I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up that version 3 of the awesome Embedded Host Client Fling has just been released! In addition to all the new features and bug fixes which you can find more details below, there is now also an offline bundle for ESXi 5.x as well as ESXi 6.x which can then be used to distribute to your vSphere environment using vSphere Update Manager. One of my favorite features in this new release is the ability to edit or delete existing disk partitions which is super handy when repurposing existing disk devices for use with VSAN. You can find the download on the Embedded Host Client Fling page here.
If you have v1 or v2 installed, you can perform an "update" by simply running the following ESXCLI command:
[root@mini:~] esxcli software vib update -v /esxui-signed.vib
Installation Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed: VMware_bootbank_esx-ui_0.0.2-0.1.3172496
VIBs Removed: VMware_bootbank_esx-ui_0.0.2-0.1.3015331
VIBs Skipped:
What's new in v3 -
- VM
- Answer question support
- Upgrade virtual hardware to the latest supported by the host
- Hot edit VM settings
- VM table column configuration (show/hide columns), remembered across browser refresh
- VM startup/shutdown priority (simple increase/decrease)
- Host
- Change host power management policy, advanced power configuration
- Generate IP/FQDN certificate signing request and import new certificate
- Join a host to an active directory domain controller
- Storage
- Disk device partition editor
- Adapter rescan for new LUNs
- Disk device rescan for new VMFS volumes
- Clear a disk's partition table
- Disk device partition diagram
- Increase datastore size onto disk that already contains a partition table
- Performance charts
- Ability to change performance chart colors (two choices: default VMware colors and high contrast colors)
- Added Network and Disk charts to Host performance UI
- Improve VM performance UI, still missing some charts
- Improved performance UI on tablets
- Always hide the top legend in the chart
- Hide the focus widget to increase vertical space
- General
- In-app update tool: provide a URL to a new version of the VIB, refresh the browser, et voila!
- For tabbed UIs, the selected tab is remembered as you navigate around the UI to avoid un-necessary clicks
- Better scrolling performance on tablets (tested on iPad)
- Hide-able navigator allowing more space on tablets
- Shortcut buttons to Host, Host Manage, Host Monitor, VMs, Storage, Networking when navigator is collapsed
- Improved Actions menu behavior on tablets:
- Menu navigation no longer hides the actions menu
- Added an explicit close button on actions menus
- A second press on the Actions button will close the menu
- Bugfixes
- VM table sizing with small number of VMs
- In-browser consoles:
- Will now attempt to reconnect when losing a connection to a powered on VM
- Reverting to a powered-on snapshot while a console is open to that VM will reconnect the console
Mutahir says
Great News 🙂 this client has surely made life easier ! Many thanks for sharing your knowledge and thanks to the engineers developing this client !
Andrey Pogosyan (@Andrey_Po) says
Just updated V1 -> V3, great improvements so far and very fast and responsive across multiple browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox). You guys are awesome!
Squish says
Awesome update !
mubix says
I'm in a port-forwarded scenario (forwarding 8443 externally to internal 443). I don't want to have to change the httpsPort (rhttpproxy) because 443 works fine internally. The Fling interface however seems to have a few direct links to the 443 port that make logging in time out externally. I'm not the greatest javascript coder so I can't tell you exactly where these are but I do see my external host attempting to hit the 443 port
Chestin says
I'm running 5.5U3a and am getting a 503 Service Unavailable error. Any ideas?
William Lam says
Was this a new install or an update, if it's the latter it'll keep the prior behavior.
Michael White says
In 5.5 U3a if you are doing a new install you must edit some files - the lab fling site has the specifics. Not hard.
https://labs.vmware.com/flings/esxi-embedded-host-client
Michael
Fud says
http://www.wooditwork.com/2015/11/05/vmworld-eu-2015-buzz-a-group-discussion-that-makes-me-worry-about-the-future-of-vcenter-server-inf6383-gd/