Thursday, February 8, 2018

Manage permissions of roles on VMware ESXi server with vSphere Client 6.0

First of all, VMware ESXi is at v6.5 at the time this post is composed. However, it seems that VMware has dropped the development of vSphere Client which has been a powerful tool to manage ESXi servers.
Now the latest version of vSphere Client one can get is v6.0 Update 3 (5112508), and the download link can be found in VMware KB: Download URLs for VMware vSphere Client (2089791).

Complaint 1: The web UI shipped with ESXi v6.5 does not work with Chrome (the latest version as of Jan 2018). I get an exception pop-up immediately after I log in. It prevents future interactions and only allows me to reload the log in page which will simply lead to the same exception again. No screen-shot for this because I do not have Chrome on the machine I am currently using, but I believe a lot of you might be using Chrome...

I really think vSphere Client is MUCH MORE stable than the web UI. So sad that they seem to have dropped the development of vSphere Client.
Note that vSphere Client v6.0 can edit the settings of a VM only if the VM was created compatible with v11 or lower.

Complaint 2: If you edit the settings of any virtual machine in the web UI for more than once, including when you create it, the form in the web UI will be filled up with garbage strings and integers (e.g. RAM size becoming some negative number) that you definitely do not want to risk continuing with the edit.

Of course, I totally understand that web-based management systems are much easier to design and maintain. Actually, vSphere Client only works for Windows systems -- those who use macOS or Linux will have to use the web UI or use another VM (to run Windows) to manage the VM host (ESXi server).

Fortunately, I have a Windows 10 machine, so I am still able to run vSphere Client v6.0.
However, I really had a hard time figuring out how to manage users and roles with the client.

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Management of users and permission can be access in "inventory".
In "users", I can create/delete users;
In "permissions", I can assign roles to the users.
But wait -- how do I manage the roles?

I searched Google and here is what I found:
First, I need to go back to the "home" page which I do not even know about its existence before this; then click on "roles".

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On the "roles" page, I can then add and edit roles if I have enough permissions to do so.

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Complaint 3: I know this does not sound very complicated, but it is really anti-intuition to me, i.e. why this function is so far away from other related functions in the client software. I do not quite understand the thoughts of who designed this client. Honestly, I think some times it could be very helpful if the entrance of some function of the software appears multiple times in different places, so it is easier to find.

Anyway, more complaints are coming in the next post.

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