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

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

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jedijeff
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If you grab the public beta of vsphere 6, you will see there are now host-only clients. A Mac version and a Windows version. Which is just a wrapper and looks just like the web client. Those will only connect to hosts--not vcenter. Moral of the story---get used to the web client. Unfortunately.

nhheeee
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Yep, I saw that. They basically just wrapped up a little browser that they are calling a "client".

VMware, I HATE using the webclient. It is dangerous, because you are never really sure you are clicking on the right item. I am seriously considering moving to Hyper-V because of this. What is the big deal about writing a thick client? Is it really such a tax to your company?

jedijeff
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Yes I agree. The experience from and admin point of view is horrible. Refresh is pretty much non-existent. And I have clicked on the wrong things before because the focus was not updated or something like that. I can say this is one reason I dont look forward much to vsphere 6. The thick client was great to just have up and running because you just see tasks all the time--what people are doing etc...You can do that in the crappy web client.

I am not sure why they did this. I guess everyone bitching they couldnt admin their hosts and vcenters on a Mac got what they wanted Smiley Sad

I would be happy with vmware just telling those people buy a copy of Fusion and run thick client from a windows vm.

It is such a horrible experience managing my 20-node clusters with the web client. Just awful.

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jameskrolak
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They announced at VMworld this week that the support for the C# client will only be extended to include VMs that are version 10 in a patch AFTER 5.5u2.  And they had a note in a slide at one of the talks that mentioned continued support of even VMs version 11 but only in some as-yet-undefined limited capacity.  When I asked for details, they said it would probably include only the most basic of modifications like CPU and RAM.  I requested more so we could at least use it to see details like what datastore the VM resides on.  (currently, if using datastore clusters, the Summary tab only tells you which datastore cluster it's on)  They still emphasized, again, that we must all move to the WebClient 'cuz support will end for the C# client.

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chrmaier
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It's like Microsoft's Windows 8 where they wanted to force people to like their new UI. The community was against it from the beginning but they were too arrogant to take them seriously. Now they have to pay the bill.

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bies
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You know what is even the worst thing... Is that VMware states to be a cloud company. Right now I am working from home as overwork with YT music and a VPN connection on to a customer. Try to use the Webclient with an RDP session and uplink!

So much fun! It's like a online game with a latency of 200+!

Then I try the normal client over VPN! NO FUCKING LAG!!!

Really.. They just want M$FT to take us over.

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DanyDemers
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I have to agree with what I read in the 1st and 9th page and add my voice to the croud who says webclient is painfull... Use the web client they say.. but wait if you use SRM (a VMware product btw) it's not supported in the web client so use the good old working c# client for SRM and the web for the rest... I don't think so. We updgrade to vmware 5.5 but kept our vm at hardware version 8 to be able to continue managing them from the c# client. I have employe who aren't vmware admin and manage only 2-3 VM thru the web client and they asked me to install them the fat client instead of using only the web client as it's not intuitive and less performant, event part time user of the web client hate it so that goes a long way for telling you how bad it is.

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mike7645
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TOTALLY agree! I cannot add anything more to this other than to say I wish I had known this back when I upgraded my VMs to version 10. I am downgrading as many as possible so I don't have to use this piece of garbage web client.

I mean really? FLASH PLAYER? At least you could have made it a native HTML5 application. Flash player is the biggest resource hog. Plus, do we really want to be managing our companies' critical infrastructure with a piece of software that has new security vulnerabilities discovered at least every few weeks???

adamjg
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Another web client issue:

Web client doesn't show storage devices or paths

As soon as PowerPath 5.9 is installed, the devices (LUNs) vanish in the web client.  They are still there in the C# client.  Note the last post in that thread dated 9/3/2014 where the poster stated he opened a case with EMC, and they said since it shows up in the C# client that it's a VMware problem.  You know, EMC, the company that owns VMware.

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DVSchwartz
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Nice description.  I was just sitting here steaming mad at how long everything takes and decided to do a Google search of "why does the vsphere web interface suck so badly?" and this thread popped up.  LOL.

Anyway, just FYI, we had a POC of Red Hat CloudForms, which is a kind of universal virtualization management console for different virtual environments.  It can connect to AWS, OpenStack, vSphere, and several others and control them via a common interface with automated workflows.  When we hooked it into our vSphere, it was able to manage everything much faster and more smoothly than VMware's own web client!

So, even a 3rd party management console uses vCenter's APIs more efficiently than whoever wrote the VMware web interface.  That tells me that it needs a LOT of optimization...

