A closer look at the new ESXi Embedded Host Client fling.

16 September, 2015 How To, VMware 0

Some time ago a new fling by VMware Labs has been released to manage your ESXi hosts. The ESXi Embedded Host Client is written in HTML and JavaScript, and is served directly from your ESXi host which means it has to be installed on the ESXi host first. Since this fling is currently in its development phase the ESXi Embedded Host Client is not fully featured and only implements a hand full of the most important features such as:

  • VM operations (Power on, off, reset, suspend, etc.)
  • Creating a new VM, from scratch or from OVF/OVA (limited OVA support)
  • Configuring NTP on a host
  • Displaying summaries, events, tasks and notifications/alerts
  • Providing a console to VMs
  • Configuring host networking
  • Configuring host advanced settings
  • Configuring host services

Please refer to the ESXi Embedded Host Client fling page for any known issues, system requirements and if you want to provide some feedback.

How to install ESXi Embedded Host Client

The install procedure is pretty simple. You have 2 options:

  1. Download the VIB, upload to your ESXi host and install.
  2. Install directly from internet if your ESXi host has access to the internet.

Since the ESXi host in my home lab has access to the internet I went with option 2.

  1. Enable SSH on your ESXi host.
  2. Enter the maintenance mode.
  3. Login as root and execute the following command to download and install the VIB: # esxcli software vib install -v http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/esxui/esxui-2976804.vib
  4. When installed successfully, you should see the following installation result.ESXi Embedded Host Client 02
  5. Exit the SSH session and disable SSH on you host.
  6. Exit the maintenance mode.
  7. Open your internet browser and navigate to https://<IP_or_FQDN/ui of your ESXi host, log in and you should be presented with the inventory of the host.ESXi Embedded Host Client 03

How to remove the ESXi Embedded Host Client

If you ever want to remove the ESXi Embedded Host Client simply follow the procedure above and enter the following command: # esxcli software vib remove -n esx-ui

Note: if you want to automate the install of the ESXi Embedded Host Client for all hosts in a cluster, please see this blog post from Brian Graf.

Cheers!

– Marek.Z

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