A lot of new stuff is released by VMware and of course everything is cool stuff, but sometimes something is released that you’ve been waiting for for quite some time. And in my case that’s a web console to control ESXi directly.
I’m using a Mac and always is a hassle to get access to get access to a user interface. There isn’t a client available for Mac and I first had to install the Web Client in order to get access.
Now some great engineers at VMware have released a Fling that gives you direct access to the ESXi host through a HTML5 web interface that can be installed through a VIB file. It’s a simple process that can be found on the Fling page over here. It’s straightforward to setup. It took me 2 minutes following the instructions.
Be aware that all Flings are tech preview, so not everything is working out-of-the-box. But these features work for sure :
- 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
For more information also have a look at the blog of Willam Lam here. He has more details on the project.