vCloud Director - browser requirements?

[lluke]

Hi All,

Has anyone been able to get the remote console plug-in working with IE9 (win7sp1 x86) ?

I'm really annoyed the "VMware Cloud Director Users Guide" just says "...at least IE7..."

As attached, I just get a plain white screen...

Thanks,

Luke.

[IamTHEvilONE · Accepted solution]

lluke,

IE 9 was released after vCloud 1.0, and is not supported in the current versions of vCloud Director.  The vCloud Director website should work with the appropriate Flash plugin, but the VMRC (console) is not expected to work.

Support for IE9 is a feature request we are looking at for a future release of vCloud Director.

Best Regards,

Jon Hemming

[Onroot]

Hello,

I have the same problem with vCloud Director web environment.

vCloud web portal works fine, all menus and functions response properly.

When i try to open console of any vms, plugin succesfully installs and i get notification of self-signed server certificate, but console screen is completely white and no action available.

Tried browsers:

Firefox 3.6

IE 8

How can i resolve this problem?

[Onroot]

I think i found the problem.

In remote console proxy log (vcloud-container-debug.log) i see:

| DEBUG | consoleproxy | ABaseInitialServerTransfer | Initiating a destination connection to "vCenter IP" on port 443 |
| DEBUG | consoleproxy | SSLSocketChannelFactory | Encoded VM Host: "vCenter IP" |
| DEBUG | consoleproxy | ConnectionOperation | Cannot establish connection |
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

But my vCenter works on port 444, how can i configure Remote Console Proxy for use port 444 when establishing connection with vCenter Server?

[IamTHEvilONE]

Just so you know where to find it in the future, in case others search this post, IE9 is absent from the supported browsers list:

https://vmware.com/pdf/vcd_10_install.pdf (Page 14, Table 1-10)

[SKYWAYCH]

I think it would be much better to build a java port of the remote console client, that works on most operating systems (at least with reduced functionality), because a working VM console access with most browsers on common operating systems (Windows, Linux AND Mac) is an absolute and essential requirement for customer acceptance of the vmware vcloud solution. Even the last Web Developer/Designer realized that Windows-/IE-only solutions are no more state-of-the-art at least years ago, sad to see vmware still goes just this way (vSphere Client and vCenter for Windows only, Oracle Database needed for vCloud etc.) It is reasonable that no one can support every OS and every browser, but anyway there should be ways to get it working, even if it is not supported.

I got the console client application running on Linux (downloaded and unzipped the vmware-vmrc xpi), but it is useless without the connection data given by the browser...

[b0rbb]

I'm not sure how I was able to get it to work, but I've been running IE 9 witht he VMRC plugin now without issue for the last couple of months (pretty much since the public release of IE 9).  I'm guessing when I did the inplace upgrade of IE 9 from IE 8, it just kept the VMRC plugin there.

Maybe installs on top of IE 9 (as in, the plugin's not there prior to an IE 9 upgrade) just won't work?

[coewar99]

Director 1.5 SUCKS!!!!

Here is the "requirements" to run it on client side:

(http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200581...)

Is vmware insane? C'mon! But aside from those ridiculous requirements, they don't even work all the time. Forget getting a 32bit IE and Adobe Flash to work correctly on a 64bit Win 7 machine..  the tricks to actually get those versions to run just don't cut it to get the console web plug-in to work.

So I can get into a console using Firefox 8 (on 32bit OS) but it's so pathetically slow (we're talking a TEXT BASED LINUX CONSOLE WINDOW) that the password changing times out (60 seconds) on me as I'm waiting for the next prompt!!

Ver 1.0 used the separate vmware console application, why can't they go back to using that? That app works fairly well. The web plugin BS is freaking awful! Out of several machines, the only place I could kind of reliably use the damn thing was from a Win2008 32bit instance I have running on Amazon. Possibly due to some outrageous bandwidth requirement maybe. I don't know, but people actually use this garbage for production systems????

I don't have to get to console much, but I can't even get on AT ALL to do initial configuration.. for a Linux box even!!

Aside from lousy console, sometimes the freaking interface fails to do its job. Sometimes I couldn't delete vApps I created; had to have a cloud provider support do them for me. And this is not limited to a single cloud provider.

[munishpalmakhij]

Any update in regards to browser requirements,, i am still unable to view console using IE8 on 2008R2

[coewar99]

Hi. I have not whitnessed any improvement. I use Firefox on home internet connection. IE (8 or 9) continue to not work unless I'm doing it from some highspeed connection like another server in the cloud.

[b0rbb]

I've found that you can get IE 8 and 9 (as long as they're the 32-bit versions) to work by adding the address of your vCD environment to the Trusted Sites list in either browser.

For example:

https://vcloud.companyname.org/cloud/org/OrgName would mean you'd have to add "https://vcloud.companyname.org" to your trusted sites.

After I did that, I can get the VMRC sessions working without a hitch.

Edit: Also, for 2008 R2 VMs, the console sessions will run very sluggishly until you utilize the WDDM drivers, or at least so I've noticed.  See http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101677... for more info.

[munishpalmakhij]

@ b0rbb

Thanks,, it worked for me,, but strange thing is i tried this b4 and it didnt work at that moment, I tried again today and it worked,,,

strange but its fine as long as its working :smileycool:

Regards

Munish