The following screen shots show the Ctrl+Shift keystroke combinations to move between the most common VI Client management views:

Other Ctrl+Shift Navigational shortcuts

• installing the VIC with Wine
• Locally running Windows virtual machines in either Virtualbox or VMware Workstation/Player
• Used the ESX web client when possible (features are limited)
• Used a full Remote Desktop to vCenter

The method with the least pre-configuration necessary has always been a remote desktop with the VIC already installed, but there is always some untimely inconvenience involved when working between two different desktops.

Long story short, the rest of this post is about using the default Ubuntu Terminal Server Client to access a single application via RDP. This is perfect for using the vSphere Client or VIC on Linux. It does not require a “published application” or full Terminal Server, but instead it is a simple way to take advantage of the administrative RDP connection from the standard Remote Desktop access available on any Windows operating system.

Before I describe how to set this up I want to also reference my first try at RDP directly to the vSphere Client and VIC. Afterall,

the first attempt is what started me down this path, and readers may find some value from where I’ve already moved on.

I originally ran across Brian Atkinson’s Blog: vSphere client for Linux (sort of)… and I was intrigued by the idea of being able to use SeamlessRDP and the Linux application rdesktop to access a single Windows application remotely. It’s simple enough to download the SeamlessRDP.zip file and expand it on the Windows server with the VIC installed. Entering the Ubuntu Terminal command is not difficult to script, but the experience for me was always “buggy”. Maybe it was because my SeamlessRDP sessions were to the vCenter server which, more times than not, was a VM itself? It just wasn’t a very reliable session. I came to the conclusion that calling the SeamlessRDPshell application in order to run the VMware Client most likely is not an efficient way to get the job done. Check out the post at the link above for the full details.

The concept of a RDP session to a single application stayed with me as a great idea, and it wasn’t until I participated in a brief and unrelated conversation about the latest features of Microsoft’s RDP client that it dawned on me to explore the default Terminal Server Client which is now under Applications > Internet in Ubuntu. Eureka!

The General Tab should be very familiar to anyone connecting remotely to Windows servers

I choose to use a specified screen size for each session, but experiment with the settings on the Display tab to achieve what works best for you

The Local Resources Tab is key. For convenience be sure to allow access to your local Ubuntu drive(s).

The Programs tab is where the session to a single Application is configured. By default the vSphere client is installed at:
“c:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe”. This varies depending on 32bit versus 64 bit OS, but once you have the correct path enter it here.

Save the RDP configuration with the Save As button for repeated use.

Here’s a sreen shot of the vSphere Client open on 32 bit Ubuntu 9.04.

Exiting the vSphere Client exits the RDP session, but clicking the “x” to close the window leaves a disconnected session on the remote server. This can result in a scenario where the maximum of 2 connections is exceeded if you are not careful. Be sure to tweak the MS Terminal Services Settings from the Administrative Tools Menu so that idle and disconnected settings end in an appropriate amount of time (I’ve been using 15 minutes) to prevent this from happening.

All in all it is still a work around, but in my opinion it has been the most reliable and feasible one. It doesn’t eliminate the need for at least one Windows desktop in your environment, but if you have vSphere or VI3 your are probably going to have vCenter anyways, right?

Windows vSphere Client

If you just need a general walk through in order to get a look and feel comparison based on what you already know about the current VI3 client and administration, check out Jason Boche’s A random collection of what’s new vSphere eye candy.

The image below (from Jason’s post) is the vSphere Client Home page available when connected to vCenter.

Web Based vSphere Client

I’m surprised that more has not been posted about the new web client available with vSphere. VMware has switched to the VMware Server 2,0 style web interface now. Although this interface has not been an adminstrator’s favorite in the past, I welcome the change specifically because it enables more administration ability from Linux desktops.

Some vSphere web client coverage I’ve seen so far has been Eric Sloof’s Generate a Virtual Machine Desktop Shortcut.

As Eric points out in his post, web access to a vSphere host needs to be enabled first. To check if the Web Access daemon is running at the vSphere console enter

#service vmware-webAccess status

To start it use the  following command :

#service vmware-webAccess start

Click on the following images for a larger view.

Web Client Inventory Management

The Web VM Console

If you attempt to manage Windows VMs from a Linux machine using the web interface you may run into problems sending ctrl+alt+del to the VM operating system. Check my previous post on this issue for a quick work around.

