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Standalone VMRC now available for Mac OS X

04.15.2015 by William Lam // 55 Comments

Last year, a standalone Virtual Machine Remote Console (VMRC) was released for Windows as part of vSphere 5.5 Update 2b which provides an alternative way of launching the VM console due to NPAPI deprecation. There was of course a huge request for Mac OS X support and the VMRC team has been working hard and today I am please to announce that standalone VMRC is now available for Apple Mac OS X which you can download using the following URL: www.vmware.com/go/download-vmrc

Note: Mac OS X 10.8 or greater is required to use the new Standalone VMRC. The release notes will be updated to reflect this requirement

There are currently two methods of launching a remote console to a Virtual Machine using the vSphere Web Client as seen in the screenshot below:

  1. Using HTML5 VMRC simply by clicking on the thumbnail preview
  2. Using the new Standalone VMRC by clicking on the "Launch Remote Console" link

vmrc-mac-osx-2
When using the Standalone VMRC method, instead of opening the VM console in the browser, it will launch the native VMRC application on your system whether that be Windows or Mac OS X. All basic functionalities of the Standalone VMRC is available as you would expect such as power operations, device management, etc.

Note: There is not a specific version of vSphere that is required to directly launch the Standalone VMRC. However, to launch it within the vSphere Web Client, you will need vSphere 5.5 Update 2b or greater.

vmrc-mac-osx-1
The other great thing about the Standalone VMRC is that it can function without vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client and you can actually use it to connect to VM directly on an ESXi host. To use the VMRC without the vSphere Web Client, you will need to construct the VMRC URI which looks like the following:

vmrc://clone:[TICKET]@[HOST]:[PORT]/?moid=[VM-MOREF]

where TICKET is obtained by calling the AcquireCloneTicket() method using the SessionManager in vCenter Server. The HOST will either be the Hostname/IP Address of vCenter Server and the PORT should be default to 443 and you will need to specify the VM MoRef ID. In the case of a standalone ESXi host, you would just change the HOST property. If you do not wish to use the clone ticket, you can also just provide the following URI which will prompt for your ESXi credentials

vmrc://@[HOST]:[PORT]/?moid=[VM-MOREF]

Once you have generated the VMRC URI, you MUST launch it through a web browser as that is how it is passed directly to the Standalone VMRC application. In my opinion, this is not ideal especially for customers who wish to automatically generate this as part of a VM provisioning workflow to their end users and not having to require a browser to launch the Standalone VMRC application. If you have some feedback on this, please do leave a comment.

In the mean time, a quick workaround is to use the "open" command on Mac OS X along with the VMRC URI which will automatically load it into your default browser and launch the Standalone VMRC application for you.

open 'vmrc://clone:cst-VCT-52e44ad7-712f-9f45-a9ee-13ec6a74acaf--tp-B1-6F-91-F6-B5-8F-80-E5-FD-D6-E1-8B-10-F7-FE-15-C5-2A-75-41@192.168.1.60:443/?moid=vm-18'

UPDATE (05/31/15) - If you are connecting directly to an ESXi host you can either use the vSphere API to query for the VM MoRef ID or you can easily pull it by running the following command directly in the ESXi Shell:

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

I am sure there are probably a few of you asking, what about for Linux users? Well, you can probably guess what is being worked on next πŸ˜‰

Categories // Apple, ESXi, vSphere, vSphere 5.5, vSphere 6.0 Tags // mac, osx, remote console, vmrc

VMware Fusion Tech Preview 2 can now connect to ESXi & vCenter Server!

07.04.2014 by William Lam // 4 Comments

There was a lot of buzz this week on the announcement of the first vSphere Beta that is available for anyone to sign up for (still a private Beta with NDA rules), however one announcement that was probably missed is that the folks over on the VMware Fusion team just released their second Tech Preview of VMware Fusion (Build 1943533). Why is this such a big deal? Well, it includes one very exciting new feature that I have been asking for a awhile now, which is the ability to connect to an ESXi host or vCenter Server using VMware Fusion! VMware Workstation has had this feature for awhile now and I have been hoping the Fusion team would eventually implement something similar and It looks like they have finally answered πŸ™‚

fusion-connect-to-vsphere-1
You now can connect either a Workstation, ESXi host or vCenter Server using VMware Fusion! If you are like me who primary uses a Mac and you do not want to run a single Windows VM just to be able to use the vSphere C# Client, you can now use VMware Fusion to connect to a vSphere system and perform some basic VM operations, which includes managing Virtual Hardware 10 VMs. You can even use this latest version to connect to the beta version of ESXi host.

Under the File menu, there is now a new option called "Connect to Server" or you can use Command+K for keyboard shortcut.
fusion-connect-to-vsphere-0
Here is a screenshot of connecting to a Mac Mini running ESXi 5.5:

fusion-connect-to-vsphere-2
Here is screenshot of connecting to one of my remote vCenter Servers:

fusion-connect-to-vsphere-4
As you can see this is a super handy feature and you can also have multiple connections to various vCenter Servers, ESXi hosts including Free ESXi! This alone is worth grabbing the latest Tech Preview of VMware Fusion! I can not wait for this feature to be officially released with VMware Fusion, this is going to be a must have feature for any VMware/Apple user!

If you have any feedback on this particular feature or others, please leave a comment on the VMware Fusion Tech Preview community forums!

Categories // Apple, ESXi, vSphere Tags // apple, fusion, mac

Want a free VMware Fusion 6 Professional License?

03.02.2014 by William Lam //

fusion-6-pro-license Here is an exclusive for my Twitter followers! Last week I had the chance to catch up with Simon Bennett, Product Manager for both VMware Fusion & VMware Workstation and just chat about some random topics. Simon was kind enough to offer me seven free VMware Fusion 6 Professional license keys, each valued at $129 USD. I personally already had a copy of VMware Fusion which I use all the time on my iMac whenever I need to quickly spin up Virtual Machines. I thought I would extend this generous gift from Simon onto my Twitter followers, since several of you mentioned you would like one after I tweeted about the gift.

I had thought about giving it to the first seven followers that responded and realized that would have been unfair to folks who were not watching their Twitter stream at that very moment (which nobody does, least I do not). So, if you want a super easy way to win a free VMware Fusion 6 Professional license key, take a look below an please CAREFULLY READ all directions.

How to Win:

Leave a short comment on this post on what this VMware Fusion license key would enable you to do, whether that is solving a particular problem or challenge.In addition, what is the one feature that you are most excited about for new users or what new feature would you like to see for existing VMware Fusion customers. Simple, right? I will randomly select seven winners from the list of comments in one weeks time, so make sure you leave your Twitter handle in the post else you will not be eligible to win. This is open to everyone, you do not need to reside in the US to win.

How to Qualify:

  • You must be following me on Twitter, I am at @lamw
  • Must not be a VMware employee, I will check πŸ™‚
  • Include your Twitter handle in the comment, that is how I will contact the winners

Winners:

@wozik
@mstone333
@davidahewett
@dkguru
@hippotech
@romankallen
@mralexandr0

Categories // Fusion Tags // apple, fusion, mac

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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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