#VSPHERE CLIENT 5.5 UPDATE 3E UPDATE#
In summary, while vCenter Server 5.5 Update 3 was mostly a bugfix and compatibility update release there was significant effort put into enhancing the User Experience of vSphere Administrators using the vSphere Web Client. The chart below shows normalized averages across our test environments. In other words, when I look at all the VMs that are running under a Cluster, there is a better than 40% reduction in the time it takes to generate that view. In the chart below we can see a large reduction in the time it takes to generate the Related Objects view for a Data Center, Cluster, Host, VM, and Distributed Switch object. As you might imagine, this area of the vSphere Web Client is a commonly used view and any performance increase is very welcome. For example, if we’re viewing the configuration of an ESXi Host, we can click on the Related Objects tab of that host and see all the VMs, VM templates, datastores, and networks that are registered to that host. The Related Objects view is where we can see objects related to the object we’re currently viewing. The chart below shows the nearly 60% improvement, on average, of the 5.5 U3 Web Client!įinally, the Related Objects view in the vSphere Web Client has also seen improvements in response times in 5.5 U3. Clicking, resizing, refreshing, and changing objects & metrics were all operations that caused delays in the vSphere Web Client. An additional area where administrators identified as an area for improvement was the Performance Charts. Administrators will definitely notice these optimizations in their day to day activities. Here’s a chart that shows the normalized response times of some of the different object types.Īs you can see, there is significant improvement across the board for the Action Menu. For example, a VM object has very different actions available to it than a Cluster or Data Center object. This is due to the context of the object and the types of actions that need to be loaded. Depending on the object we’re interacting with we see slightly different performance characteristics. In fact, the vSphere Web Client included in vCenter Server 5.5 U3 is on par with the performance in 6.0 Update 1 in some areas.Īnother pain point was the Action Menu (which is also the Right-Click Menu). The improvement is quite significant in many areas, not limited to what’s shown below. In the charts that follow we’ll see the normalized performance data of the vSphere Web Client prior to the optimizations included in 5.5 Update 3 compared to the performance after the inclusion of those optimizations. Large – vCenter Server (32 vCPU / 64 GB RAM), 1000 hosts, 15000 VMsīy using this wide range of environments the team was able to show marked improvements in the user experience regardless of the size of environments you may be managing.Small – vCenter Server (4 vCPU / 16 GB RAM), 2 hosts, 4 VMs.Two testbed environments that were used to test these new optimizations were: The team also felt it was important to consider the impact of the size of both the inventory and vCenter Server instance. These improvements were accomplished by a number of optimizations behind the scenes which includes the streamlining of pre-loaded data and reducing the number of queries required to build a view, page, or menu. Related Objects, Summary, and Settings pages.Action menu as well as the right-click menu.There are several key areas where we’ve seen a significant improvement in performance over previous versions of the 5.5 Web Client: VSphere Web Client – Areas of Improvement Our goal is to make the Web Client everyone’s primary management tool for vCenter Server & vSphere and continuing to improve performance has been an essential requirement in doing that. This is especially important as we see customers continue to leverage the legacy vSphere Client (also referred to as the legacy C# client). Throughout this blog post I’ll highlight some of the enhancements that have been brought to the vSphere Web Client in 5.5 Update 3. So, while vSphere Web Client performance has drastically improved with 5.5 U3, the UI elements have stayed the same which makes it easier for Administrators to continue using the 5.5 Web Client. The primary scope of the backported functionality was to greatly improve performance while maintaining the consistency of the 5.5 User Interface (UI). With that in mind, many of the improvements of the 6.0 vSphere Web Client have been “backported” to the vSphere Web Client in vCenter Server 5.5 Update 3. And the feedback is that the vSphere Web Client in vCenter Server 6.0 and 6.0 Update 1 has been a really great step forward in terms of User Experience (UX). VMware has been listening to the feedback coming in from our field, partners, and customers. Over the course of the previous few years we’ve seen a steady improvement in the vSphere Web Client.