Purpose of this post is simple and obvious... bring back development to thick client. THANKS!
The web client is a piece of software in a clear need of improvement and they have definitely made some bizzarre design decisions.
Here's to hoping that vSphere 6 will bring an overhauled Web client!
I cannot agree more with OP and all answers.
I am really disapointed being forced to use this laggy monotask web client.
I was working for a gold partner firm, and deploying many vSphere instances, and the move to Web Client is not understood by any of our customers (Wait, we really have to use 2 different clients to manage the same infrastructure ? What, are you really saying that the vCenter VM must be one of the biggest sized VM in the infra just to be responsive ?).
Now, I work for an end user, and dealing with web client on a daily basis is just not possible.
My user experience with Web client, which is said to be multi-platforms :
Long story short : get ready to wait a lot.
What I would like is that the client must :
As a bonus, I would like to see :
I cannot wait to see VMware reaction to this thread, I hope you will listen our customers.
Best regards
+1 here.
At least, they should provide a way to downgrade the Virtual Hardware from v10 to v9 while they are trying to "improve" it so we can still use the awesome vSphere Client.
Hopefully someone will say something at VMworld next month.
CP7,
The key is to remember to set the VM hardware version to a lower version than 10 when creating the VM. (it is an easily overlooked setting on in the new vm dialogs on the web client)
Having not done that. You have a few options to try:
-or-
-or-
You should certainly back up your VM first in case things go bad. Testing this on a clone of your target vm is also a good idea.
Personally I think the inability to edit/manage version 10 format VMs in the c# client is on purpose to force people to the web interface. It probably would be very little work for them to modify it to support the new VM hardware version since it is very substantially similar from a configuration standpoint. (hence the ability to do the trick above)
Aloha,
I want to get something very fundamental clarified. I am debating an 5.0 to 5.5 upgrade. If I do not upgrade the current
VM Hardware on my VM's to v10 and I don't create any new VMs at v10, I can completely avoid the web client.
Is this a correct statement??
Mahalo,
Bill
@ Wojtowvm
Thanks. I'll try it on one of my vm as a test.
@ Kahonu85.
You can upgrade to 5.5, just don't upgrade the Virtual Hardware to 10 on all of the VM then you don't need to use the Web Client. That's correct.
Between the web client and SSO stories, I'm holding out on v5.0 as long as possible.
I use Update Manager and SRM, among other things, and would like to remain functional at my job.
Great thread! Good to see I am not the only one experiencing these issues. I am glad the VMWare team is working hard on getting the interface done right.
I was watching a video on some new features in vSphere 6 and it looks like the web interface is faster. I wonder if any beta testers could confirm the speed improvement? I unfortunately do not have the resources to beta test myself.
One minor thing I miss in the web client is when I first login, it would be great to see the tree structure of the datacenter/cluster by default like the C# client does. Currently when I log in, I have to drill down about 3 clicks to get to the datacenter tree view.
"it would be great to see the tree structure of the datacenter/cluster by default like the C# client does.." - I'm pretty sure this is happening as we speak.
Kahonu84 - yes that is 99% true if you are not expecting to do anything different than you were in 5.0 (i.e. not use some of the 5.5 only features) - I seem to remember there being one or two initial setup things that required the web client (I believe it was related to configuring identity sources in SSO - which setting up is a challenge in itself) but otherwise you can do everything that you are normally used to doing on a daily basis through the non-web client.
You will be prompted to download an update to the client the first time you try to connect it to the new vcenter server with it, and from then on it will display notice above the username/password dialog warning you that new features won't be available there, but you very quickly get used to completely ignoring that. 🙂
wojtowvm,
Mahalo for your comment. Please validate my logic here. If I want to avoid stressing my sanity further with the web client AND I won't be using v10 therefore disabling all 5.5 features AND I am content with 5.0, is there any reason to even consider upgrading??
Bill
The only real improvements that I recall from our upgrade to 5.5 (I wasn't the one who did the upgrade, so I'm going by what my teammate told me) was that the SSO stuff was improved immensely.
Kahonu84, if you are content with 5.0 and don't need any of the 5.5 features, then it seems like staying with what you have would be a perfectly acceptable choice for now. The announced end of VMware support for 5.0 is 2016/08/24 so you've got a little time yet before you won't get security patches anymore.
I upgraded because I happened to be in the process of redoing my whole vmware infrastructure and it seemed like a good time to make the move for future proofing, the not always true assumption that newer is always better, and without having tried the new web interface yet, it seemed like that'd be handy (manage it from any browser you happened to be in front of!)
But it was a lot of work and getting the new SSO working was frustrating. In the end I'm happy enough with the results, but most all of the benefits I care about were from the new hardware (and a license upgrade) rather than the esxi version upgrade. I've tried to make good use of the web interface, mostly for casual tasks, but still depend on the old client when I'm busy with lots of tasks.
Agree with OP.
FYI - http://www.virtxpert.com/change-the-default-vm-hardware-version-in-the-web-client/
*Does not seem to work for builds initiated via SDK
There was a time in IT where the central focus was developing web based apps in lieu of more costly delivery mechanisms such as Citrix and Pure client. Java thus became the rage, IIS asp and the rise of .NET...even after Gartner' s indemnification of the Microsoft web browser as "Natively Insecure".
People and Software Houses were at the mercy and very much still are with keeping their code and functionality alive with the constantly changing code releases of browsers for security fixes.
Refresh issues, cache clearing, credential pass-through\authentication issues and Java Client versioning became the bane of the user community sla as well as support desk satisfaction surveys.
A pure client thus became the only reasonable method of controlling the quality of your client server app.
Why VMware ever went the route of a web client in such a half a***ed fashion where only 70% of your Engineering administration could be done was a bad move.
Keep the client, keep the quality and build the client to be the single pane of glass to the environment.
Regards,
DGN
Hi All,
The VI Client will have no new functionality, and we encourage our users to begin migration to the vSphere Web Client as we plan to EOL support for the VI Client in the very near future. The Web Client is still the key client for new functionality and we are working overtime to make it much better
For our host client use cases, we are also planning to support the C# host client (through the VI Client) as the officially supported path.
Is this really an official post from VMware? The username doesn't look like what I would expect an actual VMware employee to have.
If this is true, then how do we get the VI Client to work with VMs that have VM Version 10? Is there some sort of update or patch we have to install for that?
Hi James, I am a real person ; I'm the Product Manager for the Web Client. We are working on adding some support for HW versions. The plans are in motion now, and I should be able to share more details shortly.
As for official statement, as this is a beta community and we are not yet an officially released product and will make more "official" statements as we move closer to release
Thank you for the further information. It's appreciated.