Here’s some details from Srinivas’ post about vCMA:

“Did you ever get paged when you are in a meeting about some virtual machine that needed to be restarted?  Or, did you ever get an alert when you are at your kid’s soccer game or at the movies that a particular server is overloaded?  Actually, imagine any scenario where you need to actively manage your datacenter but you are nowhere close to a PC.  Wouldn’t it be nice to act on the notification from your mobile phone?  After all, we are now a generation that doesn’t leave home without a mobile phone…

Introducing VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA).  vCMA allows you to monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices. Specifically, it allows you to:

• Search for virtual machines in your data center
• Migrate virtual machines from one host to another using vMotion
• Execute recovery plans using VMware Site Recovery Manager
• Access Scheduled Tasks, Alarms and Events
• And much more…”

This YouTube video shows off the vCMA on a Blackberry.

vCMA is the second mobile phone VMware VI administration product I have covered this week. I also posted about Rove’s Mobile Admin 4.2.

Just point the VI Client at your VC 2.5 server and then use the Administration MENU (not the administration button). Select VirtualCenter Management Server Configuration. Then click on Statistics.

Here’s a screen shot from a VI Client pointed at a VC 2.5 Update 3 server.

The number of hosts and the number of Virtual Machines in the image are the default values, but when you change these numbers to match your environment the space required and number of rows are instantly updated. The estimates are also based on the Statistics Intervals configured just above the Database Size section. If you adjust the Interval Duration, Keep For, or Statistics Level it also impacts the size of the calculated database.

If you do not have a VC server yet VMware provides a VC database calculator in excel spreadsheet format. You can download it at http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vc_db_calculator.xls.

This is very handy information to have whether you are planning for virtual infrastructure, upgrading or migrating VC, or just consolidating / redesigning your Oracle or SQL servers.

First let me state that there is not an exact substitute for VirtualCenter, and the automation and ease of management VC provides is well worth it’s cost. Now for some alternatives.

ESX Manager 2.3

As described on it’s web page at ESXGuide.com:

Features:

• Virtual Center independent
  Keeps track of Virtual Machine Host Registration, Migrations and Status
  Manage Virtual Machine Configuration
  Display and work in the Virtual Machine Console
  Kill Virtual Machine Process (if the VM can’t be powered off)
  Rename Virtual Disks of registered Virtual Machines
  Move Virtual Disks and keep the disk attached to the Virtual Machine
  Virtual Machine Registration, Start , Restart , Reset, Power Off, Suspend
  Extend Virtual Disks
  View-Search-Filter Logfiles on the ESX Host.
  Define and save custom SSH commands with Parameter handling

VMX – Trilead VM Explorer

I discovered VMX – Trilead VM Explorer from the professionalvmware.com post titled Free ESX and ESXi Backups – Trilead VM Explorer and it quickly has become one of my favorites. It is much more than a back up tool however. Here’s more info from theTrilead web page.

Features

• Multi-Server Management
  The graphical user interface of VM Explorer allows to connect to multiple ESX, Linux and FreeBSD servers at the same time in the same interface.
• Server to Server fast copy
  Allows you to copy files directly (drag&drop) between ESX, Linux and FreeBSD servers at full speed: throughput is only limited by the available network/storage system bandwidth.
• ESX to ESX/Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/SAN Backup & Restore
  Our unique ESX to any backup feature allows to backup virtual machines to other ESX Servers, Linux or FreeBSD servers. Of course, virtual machines can also be stored to a SAN (ISCSI or NFS) directly attached to an ESX. Furthermore, backups can also be saved on the Windows machine where the VM Explorer is running.
• Support for ESX 3i
  VMX version 1.5 includes beta support for the next generation of ESX servers.
• File Browser
  Browse instantly your ESX/Linux/FreeBSD servers’ file system and copy files from one to the other just by drag & drop. Supports also up- and download to the management station.
• Integrated SSH Client
  The integrated SSH Terminal Client allows you to configure all your Unix/Linux based Servers trough SSH, all within one software.
• Job Scheduler
  The integrated job scheduler allows you to perform unattened, periodic backups of your virtual infrastructure.
• Integrated ESX Snapshot Manager
  Create and remove snapshots directly from within VMX.
• Dynamic Compression
  To make use of slow network links (e.g., for wide-area replication) or to save space on the target system, backups can be dynamically compressed.

VI Client Datastore Browser

The VI Client (VIC) comes with every version of ESX/ESXi. It’s really surprising all that you can actually do with it. Although not meant to be a post about the VIC, Jason over at boche.net provides some great examples of how to simulate some VirtualCenter functionality with VMware’s standard client. Check out Jason’s post titled Virtualization rematch corrections and clarifications to see examples of how the VIC can:

• Upload and download files
• Rename objects
• Clone VMs

Let me know if there are other free alternatives that are worth adding to my VI tools usb stick.

Maybe you don’t want to manage multiple copies of the VI Client on your network. Maybe you don’t want support calls from users who are trying to get rogue administrative access. Perhaps you are just trying to ensure that your users who do have access to VI components always use the web interface. Whatever your reason, there are multiple methods for disabling the VI Client download from the ESX and VC 2.5 web interfaces. Some alternatives are:

• Close the web ports on the local firewall of each VMware Server
• Restrict access from non admin computers on your network
• Stop the web services on the VMware servers

The problem with doing any of the above is that you either end up breaking or limiting other features of your virtual infrastructure solution or it could require significant planning and configuration to implement.

