C# Client is dead, long live the Web Client

Yep, C# client will no longer be available in the next releases of vSphere.

VMware have been giving a pretty clear signals in the last major vSphere releases that C# client would be gone soon, but nobody knew when exactly it was going to happen. However, when SRM and VUM were moved to web client in vSphere 6 it was obvious C# client's days are numbered.

Probably it could have been done a couple of years ago, but first Web client wasn't good enough due to performance issues. It also lacked integration with other VMware solutions and there was no replacement of C# client for standalone ESXi hosts.

Today VMware have moved its plugins (SRM, VUM) to the Web client and other VMware partners are sailing in the same direction. It also presented new embedded HTML5 Host client for ESXi hosts, which has feature parity with C# client for standalone hosts.

Here are some of web client benefits compared to C# client:

• Scalability – WC handles more objects and more concurrent admin access
• Bookmarking URLs - WC allows you to quickly return to specific objects or views and share them with others (such as in a support ticket)
• Recent Objects - WC lets you navigate quickly between things you’re working on
• Work-In-Progress - WC lets you save your work and come back to it later, even from another computer!
• Enhanced Linked Mode – WC can call up all your inventory in one view
• Remembers user customizations to UI – WC enables column selections and widths on grids, portlets on summary pages
• Latest feature support – WC is the only interface to support all new features 

As a short-term goal I think VMware will be focusing on fixing Client Integration Plugin which causes most of the issues with Web client - people having issues with OVF import, browsing datastores. It also doesn't work on Mac.

The long term goal would be to have a single ultimate client for vSphere and ESXi hosts. That's what actually VMware is doing right now by trying to replace Flash Web client with HTML5. You can already have a preview of H5 Web Client for vSphere - it exists as a Fling.

It has to be noted that The C# client will be kept in all current platforms.

You can read the official announcement here and that's where you can leave your feedback.