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Using a VNC Client to Connect to VMs in ESXi 5

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The ability to connect to a virtual machine using a VNC client has been available since the early days of VMware GSX as described by this VMware KB article. The required .vmx configuration can also be applied to virtual machines running on ESX(i), but is not officially supported by VMware. With ESXi 5, this continues to work but there is one additional caveat users should to be aware of, which is the new firewall that has been introduced in ESXi 5.

In addition to the three .vmx configurations:

  • RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = [true|false]
  • RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = [port #]
  • RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = [optional]

Users need to also enable the ports selected for each virtual machine on the ESXi firewall. Here is an example of a firewall rule that needs to be created:

Take a look at this blog post for details on configuring custom firewall rules including persisting the custom rules upon a system reboot.

Here are a few screenshots of configuring the .vmx configurations and using a VNC client to connect to the powered on virtual machine.

Only the first two .vmx configurations are required, if you do not set a password, anyone can connect to the virtual machine as long as they know the hostname/IP Address of your ESX(i) host and port.

To connect to a specific virtual machine, you will specify the hostname/IP Address of the ESX(i) host and port for the given virtual machine. If you set a password, you will need to also provide that before you can connect.

Please be aware of the limitations and security concerns of using VNC. VMware Remote Console or standard RDP/SSH should still be considered for virtual machine remote access.

How to Generate VM Remote Console URL for vSphere 5.x Web Client

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There was a question last week on the VMTN community forums about generating a shortcut URL to a virtual machine's remote console in the new vSphere 5 Web Client. For those of you who have used the vCenter's Web Access may recall the option to generate a desktop shortcut to a particular virtual machine's remote console which includes ability to obfuscate the generated URL that could then be provided to your users.

With the updated vSphere 5 Web Client, there is not an option to generate the remote console URL but there is a link that you could manually copy and provide to your users. This of course is not ideal but after a tinkering, I was able to figure out how to generate the remote console URL for any virtual machine in the new vSphere 5.x Web Client.

I also created a vSphere SDK for Perl script awhile back called generateVMRemoteConsoleURL.pl which helps users automate the URL generation for vSphere 4.x environments, it has now been updated to support vSphere 5.

Here is an example of what the URL looks like for vSphere 5.0:

https://reflex.primp-industries.com:9443/vsphere-client/vmrc/vmrc.jsp?vm=EE26E7F6-591B-4256-BD7A-402E5AC9E0A8:VirtualMachine:vm-1506

Here is an example of what the URL looks like for vSphere 5.1 & 5.5:

https://reflex.primp-industries.com:9443/vsphere-clien/vmrc/vmrc.jsp?vm=urn:vmomi:VirtualMachine:vm-1506:EE26E7F6-591B-4256-BD7A-402E5AC9E0A8

There are basicallythree important components to the URL:

  • Hostname of the vCenter Server - reflex.primp-industries.com
  • The vCenter instanceUUID which used to uniquely identify a vCenter Server - EE26E7F6-591B-4256-BD7A-402E5AC9E0A8
  • The MoRef ID of the virtual machine - vm-1506

Since the Web Client does not support URL customization, you only need to provide the name of a virtual machine to the generateVMRemoteConsoleURL.pl script and the URL will be generated for you.

Here is an example execution of the script:

Now you can take the URL output from the script and enter it into a supported web browser. You will then be asked to authenticate before it allows you to access the remote console of a particular virtual machine.

You can now provide links to specific virtual machines