Availability of the vSphere Clients for Linux systems

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about the availability of the vSphere Clients for Linux systems.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded

Resolution

The vSphere Client (C#) is only available for Windows systems while running vCenter Server 6.0 or earlier and it is not available for Linux systems.

For vCenter Server 6.0, the vSphere Web Client (Flex/Flash) was introduced providing full administrative abilities through a web based user interface. Additionally, in vCenter Server 6.5 and higher the vSphere Client (HTML5) was introduced allowing the administration of vCenter Server without the requirement of Flash. 

For more specific details on the clients available, see below:

• In vCenter Server 4.x, vSphere Web Access, a subset of vSphere Client functionality, can be used from Linux systems. 
• In vCenter Server 5.x, the vSphere Web Client (Flex/Flash) can be used from Linux platforms as well. The vSphere Web Client includes a subset of the functions available in the vSphere Client. 
• In vCenter Server 6.x, the vSphere Web Client (Flex/Flash) and in later 6.x versions the vSphere Client (HTML5) becomes available which allows administration of a vSphere environment through a web browser. More information on these can be found under Using the vSphere Web Client and Using the vSphere Client.

Note: With the release of vSphere 6.5 the vSphere Client (C#) has been deprecated. 

Additional Information

In vSphere 5.1, all new vSphere features are available only through the vSphere Web Client. The traditional vSphere Client continues to operate, supporting the same feature set as vSphere 5.0, but not exposing any of the new features in vSphere 5.1.

vSphere 5.1 and its subsequent update and patch releases are the last releases to include the traditional vSphere Client. Future major releases of VMware vSphere will include only the vSphere Web Client.

For vSphere 5.1, bug fixes for the traditional vSphere Client are limited to security or critical issues. Critical bugs are deviations from specified product functionality that cause data corruption, data loss, system crash, or significant customer application down time where no workaround is available that can be implemented.