Steve Herrod just announced the in my opinion the best fling so far on twitter.
Run vSphere client 4.1 in a snap. No install, just download the EXE and double-click. Place the ThinApped vSphere client on any network share and it will automatically stream to any Windows PC with no installation, agents, drivers, or specialized servers required. Carry ThinApped vSphere client and your customization on USB stick and now your vSphere client is available on the GO!
This fling uses VMware ThinApp to package vSphere Client into a single portable EXE giving you instant access to your virtual infrastructure from any computer. ThinApp has been used by corporate administrators to deploy thousands of applications to millions of desktops. Use VMware ThinApp to create your own virtualized applications, for more information visit the VMware ThinApp page and watch the ThinApp Blog.
I’ve had the Virtual Infrastructure/vSphere Client Thinapped for a few years. This isn’t news for me.
That’s great for you Jason, so did I but still it wasn’t a “VMware Thinapped here you go it is Free” thingie. Now it is, so it is cool!
I probably could have worded that to be a little less negative, but nonetheless that is my opinion.
A little more background info on what I did..
I created it for my own use as a Citrix Presentation Server (XenApp) published application which I managed a lot of in my previous environment 3 years ago. As you point out, it wasn’t distributable so unforutnately it could not be made available to others.
I remember at the time, I questioned describing it as “portable” because the ThinApp package was something like 400-600MB in size, mainly due to MS .NET which need to be baked in.
Finally!
Just like Jason (and probably countless others 🙂 I used to carry my own thinapped vSphere client, but having the option to give it to customers without buying thinapp licenses is definitely a great thing.
It’s nice but not necessarily maintained.
Jason, would you please blog about how you thinapped it??
Some of us don’t have the full-blown ThinApp but we do have ThinApp “Lite” that goes with VMware Workstation…instructions for both versions would be much appreciated…but if VMware would release and maintain a standard thinapped version it would help MANY people.
Perhaps all the VCDXes could exert their collective might toward the above??
Thank you, Tom
If ThinApp-version works perfectly fine, why would VMware even bother continue releasing “plain” client?
Wouldn’t it make life simpler for everybody to provide only this version?
Because the Thinapped client is a VMware fling, not a fully supported client.
this is the next best thing to a web-based or java-based OS-neutral client! 🙂
SSSSSLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW.
I have had a ThinApped client myself. I never even thought about the license and support parts for others. But it also would have been nice to release an Update 1 version as well.
Dave
It’s not the latest viclient version … Useless ?
I had a customer who did not have admin rights to update his virtual desktop’s client to 5.1.1… would have been nice to have an updated thinapp version on a somewhat trusted site