crash when coming back to it. This can make you spit explicative's wilst having gone through a lot of config work.

[tsivanathan]

Yeah! Same here! I've been using it for learning. It's very slow and crashes a lot! I've tried all the major browsers and different OS (2008 & 2012 Server) with 8GB of Ram just for the server and the vcenter server.

I recently came across this site doublecloud.org and in that they have a small tool that we have to install in our server machine and then run the webclient through this program. I tried it and it seems to be faster compared to the direct webclient use through a browser. The only drawback in this was that I couldn't open a Console for my VM's. If you guyz try it out and can figure out a way to open a console please let me know.

A Tiny Tool to Ease the Use of VMware vSphere Web Client | DoubleCloud => Private Cloud + Pub...

Thankyou!

[escapem2]

yeah for me it's way too slow....one I created a VM HW 10 and oh my god I have to use webclient slow client to modify their settings since then i learned the lesson only VM HW 8.

one of these day I had to get some information for my boss which I had in like 10 secs and I thought OMG doing the same in the web client would tame like 30 secs

check this post

by the way today I was working in a case with Vmware and I told to the guy let open the widows client....and he says yeah much faster.... and I was like OK (yes it is)

http://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/1u5xzn/anyone_actually_happy_with_the_vsphere_web_client/

[Wareman]

The web client is a pain, because It's slow, and doesn't properly refresh vm status. I am so angry at myself for upgrading the VM hardware to v10.  Is there a way to safely revert back to 8?

[vmrulz]

Assume you're speaking of the vcenter appliance? Yeah well if so then you're looking at a redeploy unless you cloned it prior. I've deployed the appliance many times now and it is a lot easier than the windows based version in my recollection from the v2-4 days... unless you have a ton of inventory and are going to attempt to do some kind of DB recovery.  The life cycle management (backup/recovery procedures for example) space is in need of work for the move towards appliance based infrastructure.

[Wareman]

I kinda guessed there wouldn't be an easy way going back.  I agree that VCA was an easy deploy and setup but forcing the webclient is a step backwards although improved from the previous version.

[vmrulz]

I've found the web client stability and speed to be dependent on client side OS version and perhaps Flash versions installed. It seems more stable on my Win7 client running Firefox than 2008r2 running firefox (same ver of FF). I've not had good luck with IE. You may also want make sure your vcenter appliance has plenty of resources with all that Java running on it.

[Wareman]

Much appreciated vmrulz!  Web client is a much better experience now accessing with W7 and FF, though I still like the fat client better.  Previously using W2008/IE.  Thanks again! 

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Though its not as good as desktop client but it is getting improved every release with everything under single interface.

UI is too cool but slow. Hope it will be faster.