Have you ever wanted to connect directly to your ESXi host via a web browser and take a quick look at the available resources on the host? How about checking on the status of the vCenter VM? Conduct host administrative tasks through the browser? Today I’m happy to introduce the vSphere Host Client fling, an HTML5-based UI client served directly from the ESXi host.

The Client is distributed as a VIB that once installed, allows you to point your web browser at the host IP, and begin directly managing the host. Underneath the covers, the Client interfaces with the host through the VIM API similar to other host access methods such as the Web Client or PowerCLI.

The current Client feature set include:

Display host, VM, storage, and networking information

Execute tasks such as create/update/delete of host resources

Support of VM console access

Configure the host NTP

See summaries, events, tasks and notifications

Configure advanced host services and settings

The Client will work on ESXi 6.0 and 5.5U3 when the update release becomes available later this year. You can find browser requirements, download and installation instructions from our Fling website:

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/esxi-embedded-host-client

We’d love to get your feedback or if you have questions:

https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/hostclient

Many many folks contributed to this fling: George Estebe, Etienne LeSueur and Kevin MacDonell our development team for bringing the Client to life, Jehad Affoneh for the proof of concept that inspired what you see today, William Lam and Kevin Christopher for their ongoing (and vocal!) guidance each step of the way, and our ESXi leadership team for allocating the time and resources to make this all happen.

Going forward, we plan to add more features to the fling including additional VM and host resource management actions, datastore operations, performance charts and metrics. Based on your feedback/community support and resource prioritization, we hope to incorporate the Client into a future ESXi release as a formalized offering.