VMWare: vSphere Web Client sucks so bad | Hacker News Reader

VMWare: vSphere Web Client sucks so bad

communities.vmware.com

57 pointsjbd25 comments

I'm glad this article made it to the front page, it must have been a repost because last time I saw it come up it didn't receive any upvotes or comments. It really does suck that bad, for anyone who isn't on it or is at all skeptical.

I haven't found a way to run it on a Linux machine, which kind of negates the usefulness of a web client for me; we have a Windows 7 machine in the back room hooked up to a KVM since our $10,000 servers for running ESXi can't run the client on a Windows 7 virtual host as fast as a roughly five year old desktop computer. No idea why. Maybe performance crosstalk with the vcenter host.

It's true that many seemingly routine tasks take an order of magnitude more time than with the C# client, but when the C# client is no longer developed and apparently doesn't receive new features like "migrate", you're stuck with it.

I think I learned from this post there is actually a way to log into the vCenter server and manage all of your hosts from the C# client, so I'll definitely be trying that out. I always thought that vCenter meant Web Client, and maybe that's not true. But even if that adds some of the missing features I'm going back out to the web client to use today, it's just a miserable program and I felt I had to throw in $0.02 here. I used to admire VMWare, but not anymore since I started using their stuff in a business environment.

I have manage to get it to run on a Linux machine by installing Google Chrome, because they have Flash embedded in the browser. In my opinion this is a terrible option, but I thought I would share it never the less.

I thought the same thing (and I can't test it right now, our vcenter host is currently powered down because of thermal issues we're having during an asbestos abatement next door, another story)

However on my Windows 7 machines, even with Google Chrome, connecting to the vcenter host's web interface asks to install two additional plugins that are not as far as I can tell Flash related. My boss does a decent job keeping up with the patches for most things, so if maybe you stopped upgrading when they started breaking stuff it's possible we might be running a newer version than you.

On my Ubuntu Desktop I am running Google Chrome and just opened vSphere Web Client. My versions are as follows.

Ubuntu 14.04, Chrome Version 35.0.1916.153, vSphere Web Client Version 5.5.0 Build 1750595 and Flash Player LNX 14,0,0,125

I included Flash Player because it comes up in my about VMware vSphere page but I can tell you I could not install a newest enough Flash plugin on Linux because Adobe has stopped releasing them, which you probably already know.

That was the hangup, I remember now. You can't download a new enough Flash plugin, I found that and gave up, but I guess Chrome works. That's great news. Means I can ditch the Windows VM. Thanks.

It's been a while since I used the vCloud web client, but if it's the same as the vSphere one I can appreciate the pain anyone else using it goes through. Trying to have the "right" version of IE/Java was a right mess.

It seems as though they jumped on the bandwagon for web clients with it. I've used both it and the C# application, and I can say that I much prefer the latter. Easy to navigate, and very fast response.

Honestly, installing a fast, custom application to manage VM servers is a very reasonable time investment of probably less than a minute. Having a backup web client is also reasonable, but by no means should it be the primary interface. Browsers are good for many things, but they are also equally terrible for many others.

As a Fusion user, it is interesting to me that Fusion appears to be getting ESXi/vSphere management capability:

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/vmware-fusion-te...

Not sure what your use case is, but why not build your own tools? As a previous user of OpenStack, the UI was not terrible but as an administrator I found it useless except very simple things. I wrote scripts for tasks regularly carried out.

I haven't had experience with vSphere's UI, but if it's anywhere as terrible as the vCloud Director UI, why not write some stuff to make your life easier. VMware recently open sourced some vSphere python bindings: https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi

I am tempted more and more each day if I knew that I could get SRM and few other choice options working I would spend the time. Thanks for that pyvmomi link I am going to check that out right now.

If you are on a windows machine it might be worth looking at PowerCLI [1] as well, it has a very active community and they just started added some basic cmdlets to access to the SRM public API [2].

[1] http://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/ [2] http://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/2014/03/new-release-vsphere...

Now this is something that I have been doing is looking at tasks I can accomplish from PowerCLI and I do like it well enough. It may be that this is more the direction I should be looking instead of client (web/C#) based solutions...

I was wondering if vCloud Director and vSphere Web UI were the same thing. From your comment, I infer that they aren't - is that right? I'm currently trying to build out virtual infrastructure on a trial from a preferred supplier at work, and they use vCloud. My interactions with the web UI have left me ranting in the office to the point where my cow-orkers look nervous. A combo of flash, Java, proprietary plugins and highly browser-specific code is a recipe for disaster. Some tasks only work on my Windows VM (e.g. uploading media) and some only Linux (e.g. virtual consoles). I'm told I have to use FF 29 or IE9 only - nothing else will work. It frankly unbelievable that they would ship this junk, and its dog slow. Are there any alternatives that you know of? Even API bindings maybe? I don't know how long I'll be using this, but if my company decides to take up the product long term I'll need some alternative to keep me sane.

As someone who uses the webclient everyday while the 5.5 version is MUCH improved, there is still a lot not to like. The organization is awkward and the response is terrible. As far as underpowering the server running vcenter if it this much of a drain it should be broken out to a separate server or optimized for responsiveness for the webclient. I want this to change I like being able to manage VMs from a browser. But there are some tasks that just need to be done from the C# client simply for the sake of time.

The web client here at work times out with some queries.

5.5 might be improved, but it is the most horrible example of a "web" client.

I also love the "kinda sorta doesn't" works with chrome stuff too. Having to basically open up IE to run a flash app makes me wonder if vmware has any web developers that can accomplish the task sanely.

I dont have any luck with Chrome which is a shame...but it does work well with Firefox on OSX so I try not to complain.

As a Flex dev, it seems there are two problems. The first is that the community doesn't seem to want to change. That's normal and lord knows warranted in many cases, but regardless of what's happening, opposition is expected. Secondly, it seems the Flex/Java code may not be up to par. As someone who doesn't even know what the application is supposed to do, the specs of the machines people are running while saying it is still slow is unacceptable.

I actually like the web client. I only have two issues with it - it depends (depended?) on Flash along with a proprietary plugin for Windows integrated authentication, and it's slow as hell.

Other than that, after a bit of getting used to, I find it easier to use than the native client.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Yes, yes it does.

I try to do as much as possible via Python and maintain a jumpbox for running the full client.

More importantly, I avoid VMWare wherever possible. These days there are plenty of excellent, fully viable alternatives which weren't quite there just a few years ago.

I wrote a web client for VirtualBox. Works a lot better than VMWare (not that it's that hard), like most everything else in VirtualBox.

If your needs are personal, this project is pretty good :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpvirtualbox/

If not, I'd be interested to hear what your needs are.

It looks quite nice! Have you considered using GitHub or something more cleaner than Sourceforge?

No you misunderstand. I'm not the phpvirtualbox author. I worked on the backend components, the API, the networking support and the VNC server.

How can we donate to this project?

Are you the original author of that project? Did you ever find someone else to take over development? I remember reading about that last year.

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