vSphere Hypervisor administration

[user9922]

It seems the web-client is the tools to use for vSphere Hypervisor administration.

The "VMware vSphere Client" doesn't support the newest ESX VMs and have limited functions. Seems to be deprecated by VMware (?)

But even the web-client following the vSphere Hypervisor installations is rather limited.

I've read places that you get better functionality using the web Client Integrations Plugin (CIP).

But where can I get this? Do I really need to install vCenter to get this?....as fare I understand the vSphere Hypervisor (the free version) doesn't support vCenter so I have no use of it.

And beside you can only install vCenter on a Windows Server.....just wanna have a tool on my workstation.

It all seems rather ridiculous, or did I miss something!

How do I administer my vSphere Hypervisor host the best way?

[rcporto]

You can use the vSphere Client (C# version) to manage your free vSphere Hypervisor, but with the feature level of version 5.0, this mean that all new features will be available only on vSphere Web Client, and to get the vSphere Web Client you will need vCenter Server, and vCenter Server cannot manage a free vSphere Hypervisor.

vCenter Server is available also as appliance, installed on top of SUSE Enterprise Linux, but again, you have to pay for it.

Anyway, if you're using the free vSphere Hypervisor, I doubt that you will need advanced (new) features that can be found only with the payed version and with the vSphere Web Client, so the vSphere Client is enough to your administer your free vSphere Hypervisor.

If you're really needing do something on your free vSphere Hypervisor and can't accomplish using the vSphere Client, tell us and we can found an alternative method, like command line.