vSphere Web Client is so bad that my experience managing and supporting VMware has turn to....

[kgottleib]

Purpose of this post is simple and obvious...  bring back development to thick client.  THANKS!

[HendersonD]

We own two Nimble storage arrays. About a month ago we upgraded firmware knowing that we were jumping from a web interface that used Flash to one that uses HTML5. So far I am impressed. The new HTML5 interface is responsive and seems to work just fine. Now, a web based client for vSphere I am guessing is a more complicated piece to get right. Can HTML5 provide a great web based interface for vSphere, as good as the C# client? I am not a programmer so I would like to get others opinions.

Rumor has it that VMWare will release a new HTML5 client with full functionality when ESXi 6.7 is released. Is there hope?

[unsichtbare]

I find it interesting that major VMware thinkers, like GOSTEV of Veeam, are beginning to cover alternatives to VMware regularly. In his last two e-mail digests, he covered KVM, (including Proxmox and oVirt)

The client issues are huge in many of our lives, but so are other, equally troubling issues like PSOD in all ESXi 6.5 VMware Knowledge Base - SINCE IT WAS RELEASED! VMware executives have had their head in the clouds (literally), for about 6 years now! They don'y listen to their user base (administrators like us) they don't listen to their customers (the guys to whom we recommend VMware in the first place, A.K.A. our bosses), and they are directly adverse to much of their partner ecosystem (the guys that sell us the VMware we use).

I am actively starting to use other hypervisors in production (KVM) and I will estimate about one more FUBAR version before I shift the majority of production systems off the vSphere platform. VMware needs to get rid of its Steve Ballmer (basically everybody that has been influential in the last 6 years) and find its Satya Nadella! Every indication so far is the absorption by Dell has not improved things!

[unsichtbare]

The Embedded Host Client (https://esxi/ui) is HTML5 and works great, but is missing major components (like you can't see LUN numbers in Create Datastore).

The HTML5 for vCenter (https://vcenter/ui) is also incomplete.

There is hope, but there is a huge deficit to make-up since the regression of vSphere 6.5. If vSphere 6.7 is close to the actual functionality of 6.0 using C# client, I will be surprised!

• OVA functionality missing
• OVF functionality strictly handicapped
• Permissions issues
• No client ISOs for VMs
• Slowness
• Missing items in menus (like LUN NUMBER in Embedded Host Client)
• Much more

[MattHays]

I agree about the heads in the....

A few years ago it seems that VMWare wanted to abandoned single tenant (aka in house) installs and force everyone into a multi-tenant architecture with the inclusion of their own SSO/LDap.   Why?  Cause they wanted everyone with extra capacity to resell it through them.   I'm in the financial industry and that is simply not an option.   While chasing these drunken Wall Street analysis dream other hypervisor vendors have caught up. 

We are actually looking at a migration because the client tools are simply that bad.   The recent Flash issue has just pushed us that much more down that path.   Access to fully manage my infrastructure should not be dependent on 3rd party vendors. 

[hostasaurus]

Just got finished deploying 13 new hosts, configuring, assigning host profiles, remediating, applying updates, etc.  It is simply unbelievable how f'ing horrible the web client is whenever you have a very large amount of work to do.  I haven't used the fat client for probably 6+ months but part of this upgrade involved connecting a VCSA 6.5 to an older 6.0 server and migrating some VM's off of it.  I fire up the fat client for that server and it was like going from driving a pickup truck to a sports car; I had completely forgotten how much faster it is performing tasks in the fat client.  Seriously night and day.  Doing bulk changes in the web client is simply an exercise in frustration.  Half the time the dialog boxes don't even reflect the correct server; try enabling and disabling ssh on a bunch of stuff, it may not even be talking to the server you thin it is.  Someone at vmware really needs to be slapped.

[hostasaurus]

Story of my life trying to work with host profiles, in between clicking and waiting forever...

[eizhak]

you are 100% right

the new web client is suck (6.5) also

[klutch14u]

Nice to see the vsphere web client revolt is still going strong.  No question the HTML5 version is much better than the POS flash based one but it STILL isn't an administrator level management client.  Great to give a developer so they can access a handful of VM's but is complete crap for actually administering your entire company.  So sick of VMware ignoring us and simply reassuring us we'll love the next version.

Anyone know how to get the wanna be social media forum to quit showing my real name?  What a PITA

[rlee09]

Sorry not going to read through 44 pages and 3 years of posts... I never really post anything here for I been hanging on to version 5.5 for the last 3+ years but I am now being asked to upgrade to the latest version 6.5, I have a lab environment and upgrade my vcenter server and esxi hosts to 6.5

My opinion is that vsphere web client was junk 3 years ago when I first tried and it is still JUNK now 2018, and now we are being forced to only use this junkarse piece of code on 6.5

The upgrade did not go smoothly as usual but I worked trough it all and got in, everything working until the last reboot of the vcenter server which I now get this:

The HTML5 version works but I also see this:

NO WAY I UPGRADE TO 6.5 and if really pushed to upgrade I will only go to 6.

For the thousands of $$$$ my company pays VMware to licensing and support one would figure their developers would be working hard to deliver a fully working product, I dont understand why move away from a perfectly working interface like C# to something that is in war between Chrome,IE,Firefox and buggy as heck. Is VMware serious? Maybe it is time to start looking at Hyper-V and cloud based solutions from MS (which will most likely be junk as well)

Done venting and ranting.

