A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the
need for vSphere Web Client (Server) to track down your license utilization.
But, that’s not all about what vSphere Web
Client (Server) can provide.
The main utilization would be for
administrators to manage their environments, without the need of vSphere
Client, through a Web Portal, and YES Web base portal has improved A LOT !!! It’s
also perfect for administrator who does not have a Windows desktop.
Also, since the connection per client, made
through the Web Client (Server), is kind of light weight, you might get 1.5 or
2 times more users than using the regular vSphere Client, based on C#.
Remember that, vCenter has a limitation of
100 concurrent users, so be carefully when your utilization is around this
limit.
You probably don’t like the idea of having
one (or several) servers consuming Windows License just to run the Web Client
server, right ? Neither do I.
Searching around, I found a solution from
the amazing blog Long White Virtual Clouds owned by Michael Webster, I would
advice you all to follow his posts, it totally worth.
The idea is to split the vSphere Web Client
services from vCenter. The beauty of this solution is that you can use vCenter
Server appliance just to provide Web service, without having to license
Windows. vCenter Server applicance is based on a Linux distribution, therefore
free.
The other benefits of this approach are
because since you split the services the load on the web service will not affect the
vCenter performance, you can troubleshoot, update, restart the vSphere Web
Client services without affecting the vCenter service.
So, without further ado let’s see how to
implement that.
Deploy and configured the network piece of VCSA
(vCenter Server Appliance). I would not cover that up, since it’s relative
simple.
Once you log in on VCSA
(https://”VCSA_IP”:5480) , first thing you need to do is accept the EULA.
Then you need to unregister the Web service
from it’s internal vCenter.
All the scripts can be found at: /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/scripts
To unregister run:
./admin-cmd unregister https://”VCSA_IP”:9443/vsphere-client
localhost root “root_passwd”
After the internal vCenter has been
unregister from the Web service, you will need to register your vCenter to the
Web service.
To register run:
./admin-cmd register https://”VCSA_IP”:9443/vsphere-client
“vCenter_FQDN” “vCenter_Admin_ID” “vCenter_Admin_passwd”
You should be able to manage your vCenter
from Web Portal (https://”VCSA_IP”:9443/vsphere-client
) and also, your license
utilization will be shown on the reporting tab on vSphere Client.
That’s all you need to make this solution
works, but if you have a few more minutes I recommend you read it through the
end.
VCSA comes with Syslog and Core dump serves
enabled by default. If you do not intent to run these services, there’s no
reason to keep them running and consuming resources without a need to.
If you go the Services tab and click on
“Stop ESXi Services”, those services will be stopped, but after each reboot of
the appliance, those services will come up running again.
To disable the services you will need to
log in on the VCSA console and run the following commands.
To disable Syslog Server, run:
chkconfig syslog-collector off
To disable Core dumpe Server, run:
chkconfig vmware-netdumper off
Next time you reboot the appliance those
services would not be started up.
