Registering vShere Web Client on a dedicated hosted hardware at a co-location

[AldoGrillo]

I currently have ESXI 5.5 installed on a hosted dedicated server in a remote location at the hosting company. I am trying to register Web Client but from my understanding what I have read it is install on the server with ESXI but needs to be activated. Why I don't know. is it perhaps I am using a free license? I seem to run into deadends in getting clear info on this subject. I have been running vShere Client but it does not have the advantages of the new Web Client from VMware.

Can someone inform me if I am right and how to register the web client so that when I enter the IP and port and then vshere-client, I'll have access to the web client?

Thank you

Aldo

[admin]

The Web Client cannot access a host directly but needs a vCenter Server installation to which the host is added, which is not possible by using the free license.

[AldoGrillo]

The reason I am asking to install the web client is so I can setup a vswitch with outside IPs. I only have 1 nic on the server but noticed that with sshere you can have vswitchen and assign an IP to it but I am unable to do that in vshere client. Am right or you can direct me to something to set that up?

Aldo

[JarryG]

As Frank wrote: you can not use vSphere web-client for administration of free ESXi-server (except for evaluation, which is time-limited). Moreover, web-client needs vCenter server as "intermediary". If you have free ESXi, you have to use "traditional" Client with which you can connect to ESXi directly.

BTW be very carefull how you connect to your ESXi-server hosted in remote company. It is extremely dangerous to expose administration port directly "to the wild". Built-in esxi firewall is just "very basic" and definitelly not good enough to protect server. One recommended solution is to use VPN...

[admin]

Click on the host, then go to the configuration tab in the middle pane, and from there choose the blue networking link, you should be able to do this task easily in the C# client.

You cannot assign an IP to a vSwitch. You can add port groups to vSwitches. There are two types.

1) Virtual Machine port groups - These can not have IP addresses assigned to them and their purpose is to allow VM traffic to pass to the outside world, the VMs will have those IPs.

2) VMKernel port groups - These are port groups for special type of traffic (HA heartbeats, NFS, iSCSI, vMotion, Fault Tolerance and VSAN), these can be assigned an IP address but it wouldn't make much sense with a standalone host

What exactly would you imagine as a use case for assigning an IP address in your environment?