In moving to VMware vSphere 6 and 6.5, VMware abandoned their C# thick client and instead provided two web clients. The legacy Adobe Flash client is at feature parity with the C# thick client, while the more modern HTML5 client is still not at feature parity. This leaves admins in the position where they need to switch back and forth between the two clients to perform normal administration duties as well as keep track of the vSphere client in a sea of browser tabs. This project was created to address those shortcomings. Basically, the project is an electron front-end for the vSphere client. It allows for easy switching between the Flash and HTML5 clients, and works like a standalone desktop app.

To build the project, you will need Node.js and NPM installed on your machine. Clone the repo locally, and then run npm install from the repo directory. This will download and install all of the Node.js modules required for the project.

If you would like a quick select list of all of your vCenters and ESXi hosts, make the appropriate changes in the mainmenu.js file. There is a sample vCenter entry and some sample host entries to get you started. If you don't want anything in the menu, feel free to delete everything between the Begin Custom Menu and End Custom Menu comments.

To run the application to test any changes you make to the menu structure, run npm start in the repo directory.

To build an executable, run npm run build. Executables will be created in the dist directory under the repo root. This directory is specified in the .gitignore file so that packaged builds won't be commited to the repo.

Please note that the Windows packager creates a 64-bit executable and won't run on Windows 32-bit.

If you are using Active Directory Integration with your vSphere environment, you'll want to make sure that you install the Enhanced Authentication Plugin from VMware. If Windows Session Authentication already works for you on the vSphere web clients, you most likely already have this installed.

Code contributions are welcome! If there is something you see that can be fixed/improved, feel free to create pull requests for your changes.

This project is licensed under the MIT. You are free to use this project in any way you wish. Commits back to this repo with fixes and improvements are welcome. The author of the project grants no warranties and accepts no liablity for anything that might result from the use of this software.