With so much excitement and positive feedback (internal/external) regarding my article on customizing the login UI for the new vSphere 6.0 Web Client, I knew it was only a matter of time before folks started asking about customizing other VMware login UIs. As I have mentioned already, going beyond just the aesthetics such as adding an organizations logo or colors, it is often a mandatory requirement for many organizations to display a security or warning banner to users prior to logging in. I was recently added into an internal Socialcast thread asking whether it would be possible to do the same for vRealize Operations Manager (vROps).
I figure I take a quick look to see if this was possible and what it might take. I wanted to also take this opportunity and share a few other solutions that other VMware folks have found in terms of customizing the login UIs for both vRealize Log Insight (thanks GSS Engineer Alan Castonguay for sharing the details) and vRealize Automation (thanks to Justin Jones for his awesome tool). You can find all the details below as well as some additional tidbits through my exploration.
Something that can be helpful in the future as more products integrate with vCenter's SSO (PSC in vSphere 6.0) is that you only need to customize the login page once and it will be available to all other solutions.
Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware. Please make sure to perform a backup of all original files prior to editing in case you need to restore the system defaults.
vROps (vRealize Operations Manager)
Here are the two locations if you wish to customize the login UI for vROps 6.0. The first is the login.jsp file that controls the login UI. If you wish to simply replace the entire image, it will require some tweaking as the login UI is actually composed of several graphical elements making this task a bit more difficult. The second is the images directory which you will want to upload any content you wish to use for the login UI.
Note: Please make sure to perform a backup of all original files prior to editing in case you need to restore the system defaults.
- /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat-web-app/webapps/vcops-web-ent/pages/login.jsp
- /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat-web-app/webapps/vcops-web-ent/images
Due to the various tweaks, I have created a sample login.jsp which you can download and reference here. This will allow you to replace the entire background for the vROps login UI as well as adding in some text that you wish to display. I know how big of a fan Rawlinson Rivera is of Justin Bieber, so I thought I use his favorite background for creating what an a custom vROps login UI can potentially look like.
vRLI (vRealize Log Insight)
Here are the two locations if you wish to customize the login UI for vRLI 2.5. The first is the main login background image which is a 600x410 image if you wish to stick with the default layout. The second is a 300x78 transparent image for the vRLI logo, you can either keep this or replace it with your own.
Note: Please make sure to perform a backup of all original files prior to editing in case you need to restore the system defaults.
- /usr/lib/loginsight/application/3rd_party/apache-tomcat-6.0.36/webapps/ROOT/images/misc/login-bg.png
- /usr/lib/loginsight/application/3rd_party/apache-tomcat-6.0.36/webapps/ROOT/images/logo/vmware-logo-big-white-v2.png
If you wish to add additional text to the login page, you can edit the following file which controls the login UI.
- /usr/lib/loginsight/application/3rd_party/apache-tomcat-6.0.36/webapps/ROOT/loginsight/login/login.css
Here is a quick example by inserting the following above Line 20:
<div style="color:#ffffff;text-align:center;font-size:20px">Punching Cloud Edition</div>
Here is an example of what custom login UI for vRLI could potentially look like:
vRA (vRealize Automation)
As a bonus, if you are interested in customizing the Login UI for vRA, be sure to check out fellow Automation colleague Justin Jones who has built this really cool utility called vRA Brand Customizer to help with customizing vRA login UI for the various tenants in your environment. I would recommend keeping an eye on this tool for some really cool stuff coming in the future 😉
I would love to see one of these for the Horizon view HTML client 🙂
I had quickly taken a look at one of my Horizon View 6 deployments and it looks like the login page is all Flash, so I don't believe it would be possible to customize. Perhaps this would be great feedback for Horizon View folks if you wanted to file a quick SR or let your VMware Account team know
For loginsight I found the path to be slightly off:
/usr/lib/loginsight/application/3rd_party/apache-tomcat-6.0.36/webapps/ROOT/loginsight/login
I also found login.css to be exactly 1 line ( no newline characters ) which makes it particularly hard to figure out where to add in the edits.
Dominic,
Thanks for catching the bad path, I've fixed it in the article. Regarding the line edit, this is why I specifically mention above Line 20 as you can use something like sed to insert the line exactly above 20 which makes it easier, but do agree manually it can be difficult to find.
Hi.
Do you know how avoid or remove or customize basic web display page. When users insert basic vRealize Automation URL. For example https://serverx.test.com without /vcac/ basic page with configuration link was displayed. I want avoid this or customize this page to not show tools and other links. Best Regards
Hi William,
What about the UI/UX inside the vRA itself (post login page). Would it be possible to change such a dull interface to a more interesting ones? I'm looking at customization of html and css, etc.
Thanks William! Do you know if this article is still good on vROps 7.0 and Log Insight 4.7?
I don’t sorry
https://vmarkade.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/custom-branding-the-login-ui-for-vrealize-operations-manager-7-0/