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Running VMware Infrastructure Client on your Mac

R

robbith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 5, 2008
1
0
Melbourne
Hi All. I've been reading these forums for a while now and I decided I would try to contribute a little :)

I found that the only reason I needed to fire up windows was to run the VMware Infrastructure Client, so I decided to find out if there was an alternative way of doing this.

Unfortunately ESXi doesn't provide an Infrastructure Web Interface, so it appears the only way to do this is to run the Windows Client.

I ended up setting up a virtual 2003 server, which can 'stream' the infrastructure client to your mac using rdesktop seamlessly. This was exactly what I needed. An icon which I double click on, and the Infrastructure client launches.

The only issues are that because the client isn't actually running on your Mac, you cannot connect devices such as CD-Rom or FDD. This isn't a huge deal for me as my ESX server has access to an NFS share which has all the images sitting in it.

I have written up a guide on how I went about setting this up. Unfortunately I wrote this up in Word so I only have it in PDF format, no HTML. Hopefully it will help some of you out there who are sick of loading up fusion JUST to use one application.

You can find it here: http://rob.sprinkspt.com.au/infrastructure-osx.pdf

Anyway - thanks to you all, this forum has saved me several times since I became a Mac user.

Cheers, Rob.
 
Thanks

Thanks for the effort!

robbith said:
Hi All. I've been reading these forums for a while now and I decided I would try to contribute a little :)

I found that the only reason I needed to fire up windows was to run the VMware Infrastructure Client, so I decided to find out if there was an alternative way of doing this.

Unfortunately ESXi doesn't provide an Infrastructure Web Interface, so it appears the only way to do this is to run the Windows Client.

I ended up setting up a virtual 2003 server, which can 'stream' the infrastructure client to your mac using rdesktop seamlessly. This was exactly what I needed. An icon which I double click on, and the Infrastructure client launches.

The only issues are that because the client isn't actually running on your Mac, you cannot connect devices such as CD-Rom or FDD. This isn't a huge deal for me as my ESX server has access to an NFS share which has all the images sitting in it.

I have written up a guide on how I went about setting this up. Unfortunately I wrote this up in Word so I only have it in PDF format, no HTML. Hopefully it will help some of you out there who are sick of loading up fusion JUST to use one application.

You can find it here: http://rob.sprinkspt.com.au/infrastructure-osx.pdf

Anyway - thanks to you all, this forum has saved me several times since I became a Mac user.

Cheers, Rob.
Click to expand...
 
robbith said:
Hi All. I've been reading these forums for a while now and I decided I would try to contribute a little :)

I found that the only reason I needed to fire up windows was to run the VMware Infrastructure Client, so I decided to find out if there was an alternative way of doing this.

...

You can find it here: http://rob.sprinkspt.com.au/infrastructure-osx.pdf

Anyway - thanks to you all, this forum has saved me several times since I became a Mac user.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Rob!
 
How do you control the geometry of the x11 window?
I run 3 monitors and it makes my 'window' like 7000 px wide. If I try to use the -g option i get an error that it's not compatible with -A option.
 
homa2001 said:
How do you control the geometry of the x11 window?
I run 3 monitors and it makes my 'window' like 7000 px wide. If I try to use the -g option i get an error that it's not compatible with -A option.
Click to expand...

I guess I spoke too soon. It makes my window 7000 pixels wide while logging in into windows, but then presents a proper size VI3 login window and after login to that it creates a normal size VI center window which can even be resized.

It's just annoying that it does that during login, otherwise it's awesome. Tx for the tip. Hopefully they'll release a native client soon.

PS. I just installed the client on the VI3 admin server and use it instead of creating a dedicated VM for that. Seems a bit odd to use a VM to manage ESX especially if you are having problems with that ESX host.
 
I just ran into this page from a search on google.
I registered for these forums to say Thank You!

Trying this out now. I had been trying to come-up with a similar solution for weeks.

Thanks!
 
tcador said:
Wow that's great, thanks for your effort on this!
Click to expand...

One important caveat though - you'll still need to manage (power on/off, change settings etc.) your VMs through the VI client (on ESX(i)) or the web interface (VMware Server). But the remote desktop bit is definitively smoother than through virtualization of the Windows VI client.

Also, I don't know if it's possible to install avahi on ESXi. Does anyone know if this is possible?
 
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