This post explains how to leave the default VMware web ports and services open and active, and instead modify the web interface page content so that the unwanted links are no longer available. When finished with the steps below the “Log in to Web Access” link is the only content available from the web interface. It’s a simple alternative that doesn’t have any of the “gotchas” of the previously mentioned possibilities.

This tip is not officially supported by VMware, and you should use it at your own risk – although it is basic html editing so I doubt you could do any serious damage to your implementation!

Modify ESX 3.5 Web Interface
The default ESX 3.5 web page interface
Use WinSCP (or the tool of your choice) to remotely browse your ESX host(s)	** SAVE A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL FILE BEFORE CONTINUING ** Edit /usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/index.html
Comment out the sections you do not want users to have access to	Use “<!–” to start commenting and “//–>” to end commenting
Example of a modified and restricted ESX 3.5 web interface
Modify VC 2.5 Web Interface
The default VC 2.5 Web page interface
Log on locally to the VC 2.5 Server	** SAVE A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL FILE BEFORE CONTINUING ** Edit C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\docRoot\index.html
Use Notepad to comment out the sections you do not want users to have access to	Use “<!–” to start commenting and “//–>” to end commenting
Example of a modified and restricted VC 2.5 web interface

For those who are satisfied with the appearance of the web interface in the images above I am providing a .zip file containing both the modified VC and ESX index.html files. Just rename the file currently in your VMware server’s directory for backup, and then extract the .zip contents to the appropriate servers and rename them to “index.html”.

I’ve never tried it, but I can’t think of a reason why you couldn’t rename the original file something similar to “admin.hmtl”. Then you also have the option to tell your authorized users to browse to “http://hostname/admin.html” to download the VI Client.

I was able to manually change the NTP configuration by digging out the related recommendations from the VMTN Communities thread VMware Communities: ESX 3.5 – Time Configuration = “Failed …. I have summarized my resolution steps in the rest of this post. Note that I did not have to modify all of the files and settings (steptickers, esx firewall) as previously required (and scripted) when manually changing NTP sync in ESX version 3.0.X.

Early in the VMTN thread was the advice:

“To use the NTP Time setup configuration option, your ESX server must also be in Maintenance mode. Once that is done, it works just fine.”

Honestly, I did not try this for my scenario but I wanted to point this out for future reference. Replies in the thread indicated putting the host in maintenance mode did not fix the error.

Later in the thread I found my resolution and cause of the problem.

“The issue happens when you set ZONE=UTC in /etc/sysconfig/clock. The host agent uses the timezone list in /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab to determine if the ZONE is valid. Since UTC isn’t in zone.tab, it thows an error and will not change the NTP settings.

There is an PR open for this issue internally, but you should probably also file an SR so that this will be fixed in a future release. As a workaround, would it possible for you to use a timezone that does appear in /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab?”

Sure, changing that file is possible! VMware, if you are reading this please consider this post an informal Support Request.

To investigate I used putty and nano. Putty for remote access from my XP workstation and nano because I never seem to remember how to use vi. I opened 2 Putty sessions to the ESX host. Logged in as root I typed:

in the first putty session

#nano /ect/sysconfig/clock

in the second putty session

#nano /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab

For the hosts I was working on /etc/sysconfig/clock was set to

ZONE=”Etc/GMT-5″
UTC=true
ARC=false

Looking at the other Putty session I was not a matching zone entry in /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab. So, it was obvious I had to find the appropriate entry. The file is alphabetically in order by the first column of location abbreviations and I had to scroll all the way down to the US entries. I found the following entry for my timezone:

America/New_York

Then I changed /etc/sysconfig/clock to match the zone.tab entry and look like this

ZONE=”America/New_York”
UTC=true
ARC=false

Ctrl+W saves the file changes in nano and prompts you for over writing the original file

Then I used nano to change

/etc/ntp.conf

#nano /etc/ntp.conf

The VMTN thread suggests the line with the default NTP server to change will read “server 127.1.0.1″, but in my file the line was slightly different. I had to change  “server 127.127.0.0″ to “XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX” where “XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX” is the new NTP server to sync with.

Once again Ctrl+W in nano saves the changes.

To make it all work I had to restart the NTP service

#service ntpd restart

Then to make the changes show up in the VI client I had to restart the VMware management service

#service mgmt-vmware restart

The NTP information was updated in the VI Client.

Just for a “warm fuzzy” I also ran the following from one of the Putty sessions before closing them out.

#ntpq -p

That will show you the time sync is working and if there is any offset.