vSphere 5.5 - Will I be FORCED to use the web client??

[sarkmo]

So I've already had a little experience with the vSphere web client in a lab environment and don't much like it. Will I be forced to use it when I upgrade to 5.5? The web client is clunky, slow, confusing.... WHY is VMware forcing us to use this?? WHY???

[sarkmo]

OK, I've read a comment somewhere that states:

"I'm on 5.5 but still using the fat client. Just don't upgrade VM hardware to the latest version and you can continue to use the fat client."

Is this true? What hardware version can I upgrade to but still be able to use the fat client? 9? 8?

ESXi 5.5 - 10
ESXi 5.1 - 9

ESXi 5.0 - 8

ESXi 4.1 - 7

[MBrownWFP]

You are not forced to use the web client with vSphere 5.5. As long as your VMs remain at hardware version 9 or below they can be fully managed through the software client.

Version 10 machines have basic management (power on/off, snapshots) through the software client but the VM settings can only be modified through the web client.

[sarkmo]

I've been told that if you're using vCenter (Windows or vCSA) you must use the web client. You can only use the fat client if you are connecting directly to a host. So I'm confused, can you still use the fat client to manage VMs in vCenter in 5.5?

[larstr]

It is still possible to manage vCenter with the fat old client, but not all features are available. New features like vSAN, vDS 5.5, and other things that are new in 5.5 only exist in the web client.

Lars

[vNEX]

Hi,

until the "legacy" fat client will be supported you can use it to manage your vCenter server. But as others already mentioned there are some caveats:

- you will lose many new and cool features

- you will not be able to edit VMs with HW version 10 (anyway you can acomplish this with PowerCLI scripts... )

For features comparison between Web an Fat clients see this blog post:

Which vSphere client should I use and when? | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs

Also look at these articles:

VMware KB: Editing virtual machine settings fails with the error: You cannot use the vSphere client ...

VMware KB: Upgrading a virtual machine to the latest hardware version (multiple versions)