Unfortunately, the excellent vsphere windows client has now been discontinued (or at least we assume it has because we get error message "you have restricted editing capabilities on a virtual machine of version 9...). So now we have to figure out how to get the web client.
We don't want to install vcenter, due to the unnecessary complexity and cost, but it looks like we have to.
Unfortunately, I cant find out how to install vcentre - I found a page with the prerequisites, but It didn't mention the most important piece of information - what OS it needs, nor how to actually install it from the iso.
We are using vmware essentials kit on a single host. We dont have any windows server licenses, so if vcenter requires this, vmware is out, unfortunately.
- what OS is required for vcenter
- is vcenter free?
- Do we need vcenter or vcenter server, or are they the same?
- how do we get it?
- How do we install it?
- How do we access the web panel?
- Where is the documentation? We have spent some considerable time looking for it. The nearest is this page:VMware vSphere Documentation which is for vsphere, not vcenter, and only includes info about the vcenter appliance. On this page is a documentation link to the right, but vcenter is not included in the list of products - its like it doesn't exist.
Why do vmware make it so hard to use vsphere now? Why doesn't sphere simply come with vcenter, as it cant work without it now, or at least offer it as an option when installing vsphere. It must be a show stopper for many people like us who want to evaluate vmware to virtualise a hand full of non HA environments, but get stuck at this point.