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Gleb Reys February 25, 2009 19 Comments

Use Infrastructure Client to manage VMware Server

I'm not sure if it's part of the official documentation to VMware Server, but seeing as a few people failed to connect to their VMware Server 2.x using Infrastructure Client, I thought I'd explain how exactly this can be done.

Why use Infrastructure Client to manage VMware Server

There are three reasons I can think of:

  1. Web-based administration on VMware Server is awfully slow. I must admit it got better in 2.x betas of the server, but web-based management is still far from anything really comfortable. Infrastructure Client seems visibly faster.
  2. Common management interface – Infrastructure Client provides a common interface to manage all your virtual environments, regardless of the VMware virtualization platform supporting them – can be ESX/ESXi or VMware Server.
  3. Access to a full range of configuration parameters – last time I checked, web interface only covered the most used options of managing your VMware Server and VMs. Infrastructure Client is bound to give you access to all the features available, not just the basic ones.

How to access VMware Server with Infrastructure Client

Many people attempt to access server using just the VMware Server hostname, like in this example below:

vmware-server-hostname-only

Attempt to connect VMware Server without the port specified

… they get connection refused error and give up.

To access your VMware Server from Infrastructure Client, you have to be a bit more specific, and provide a port number to connect to:

VMware Server with Infrastructure Client

VMware Server with Infrastructure Client

That's it, hope this quick tip helps you!

Filed Under: Virtualization News Tagged With: VMware, vmware server

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Comments

  1. Tor Håkon Haugen says

    February 25, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Hi,

    Thank you for a brilliant tip. I've actually never thought of adding the port address behind the servers IP-address.

    At the moment I'm running VMware ESXi instead on my home server booting from USB. After some modifications I was able to use the machines SATA-controller to add a local datastore.

    If anyone wants to read about my setup I've described it here: http://blog.torh.net/2009/02/22/running-vmware-esxi-hypervisor/

  2. Gleb Reys says

    February 25, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Thanks for a comment and for sharing a link, I'll follow your blog from now on!

  3. Catemaco says

    April 30, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    Another big thank you from me. The web client is painfully slow.

    Now I'm wondering if there's a way to use the VMWare Converter to connect directly to a VMWare Server host?

  4. Gleb Reys says

    May 9, 2009 at 1:46 am

    Hi Catemaco,

    I haven't used VMware Converter lately so wouldn't know the answer yet, but see no reason why this would be impossible. A VMware Server host is nothing but a Windows or Linux OS, so it should be easily convertable.

  5. Clayton says

    September 4, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    This didn't work for me, so I tried https://server:8333 instead of just server:8333 and it worked. Thanks!

  6. seven says

    December 15, 2009 at 11:44 am

    hi,
    Can you tell more about security and comfortable in that solution vs web interface (use https)

  7. muchas says

    December 17, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Muchas gracias!

  8. Glen Pyle says

    March 14, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    Irregardless is not a word, thanks for the great tip!

  9. Gleb Reys says

    March 24, 2010 at 11:13 am

    Thanks so much for your comment, Glen – fixed 🙂

  10. Romain says

    June 2, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    Hi There,
    I can not find The VMware Infrastructure Client to download. Any hints please?
    Thanks in advance!

  11. Richie Cunningham says

    June 4, 2010 at 1:43 am

    Thank you for your post. In the back of my mind I wondered. Your post gave me the motivation I needed! 🙂 ip:8333 worked for me.

  12. Derek Shaw says

    July 16, 2010 at 2:12 am

    vmware infrastructure client could not establish a connection with server "192.168.254.99". Details: The server closed the connection.

  13. Derek Shaw says

    July 16, 2010 at 2:32 am

    vmware infrastructure client could not establish a connection with server "192.168.254.99". Details: The server closed the connection.

    — never mind!
    — re-read the (correct) log and noticed the 'App' service was reporting problems with the /usr/lib/vmware/settings.

  14. CrazyBoSS says

    October 11, 2010 at 10:03 pm

    I'm traing with vSphare Client 4.1 (last version) to conect VMware Server 2 (last version) and say that I should update my client software. Why?

  15. QuantumGravatar says

    January 11, 2011 at 1:33 am

    With a completely fresh install of vSphere Client there is a step missing, there are special client files you need to install. See link below.

    Accessing VMWare Server 2 with vSphere Client (the unsupported way) by Andrea Benini
    http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/accessing-vmware-server-2-with-vsphere-client-the-unsupported-way.html

  16. icaro says

    April 11, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    You save my live!
    thx.

  17. CreeTar says

    May 30, 2011 at 7:33 pm

    same prob here, using vSphere, it tries to download something from the vServer which is not available (404).

    how can i get the VI Client if I use the free vServer 2.0?

    regards

  18. Nicky says

    November 3, 2011 at 11:28 am

    pls help me to configure virtual desktop machine throgh VDM

Trackbacks

  1. VI Client and VMware Server | From thoughts to text says:
    October 16, 2009 at 7:31 pm

    […] a nice tip for using VMwares Infrastructure Client to manage VMware Server, a product which is usually managed via web interface. The tip is to simply add the port number of […]

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