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svenvg93
Contributor
Contributor

vsphere web client without vcenter

I want to use the Vsphere Web Client without a Vcenter Server. Is that Possible????

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Sreejesh_D
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

welcome to communities!!

what's the actual requirement?

connecting to ESXi host directly through Web client? if so, its not supported. Web client is designed to connect only vCenter Server.

vmtechnician
Contributor
Contributor

How's this for a requirement.

vCenter is virtualized. vCenter database fills disk and dies. (or worse, datastore fills and the OS halts).

How do I recover with only the web client?

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giovannimyles
Contributor
Contributor

You can still use the vCenter client but instead of connecting to vCenter you will have to connect to the individual host, as long as you know the root account or another account with Administrative rights. Are your datastores NFS or VMFS? If the VM with your vCenter is down then the web client, which is hosted off of that server, will also be down. If you're environment is clustered and you don't know which host the VM resides on, then you will have to connect to each host until you locate the VM. Were you alerted prior to the datastore filling up?

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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

The web client only works via vCenter.  ESX hosts do not have web support.

You still need the full VM client to connect to a host.  your vCenter virtualized, which I assume means if you need to recover, you need to access a host where the VM lives to fix it.  Can't be done via the web only client software.

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vmtechnician
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the response. I am being somewhat of an alarmist because VMWare is saying that future vSphere versions will no longer have the non-web client.

The ability of the non-web client to directly manage hosts is a fallback in case of a vCenter failure, especially when vCenter is virtualized in it's own virtual environment.

I'm hoping this fallback option is not overlooked as VMWare progresses forward.

I know HA requires a vCenter license, but in vSphere 5.1, will HA function without vCenter running? Specifically, if the ESXi server hosting the vCenter VM should fail...

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