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andreaspa
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If you are part of the ongoing public beta of vSphere 6.0, you have the opportunity to give feedback about the release. I encourage you to mention the Web Client in the feedback and give your thoughts about it. There is a question that asks about if you can recommend it (the new version of vSphere, that is.) to any peers and if you want to implement it in your production environment.

If you decide to give feedback, I'd recommend you to use proper language and constructive criticism Smiley Happy

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spectVM
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DVSchwartz wrote:

...

Anyway, just FYI, we had a POC of Red Hat CloudForms, which is a kind of universal virtualization management console for different virtual environments.  It can connect to AWS, OpenStack, vSphere, and several others and control them via a common interface with automated workflows.  When we hooked it into our vSphere, it was able to manage everything much faster and more smoothly than VMware's own web client!

So, even a 3rd party management console uses vCenter's APIs more efficiently than whoever wrote the VMware web interface.  That tells me that it needs a LOT of optimization...

That's the thing. I believe CloudForms uses Flex too for the UI. So, it is more of an implementation issue that the technology itself.

In any case, I have stuck to ESXi 5.1 because of this fiasco. What's worst is the resources required to run the Web client. Compared to the thick client the Web client does suck in every way.

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Bleeder
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Well, I don't think CloudForms is using Virgo Smiley Happy  The Virgo project was almost terminated/archived a year ago (See [virgo-dev] Still looking for a lead for Virgo).

VMware even announced the End of Support Life for Virgo (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2059779).  The EOSL date has passed, yet web client is still using it.

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spectVM
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Bleeder wrote:

Well, I don't think CloudForms is using Virgo Smiley Happy   The Virgo project was almost terminated/archived a year ago.  (See [virgo-dev] Still looking for a lead for Virgo).

1. Virgo is not dead.

2. Virgo is a backend OSGi server.

CloudForms calls the vSphere API, which exposes services running on the Virgo OSGi server.

The real issue is a mix of over complex object state management, heavy SOAP payloads and protocol, and poor UI workflow.

I am a fan of Rich Internet Application (RIA) UIs, and you can see some of my personal work here: http://www.flexraid.com/portfolio-items/transparent-raid/?portfolioID=62

For my implementation, I quickly understood how light things needed to be at all layers:

  1. Light database
  2. Light service layer
  3. Light REST/RPC layer
  4. Intelligent client-side state management
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Bleeder
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Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Virgo was dead.  I'm just a little concerned that VMware is no longer offering support for it but continues to rely on it for web client.

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Dtk1
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The original poster has described the vsphere web client quite accurately.  And it makes java apps look fast.  I can run my client cpu upto 20% just by moving my mouse over menu items without selecting anything.  Pick something and the plugin-container hits 50 - 70%.  Then wait for the results, pick wait... hmm  where is that option.. pick wait..... fire up the vsphere fat client and get work done, back to web client to see if you can still find option... but still waiting from last click... And you never know for sure if the focus has changed to the object you tried to click on.  And it would be nice if it said the object name you are about to remove... so you know you did in fact get the correct object before deleting it.   And try reading perfomance metrics... did anyone even look at that when they designed it?  Ok that's my rant... Vmware please do something to improve the web client...

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Kahonu84
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Improve = Euthanasia        Complete unequivical PoS.

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mcfcmark
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It's not just about performance. If you have a problem with Vcenter (Vcentre) you can't edit VM's directly from the host if the VM is version 10. So you have to power off the VM and edit the vmx file to make it version 9.  Pain! All new VM's are created as version 9 for this reason In our environment.

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kiraa
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I agree with the posts in here. I've tried multiple times to use the web client and everytime I just get sick of it, due to it being so slow and finding things in there is a pain. Obviously im new to it, but from using the c# client to the web client, it is a lot more difficult to pick up.

My decision to do the VCP510 over the VCP550 was purely based on me not using the vSphere web client for my training etc. I will be doing my VCAP-DCA soon and will be doing the 510 version aswell if possible. If that gives you any idea how much of a pain in the @ss it is. Hopefully the next release of the web client blows the old out of the water.

Forcing people to migrate to the web client is a shit business decision as everyone agrees.

On the + side. I love vmware and the customer support but vsphere client gets a 0/10 from me.

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Bleeder
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Someone else in this thread already mentioned that the next release of the web client will still require Flash, so I wouldn't be expecting it to blow the old one out of the water if they aren't changing one of its worst features.  It makes it completely unuseable through RDP / Remote Desktop.

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