vCheck as a vSphere Client “Solution and Application”

I’ve always stored my vCheck report output file in “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\docRoot\vCheck”. I use the file name “index.html” for the output file name, which makes it the default document name for that folder. I’ve always thought this was a really cool place to put the report, because I can simply type my vCenter server name with a “/vCheck” and see the latest report [for example, http://vcenter.domain.local/vCheck]. It automatically rewrites the URL to https just like when you go to the normal vcenter.domain.local URL.

The problem is, what I really wanted all along was for it to open up in vCenter. (It is also feature request #16 and #17 on the vCheck feature request list) I looked over the instructions at http://read.virtualizeplanet.com/?p=352 and made a sample plugin. I told it to open https://vcenter.domain.local/vCheck and then placed the XML file into my local “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Plugins” just for testing. Re-launching my vCenter client gave me the new tab as expected. So far, so good. When clicking my new tab it gave me an error.

Web Browser Unable to download vCheck from vcenter.domain.local.  Unable to open this Internet site.  The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.

I double checked my plugin XML file and everything was in order. A little more digging showed that the current ‘moref’, ‘serverGuid’, ‘sessionId’ and other query strings were being passed to my document. It appears that Apache couldn’t process those query strings, so I decided to look somewhere else. A little bit of Googling found a nice write up by EMC vSpecialist @clintonskitson. The write up is avaialble here: https://community.emc.com/message/522461 I created a copy of the index.jsp from “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps\ROOT” and named it “vCheckRedirect.jsp”. I removed nearly all of the code and made the page do a very basic META REFRESH redirect to my existing report.

I then updated my Plugin XML to use https://vcenter.domain.local:8443/vCheckRedirect.jsp. The tab now opens a Java page, which does a simple redirect, which opens my vCheck in a tab.

Thats pretty cool, but still not what I really wanted. I now have to be in the data center inventory view to see my tab. I wanted it on the home page under ‘Solutions and Applications.’ You know, where things like Capicity IQ and vCenter Update Manager appear.

The plugin XML file had an extension parent of “InventoryView.Datacenter”. A little more digging and I found the solution. The extension parent I really wanted was “HomeView.Applications”. If you want to find more really cool places you could put this, check out the VMware document showing all of your options. It can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/vcplugin/vSphere_Plugin_40_Technote.pdf

The following articles and dcouments really helped along the way:

http://read.virtualizeplanet.com/?p=352
https://community.emc.com/message/522461
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/vcplugin/vSphere_Plugin_40_Technote.pdf

In case anyone wants to try these steps out, I’ve created a zip file that contains some Instructions and the two files needed — the plugin XML and the JSP redirect page. You can get the zip file here: vCheckPlugin.

If you test it out, please post a comment below and let me know if it worked. Thanks!