VMware labs have released the other day the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling:
The vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling is a standalone appliance that can be deployed in your existing or new vSphere 6.0 and later environments in a transparent manner. The Fling does not make any changes to your existing vCenter or Platform Services Controller components. Nor does it affect any operations, such as the use of the current vSphere Web Client, as it is meant to run side by side.
It is very nice, fast and responsive for a alpha/beta product. Should you wish to read more on its features and roadmap head over to Anyway, without further ado lets set it up!
Prerequisites
- 2vCPU, 4GB of RAM, and 14GB of storage
- Runs only on vSphere 6.0 or later
- Recommended Browsers include Chrome, Firefox, and IE11. Other browsers may work, but have not been tested yet
- Usable with either the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) or Windows
- Enable SSH on your vCenter Server Appliance, temporarily needed only during the install process
- Enable vCenter Server Appliance Bash Shell, temporarily needed to SCP configuration files from the Fling to the vCenter Server Appliance
Step 1
Presumably the OVF file has been downloaded from https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vsphere-html5-web-client
And successfully deployed:
Step 2
We assume that vCenter is an appliance so we will SSH into the vCenter appliance with Putty and enable true shell by executing:
shell.set --enable True shell /usr/bin/chsh –s "/bin/bash" root
Now the vCenter 6 Appliance is ready and is waiting for Fling appliance to connect and do its magic.
Step 3
Providing that the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling appliance has been deployed successfully and it has a reachable IP address we simply SSH into it as well and connect it to the vCenter Appliance:
/etc/init.d/vsphere-client configure --start yes --user root --vc <FQDN or IP Address of vCenter Server>
If it connected without an issue and all successful then we can browse to it.
Step 3
Open the browser – in my case its Chrome and head to https://<FQDN or IP Address of Fling Server>:9443/ui if prompted with a Submit button, just press it and you will get redirected to the final destination:
According to virtualizationreview
“Flings” are unofficial VMware products that may or may not become official in time. The Fling site says they’re “Apps and tools built by our engineers that are intended to be played with and explored.” In this case, however, it appears much more likely than not that the HTML5 Web client will eventually replace the Flash client. The VMware source said the new client will probably become part of the next major release of vSphere.
