It's no secret that going forward, VMware's new vSphere Web Client will be the primary graphical interface for interacting with vSphere and other solutions within the vCloud Suite. This is regardless of whether the interface is using FLEX, HTML5 or some other framework, that is not the the topic of discussion, so please do not ask 🙂
VMware has also made this very clear in the recent vSphere 5.1 release notes:
In vSphere 5.1, all new vSphere features are available only through the vSphere Web Client. The traditional vSphere Client will continue to operate, supporting the same feature set as vSphere 5.0, but not exposing any of the new features in vSphere 5.1.
vSphere 5.1 and its subsequent update and patch releases are the last releases to include the traditional vSphere Client. Future major releases of VMware vSphere will include only the vSphere Web Client.
The vSphere Web Client was first introduced with the release of vSphere 5.0 with limited virtual machine and host capabilities. In vSphere 5.1, it was completely revamped to bring the large majority of functionality that we have all been used to in the vSphere C# Client and VMware will continue to close this gap and bring other improvements with future releases of vSphere.
As with any major change, this will not happen overnight and will take time for VMware, customers and partners to transition over. Just take a look at the transition from classic ESX to ESXi, it took several years for that to really sink in through the various updates and it is no longer a question or concern anymore.
A common request that I have heard from customers regarding the new vSphere Web Client is the availability of 3rd party vendor plugins. I have found it quite difficult to find all the plugins that are available and I bet customers would love to see a consolidated list in one place that they can search through. Well, I decided to do some research as well as leverage my Twitter followers to help me build out the complete list of vSphere Web Client plugins. I have broken the list by VMware, Partners, Scripted (legacy) and Unreleased vSphere Web Client plugins. I have also tried to include links to each of the 3rd party plugins so you can easily get more information about each of them.
If you are a customer and you do not see a specific vendor plugin, I highly recommend you reach out to your vendor and provide them feedback, this includes VMware. The more feedback our partners receive, the better chance you will get a vSphere Web Client plugin or any other feature for that matter!
If there are other vSphere Web Client plugins that you know of, please leave a comment or reply back on twitter with #webclientplugin and I will update the blog post.
VMware vSphere Web Client Plugins
- Horizon View Manager 5.2
- vCenter Operations Manager (badge information)
- vCenter Orchestrator
- vFabric Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J)
- vSphere Data Protection
- vSphere Infrastructure Navigator
- vSphere Replication
- vSphere Update Manager (Available as of vSphere 5.1 Update 1)
- vSphere Big Data Extensions
- OpenStack
- vCloud Hybrid Service
- Onyx
- ESXTop
- PowerActions
- vSphere Site Recovery Manager
3rd Party Vendor vSphere Web Client Plugins
- Cisco UCS
- Cisco Nexus 1000v
- HP Insight Control Integrator
- PureStorage
- VCE Vision Intelligent Operations
- Fujitsu Eternus Storage
- SolidFire
- PernixData
- EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)
- Dell Compellent Storage Center
- Veeam Backup & Replication
- IBM Upwards Integration Modules
- Tintri
- NexentaConnect for VMware VSAN
- NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC)
- Dell Virtual Storage Manager
- X-IO ISE
- Juniper Networks
- Seagate Nytro
- Nimble
Scripted vSphere Web Client Plugins (not "native" plugins but legacy C# Scripted method)
Unreleased vSphere Web Client Plugins
Community vSphere Web Client Plugins
If you are interested in learning more about the new vSphere Web Client including videos and demos or looking to develop your own vSphere Web Client, please take a look at the additional resources below.
