As Rolf Harris would say – can you guess what it is yet ?
This tip relates to a “fling” – an application that vmware allow their engineers to develop to facilitate using the VMware platform. When I saw this I thought – this is a much more useful way to access vmware vsphere without having to run the vsphere client.
So the developers say this about the fling
VMware Boomerang is a radically simple client application that allows you to use multiple vSphere servers simultaneously. Simply select “Add a Server…” to connect and login to an ESX server, vCenter server, or View Connection Server and you will be presented with a list of all available virtual machines.
For vSphere VMs, you are able to perform power operations on the virtual machine or connect to it using the VMware Remote Console (VMRC), which is provided with vSphere Client. You can also easily add virtual machines as favorites so you can quickly view the subset of virtual machines that you are interested in.
For View desktops, you are able to choose between the RDP or PCoIP protocol and launch a remote desktop. Once you have launched a desktop, you will have a fully functional remote desktop experience that matches the existing Windows View Client.
Features
- Supports connecting to multiple ESX and VC servers simultaneously.
- Supports connecting to multiple View Connection Servers simultaneously.
- Graphical installer lets you disable support for vSphere or View if you have no use for it.
- Connect to View desktops using PCoIP or RDP.
- Automatic redirection of client printers to View desktops with ThinPrint.
- Allows you to save your credentials for easy login to servers.
- Favorites pane enables easy browsing through multiple virtual machines on different servers.
- Simple user interface gives you quick access to connecting to a virtual machine or issuing power operations.
- Keyboard navigation allows you to type the name of the virtual machine you want to use or to use directional keys to navigate.
- Servers with large numbers of virtual machines are automatically collapsed into hyperlinks, which you can click to view subsets of the inventory or the entire thing.
- Configurable automatic update checking.
- See virtual machines you have recently connected to in the Recently Used section.
- Search for virtual machines quickly across all your servers.
- Users needing access to more than basic virtual machine power operations should use VMware vCenter Server to manage vSphere hosts and virtual machines.
- vCenter supports activities like vMotion, High Availability, storage configuration, host provisioning cloning, templates, monitoring, alerts and more.
Very importantly though
VMware Boomerang does not support connecting directly to free ESXi servers.