01-01-02 Installing vSphere client (the VMWare Virtual Infrastructure Client)
In this lesson we are going to learn how to install a vSphere client previously known as Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Client on a Windows system that you will use to manage your ESX servers and vCenter Server installation.
You can install the vSphere Client on any number of Windows machines. Your licensing agreement does not regulate the number of vSphere Clients installed.
The vSphere Client is a Windows application that allows for connecting directly to an
ESX or ESXi host or to a vCenter Server installation. The difference is that when you connect directly to an ESX/ESXi host it does require user account that exists on that specific ESX host, while connecting to a vCenter Server installation relies on local Windows or Active Directory user authentication. Additionally, some major features such as vMotion, for example—are available only when you connect to vCenter Server installation.
vSphere Client isn’t that intensive of an application, and you don’t need a high-end PC to run it, in fact, the installation requirements are not that big. All you need is a PC with a single processor, 1 CPU, 266 megahertz or faster, recommend is minimum 500 megahertz.
You’r going to need 400 megabytes free on the drive in your temp directory if you decide to install Host Update Utility, and that’s because that temp directory is going to be used for things like patches, and updates, that you might want to apply to your ESX host or virtual machines, with the Host Update Utility.
Host Update Utility is a component of the vSphere Client that’s going to allow you to update your ESX host and VM’s with patches and service packs.
The truth is you are going to need more than 400 megs because patches and updates can and will grow in terms of size. I’d recommend you have at least 10 gigs, and if you are going to use the update utility to update VMs also then 120 gigs of free space are good start.
If you do a full installation of the vSphere Client, it includes a number of components, it includes Microsoft.net 2.0, .net 3.0 with service pack 1, it includes Visual J#, and of course the core component is the VMware vSphere Client, and then the optional component that you can specify at install is whether or not you want the host update utility to be installed.
All right, there’s a three different ways to download the VMware vSphere Client. The easiest way is to open up your web browser and to point it to an ESX host or the vCenter Server and from there you could easily download the vSphere Client.
http://10.55.129.252
Now one other option is that you can get it off of the VMware vCenter media, that media could be a DVD or it could be an ISO file that you’ve downloaded from VMware.
To install vSphere client I am going to open a Web browser and then up in the address bar I’ll type in the IP address that we configured on the ESX server during the installation process:
Now this is the standard security certificate error. We’ll go ahead and add an exception, say get certificate and confirm security exception to allow us to access to the https interface for the server.
From here we can download the vSphere Client.
Click the link Download vSphere Client.
Save the file on your hard drive as VMware-viclient.exe.
It’ll take just a second to download this over my local LAN. Once the file is downloaded, cick Run
Now we can say we want to go ahead and run the new application, because we know where it came from, and it’ll extract the installation files. I’m going to click on this, and then say that I want to run this VMware-viclient.exe application.
A splash screen appears. The VMware vSphere Client installer prepares to install the components.
I’m just going to take the defaults here, and with that the installation starts. You can see down here it’s extracting the VMware vSphere Client MSI, and that brings up the installation wizard.
I’ll say Next here.
We’ll need to accept the license agreement, and I’ll say Next, at this point we’ll type our username and our company, in this case it’s VIADMIN.COM, and I’ll say Next.
And then as far as where to install the vSphere Client, I’ll just take the default of C:\Program Files\VMware\infrastructure, and then I’ll click Next.
And then at this point, we have a final confirmation screen where we check install to start the installation. It’ll take just a second to install all the pieces of the VMware vSphere Client.
Okay, all of the components have been installed.
It only took few minutes, and at this point we can just say Finish and our VMware vSphere Client installation is completed. So let’s see if it really worked.
And in the next movie, we’ll take a look at doing this by connecting to our ESX server.