Although I don’t think vSphere Web Client is a good choice as main GUI for vSphere administration, it has done one thing right and well – it has a unique URL for almost everything you can browse the vSphere Web Client. The benefit is that you can bookmark a URL and open to the page without many clicks.
The URL for vSphere Web Client looks pretty long and could be intimidating at first impression. Like most of the things around us, the URLs have good patterns. I’ll analyze them and break them down to different parts. Once you finish this blog, you should be able to hack them by yourself.
Bothered by SLOW Web UI to manage vSphere? Want to manage ALL your VMware vCenters, AWS, Azure, Openstack, container behind a SINGLE pane of glass? Want to search, analyze, report, visualize VMs, hosts, networks, datastores, events as easily as Google the Web? Find out more about vSearch 3.0: the search engine for all your private and public clouds.
URL Samples
The home URL of the vSphere Client is as follows, which shows the login page.
https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/# |
After successful user login, the following first page shows up:
https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.controlcenter.domainView |
From the first page, you can click to many different managed objects to monitor or manage. The following are a few URLs to some main object types.
vCenter Home: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.viHome.domainView vCenter: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.folder.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AFolder%3Agroup-d1~core Datacenter: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.datacenter.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3ADatacenter%3Adatacenter-3~core Cluster: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.cluster.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AClusterComputeResource%3Adomain-c725~core Host: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.host.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AHostSystem%3Ahost-123~core VirtualMachine: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.vm.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AVirtualMachine%3Avm-135~core DataStore: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.datastore.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3ADatastore%3Adatastore-124~core Network: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.network.gettingStarted;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3ANetwork%3Anetwork-125~core |
As you would try out and observe, most of the URLs point to the Getting Started tab, which is not quite useful but still takes the first tab. If you want to go to a different tab, you would try out other extension IDs.
Let’s pick a virtual machine to different tabs:
Summary: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.vm.summary;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AVirtualMachine%3Avm-135~core Monitor: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.vm.monitor.issues.commonView;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AVirtualMachine%3Avm-135~core Manage: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.vm.manage.settings.vmHardwareView;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AVirtualMachine%3Avm-135~core Related Objects: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.vm.related;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AVirtualMachine%3Avm-135~core |
As you can see the extension ids are pretty self explanatory. If a virtual machine monitor tab’s extension id is vsphere.core.vm.monitor.issues.commonView, would the host’s monitor tab be like vsphere.core.host.monitor.issues.commonView? That is what I tried with host and it worked. The trick does not work with the manage tab though.
Host Manage: https://10.8.8.198:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=vsphere.core.host.monitor.issues.commonView;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~E21E5AD2-E136-4F99-BD4F-43C6BE8EAA50%3AHostSystem%3Ahost-123~core |
URL Patterns
As we’ve analyzed many URLs, it’s time to generalize the pattern. Here are the URL formula:
https://<vc-ip>:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=<extension-id> |
For one vCenter, all the part up to the extension-id is fixed. The extension-id can be different and rederers different pages. Most of the extensions need more information like vCenter instnance info, and managed object ID. These URLs comes with the following pattern:
https://<vc-ip>:9443/vsphere-client/#extensionId=<extension-id>;context=com.vmware.core.model%3A%3AServerObjectRef~<vc-uuid>%3A<managed-object-type>%3A<managed-object-value>~core |
All the vCenter UUID, managed object reference can be retrieved from the vSphere API, or vSphere MOB. They don’t change so it’s safe to use them unless removed. If you know these values, you can type them as shell command in a browser.