[jyuhas]

Is there away to make the Thick Client work even if it's not supported?

The FLASH and the HTML 5 clients are not working reliably.

[Howiedog]

If your on 6.5, your screwed, C# does NOT work with 6.5.

And the reason that...along with a million other administrators are staying on Version 6.0 until the end of days. No god damn way would I go to 6.5 with ONLY the WEB CLIENT for Management. That is a F#$%ing Nightmare.

VmWare really do not give a shit about the complaints they get from us...as long as the $$ keep rolling in...why would they care??

They do say: "we listen to our customers" be everyone in this forum knows that its true...they listen.....but DO NOT do anything other than promoting their own agenda.

Done with VmWare......when its time to move past 6.0 we will go MS Hyper V. Vmware just does not care...so piss on them.

[hostasaurus]

"I love it when I go to edit a VM's network settings, only to find out the web client edited a VM other than the one I right clicked on, causing a service outage."  -said no one ever.  Yet that seems to happen to my staff every week or two....  How hard is it to make the friggin' thing set the context to the device you actually clicked on, wtf.

[edgarasdjhsa]

At least vMware is consistent. Years had passed, but client remains as bad as it can get.

It's actually laughable that they had to take FLING of some guy and implement it as management option.

[ivanerben]

So after upgrade to 6.5 I'm daily fighting with web client(s). We have two. Bad and worse. Can not decide which one is worse.

Using flash in FF, sometimes keyboard is not working (can not type to flash based content). Need to log out and log in again. Need to see more disks on vm? Need to click some button which shows some small window, where it can not fit.

Perhaps worst is Recent task list -- it keeps scrolling, when there are new task in queue and when you need to check some older task, you can't find it.

Upload and download from datastore - total pain. You are redirected to esxi host (which have vcenter signed certificate - untrusted to browser), so you get error. After adding exception, you will find out, that you need permission to host (Host > Configuration > System Management - manipulate the file system on the host).

...and sometimes flash just crash, and you got only exclamation :smileyalert: instead vsphere client.

Years has passed and no working vsphere client.

[iamxCPx]

Hi guys,

It has been two months since the last update.

Does this mean 6.5 HTML5 is acceptable for everyone?

We are still on 5.5 and trying to hold off for as long as I can but it's not looking good because now support is starting to use that as an excuse when we have problems.

Should I just bite the bullet and upgrade?

Thanks all.

[hostasaurus]

No, I think vmware has just been successful in their effort to beat their own customers into submission by accepting this broken thing as the new normal.  I still run into issues with it daily, especially related to it not displaying up to date data, making changes to the wrong entity because the dialog box reflected the correct name but the settings were sent somewhere else, etc.  It's a pile of sh*t, and they stopped caring a long time ago.  I still get happy hey the vmware CEO wants to hear from you, fill out this awesome survey emails though; always do, nothing changes.

[kwg66]

Myself, the author of this post, have been using the vCenter 6.5 latest build with web client, and although it has major refresh issues, and some other quirks, have been much happier than in past days..   That being said, still using FLASH for full functionality, HTML 5 still not fully ready, still shows up as partial functionality when accessing the website. 

One things I've pin pissed off about is alerting and logging functionality.  It seems to be very finicky and inconsistent.   I believe VMware, if it wants to stay on top of the private cloud, needs to start looking deeper at some of the bugs that still exist in the basic functionality and work toward better stabilization.

[kwg66]

VMware seems more interesting in competing in public cloud, a space in which it can't compete in at this point, or come even close to winning, than stabilize its private cloud. 

Also, this move to outsource support to India, wow talk about horrible support.. if I had a dollar for every ticket I open that I resolve myself before they even get to me I'd be rich..

just a few weeks ago I got tired of the slow boot times and took a look at the VM kernel logs and saw WAY too much time being spent on storage tasks during boot, and I suspected an issue with the new build or possible with our storage config.. I opened a ticket, got back NOTHING of value from support other than "these 2 LUNs have some issue, talk to your storage team."    So we opened a ticket with HDS and they said everything was fine.   then I opened a post here on VMTN and got the issue resolved instantaneously by others who had the same issue, RDM causing slow boot.  Resolution = setting the devices as perennially-reserved.  Now, I felt a bit embarrassed not having known about this after having been working with the product for so long, because the KB was a few years old.. which is concerning that the support team wouldn't know this and provide an immediate answer to the support ticket...

VMware - you want to deliver a survey - but you don't need to - you just need to pay attention to what your customers are saying right here.

- bring support back home to the USA with properly trained and experienced engineers, or at least Toronto

- fix the bugs that have existed for a long time, stabilize the private cloud, don't be too confident that you own this space because Apple has already publically announced that it ditched you as its preferred private cloud virtualization layer

- Forget about trying to sell VMware cloud on top of AWS, nobody wants your cloud over cloud solution, its failing.

- work on getting proper documentation updated, its horrible, a total mess. 

[jklimczak21]

I have hope this can get better HTML5 Has been . OK 6.7 looks stable so we see

But i would love to see a Mac and Win Thick client Back

[adamjg]

Thick client is gone and will never come back.

I updated to 6.5 U1g and the HTML5 client got worse. It's buggy, doesn't reply half the time (needing a refresh and re-accepting vCenter certs), and I can no longer click on top level items and have the client refresh. I have to have the flash client open anyway because there's so many things the HTML5 client can't do, so I guess that's where we are right now.