vSphere Client
We are going to explore the interfaces of vSphere through the vSphere client first. The specific URL address I visited was “nt-vcsa.talos.net.nz” and a page will be shown like this following screenshot.
Click on the Launch vSphere Client (HTML5) button and it will direct you to the VMWare vCenter Single Sign-On page. You could directly access this vSphere Client page through the URL address of “nt-vcsa.talos.net.nz/ui/”. Enter your credentials in the designated box and you will enter your vSphere Client.
You could see on the left pane there are several tabs available and choose the leftmost option which is Hosts and Clusters. Expand all the informations in the navigation pane and choose the esxi05.talos.net.nz server under the VTEcluster. On the right pane, we could see all the specifications about this system in the Summary tab. You could also open the Hardware and Configuration panes to check them in more detail.
Next we will explore the storage interface in the vSphere Client. The Lab instructed to search for “datastore” which in my case will not be available as we have been designated a datastore with specific naming system. Alternatively, from the navigation pane on the left, access the Storage tab which is the third one. Try to expand all folders there and all the available storages in your access will be here.
Click on one of them and in my case i chose the “KiloN7-DS” storage which is a dedicated storage for my access in this assessment. Check on the right pane and in the summary tab is the informations of this datastore. You could check the storage usage and capacity on the right part of this pane. Open the details pane to see more detailed information about this datastore.
vSphere Web Client
Now that we are done exploring the interface of the vSphere Client, we are going to move to the vSphere Web Client. You can go back to the client options page as shown like Figure 1 and click on the vSphere Web Client (Flex) link and it should automatically redirect you to the web client as we have a session already available.
The problem with this vSphere Web Client is that it is quite outdated and still uses flash to operate the interface. I ran a problem since flash is by default blocked by Google Chrome. So, if you are having the same problem just change the Flash setting in Google Chrome settings to “Ask first” as shown in Figure 5. Try to enter the vSphere Web Client again and choose Allow when the browser ask for flash permission.
For those who hasn’t logged in yet, you could go through the link as stated before or you could enter on the URL Address with “nt-vcsa.talos.net.nz/vsphere-client/” and it should take you to the same VMWare vCenter Single Sign-On page. Enter your credentials and there would be slight loading time and you should be in the vSphere Web Client.
You would see a similar layout with the vSphere Client. Following the same steps as before, try to access the “esxi05.talos.net.nz” server from the left pane. The similar information will also be shown in the center pane and you could open the Hardware and Configuration pane to see more specifiation in the Summary tab.
In this part, the Lab also instructed to access the storage through the Search feature. As we have known the name of our datastore, try to use the Search bar on the top right corner of the page. In my case, i will type “Kilo” in the Search bar and a list of results will be shown. I will choose the “KiloN7-DS” in the Datastore category.
You should be redirected to the datastore you have chosen. Open the Summary tab in the center pane and expand the Details pane. The same information of the storage should be the same as the one we see from vSphere Client.
Look for the Home icon at the top part of the page and select Home. At the right pane, there are 2 available panes which are Work In Progress and Alarms. You could use the pin icon on both to minimize them. You could also drag the pin icon and put them in places where the arrows are available to help you place the pane in the preferred position. You could always click the minimized icon to check the information in the pane and minimize in right back again.
If you want everything to be back to its original places. Access the Layout Settings from you username dropdown list. A dialog box should be shown and choose the Reset to default layout button and everything should back to its original places. You could also hide the panes by unchecking it on the list.
Direct yourself to the Hosts and Clusters option and click on the Getting Started tab in one of the available server. These information will help you know the basics of what these are. If you have known these information, you could easily hide all of the Getting Started tab by opening the Help dropdown list on the top right side of the page. Under there, click on Hide All Getting Started Pages.
Summary
I am going to provide a bit of summary about this Lab. We have tried to delve into both interfaces. In my opinion, the vSphere Web Client is quite outdated and performs a bit slower than the vSphere Client which uses HTML5. Moreover, by then end of 2020, Flash will no longer be supported by most browsers. So navigating from the vSphere Client would just be more convenient.
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