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You are here: Home / vSphere Web Client / vSphere Web Client Plugin for Custom Attributes

vSphere Web Client Plugin for Custom Attributes

02.07.2014 by William Lam // 19 Comments

I just learned about a very cool vSphere Web Client Plugin that was developed by a fellow vExpert, Patrick Haefner who shared this during the South Germany VMUG back in February of last year. The custom vSphere Web Client Plugin allows administrators to view Custom Attributes in the vSphere Web Client which is currently not available today. The Custom Attributes vSphere Web Client is hosted on the VMUG site and you will need to register to access the download page found here.

Disclaimer: This plugin is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk.

To install the Custom Attributes plugin, you just need to extract the contents of the zip file and you will should see a directory called haif-customfields-ui. You will need to copy this directory to your vCenter Server which is running the vSphere Web Client. This plugin should work on both vSphere 5.1 and 5.5.

For Windows vCenter Server:

  1. Stop the vSphere Web Client service
  2. Copy haif-customfields-ui to C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphereWebClient\plugin-packages
  3. Start the vSphere Web Client service

For VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance)

  1. Stop the vSphere Web Client service by running /etc/init.d/vsphere-client stop
  2. Copy haif-customfields-ui to /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/plugin-packages
  3. Start the vSphere Web Client service by running /etc/init.d/vsphere-client start

Once the vSphere Web Client has been started, you can now login and for Virtual Machines or ESXi hosts which have Custom Attributes, you should now see a new portlet displaying the Custom Attributes as seen in the screenshot below.

I think this is a really cool plugin and shows how extensible the vSphere Web Client is by leveraging the vSphere Web Client SDK. With a bit of imagination, you can pretty much build anything! Though today Patrick's plugin only allows you to view the Custom Attributes, perhaps if there is enough requests, he may add the ability to modify Custom Attributes. Awesome work Patrick and thanks for sharing it with the community!

Big thanks to Ruediger M. who works as a VMware SE in Germany for sharing this awesome information. This is definitely a plugin I will be installing in my environments 🙂

More from my site

  • PowerCLI script to help correlate vCenter, ESXi & vSAN build/versions w/o manual VMware KB lookup
  • Applying Custom Attributes beyond just Host & Virtual Machine Objects
  • Custom Attributes != vSphere Tags
  • Want to issue a VAAI UNMAP operation using the vSphere Web Client?
  • Edit Virtual Hardware 10 VMs using vSphere 5.5 Update 2 C# Client

Categories // vSphere Web Client Tags // custom attributes, plugin, tagging, vSphere, vsphere web client

Comments

  1. *protectedTimothy says

    02/07/2014 at 5:45 pm

    It is too bad that it has come to this, as I had high hopes for tags with the vSphere 5.5 release. Tags fall short though, as they are not a true key->value pairing. Sigh...

    Reply
  2. *protectedWilliam Lam says

    02/07/2014 at 6:41 pm

    You're absolutely correct, Tagging does not cover the Custom Attributes use case today. This is something we've heard from many customers and have already fed into engineering. Hopefully we will see this area improved in the future. For now, such a plugin is useful to be able to view both your Tags as well as Custom Attributes.

    Reply
  3. *protectedSteve Kaplan says

    04/09/2014 at 5:38 pm

    Something fun to note when using the vCSA... when you unzip the files, it creates a directory but the permissions are not set correctly (meaning the Web Client won't be able to load the applet). What I had to do was chmod all directories to 755 and chmod all files within those directories to 644... After doing that, and restarting the service, magic!

    Reply
    • *protectedShoGuevara says

      07/04/2015 at 9:18 am

      Doesn't work with vcsa 6 =(

      Reply
  4. *protectedRalf Strauss says

    07/16/2014 at 9:08 am

    Nice plugin. Missing only the edit button. 🙂

    Reply
  5. *protectedVincent Jansen says

    06/22/2015 at 8:21 am

    Hello William, I really like this plugin. Is it possible to modify the "virtual machines object view" and save it as default? Now I must add evertytime "show/hide columns" when I open the the "virtual machines object view"

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      06/22/2015 at 7:32 pm

      It sounds like the show/hide column changes do not persist after logging out. Sounds like a useful feature, would recommend you file an FR with either VMware Support or with your account team

      Reply
      • *protectedVincent says

        08/12/2015 at 11:57 am

        Hello William, I filed it as feature request.

        Reply
  6. *protectedJörg says

    10/09/2015 at 4:16 pm

    Has anyone already tested if it works in vCenter 6?

    Reply
  7. *protectedVincent says

    10/09/2015 at 4:24 pm

    No, but bood idea for a test

    Reply
  8. *protectedMarco says

    01/19/2016 at 1:07 am

    No, it is NOT working with vSphere 6.0 U1

    Reply
  9. *protectedDim says

    04/12/2016 at 7:38 am

    under vSphere 6.0 U2 it will be adapted?

    Reply
  10. *protectedMarkus says

    05/04/2016 at 3:45 am

    Hey William,
    is there a way to get this working with vSphere6 ?

    Reply
  11. *protectedKevin says

    08/19/2016 at 4:36 am

    For the vSphere WebClient 6 I get errors (Module Can`t load) on the Summary Tab of the VM. But over the Related Objects it works fine.
    My Solution was to edit the haif-customfields-ui-war-1.0.2.war (plugin.xml) and remove the extension (xxx.vm.summary).Now it works fine without errors and I get my custom-fields over the Related Object Tab.

    Reply
    • *protectedRon says

      11/30/2016 at 4:14 am

      What method did you use to install this into your WebClient 6?

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Newsletter: November 29, 2014 | Notes from MWhite says:
    11/30/2014 at 7:43 pm

    […] Attributes can now see them in the vSphere Web Client if you choose to.  Check it out here.  Very […]

    Reply
  2. Which Vendor Has A vSphere Web Client Plugin? | virtuallyGhetto says:
    07/24/2015 at 2:05 pm

    […] Custom Attributes Plugin […]

    Reply
  3. Custom Attributes != vSphere Tags | virtuallyGhetto says:
    03/09/2016 at 9:03 am

    […] API. Custom Attributes are currently not visible in the vSphere Web Client, but you can use this custom vSphere Web Client plugin which makes the Custom Attributes available in the vSphere Web Client. Going forward, the future […]

    Reply
  4. Custom Annotations | Stephen Hackers Blog says:
    09/01/2017 at 1:02 pm

    […] for Virtual Machines when using the fat client. (Web client in 5.1 and 5.5 requires a plugin, see "vsphere-web-client-plugin-for-custom") 6.0 doesn't see the attributes in the Web Client, 6.5 does, see the 6.5 […]

    Reply

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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