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VMware vSphere Client can not run in wine. Neither in Mono.

What tools are you using to create, start/stop new VMs, connect on the console without VMware vSphere Client?

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5 Answers

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VMware's own VCLI will take care of most non-graphical tasks. For viewing the console, though, you're stuck with Windows unfortunately.

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I was afraid of this answer. I would prefer to do everything from Linux. – Mircea Vutcovici Apr 7 '11 at 13:56
@Mircea - so would I (Mac OSX, actually), but unfortunately VMware must not have enough customers stating this for them to put the R&D effort into anything other than a native windows client. – ErikA Apr 7 '11 at 13:58
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up vote 2 down vote

You can use the VMWare Command Line Interface to do a great many things with VMWare hosts.
This can probably meet many of your management needs, though it's not as "friendly" as the GUI and there's no console access that I know of...

You can also always run a Windows instance in VirtualBox and manage your systems from there.
This is the solution we use in my (Mac) shop, though it does require a Windows license...

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I would recommend RDCing to the vCenter server or to a VM running Windows. I know it's not really the "correct" answer but the GUI and PowerCLI tools really are the best way to interact with ESX/i.

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up vote 1 down vote

I'm working on a solution to manage ESX(i) natively on Linux with a GUI...

This has started as a little learning simple GUI coding project but it becomes more and more usable ;o)

You can take a look on the current features here:

http://vEMan.nethna.de

This is may useless for newer releases of ESX because according to:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2005377

(Starting from ESX(i) v5 there will be the web access feature also available for ESXi - so you may don't need a client anymore...)

But when you're using v3.X/4.x you will have no other GUI tool than mine (as far as I know) ;o)

I'm happy for comments ;o)

Regards Thomas

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libvirt seems to have a driver to connect to ESX in some form or other - http://libvirt.org/drvesx.html

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