vSphere Client SDK 7.0 - Release Notes

What's in the Release Notes

• Overview
• What's New
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues

Overview

The vSphere Client 7.0 SDK enables development of vSphere Client plugins supported on both vSphere and VMware Cloud on AWS.

What's New

This release of the vSphere Client and the SDK introduces the following features and improvements:

vSphere Client plugin management improvements

• Plugin Auto-Discovery
  • Automatic detection and deployment of plugins registered or updated with the vCenter Server Extension Manager (no new user login required).
  • Automatic detection and undeployment of plugins unregistered from the vCenter Server Extension Manager (no vSphere Client restart required).
• Enhancements to enabling and disabling plugins:
  • RBAC support through a new vCenter Server privilege: Plugin.Management.
  • Tracking through vCenter Server tasks.

vSphere Client changes

• The URLs of vSphere Client pages are now using a router syntax made of multiple paths. They are no longer based on extension IDs.
  • No changes to existing plugins are required.
  • This change is transparent to all API navigation calls initiated by the plug-in, all URLs specified in the plugin manifest and old user bookmarks using extension ids.
  • Plugins rely on the iframe URL but not on the URL format of vSphere Client pages which is not a public API.
• All Monitor and Configure extensions are now placed under a dedicated plug-in category or moved directly at the root of the Monitor/Configure table of contents. Integration within the vSphere Client categories is no longer available.

New SDK capabilities for plugins

• Remote plugin shortcuts are displayed in a dedicated Plugins section on the Shortcuts page. The shortcut is generated by the vSphere Client based on the known plugin display name and icon.
• Remote plugin support for multiple plugin server registrations with a single vCenter Server (see new app.getPluginBackendInfo() API).
• Theme-specific icons for both local and remote plugins. More information about this feature can be found in the Using Themes with vSphere Client Plug-ins chapter of the official SDK documentation.
• Local and Remote plugins can fformat plugin dates and subscribe for date and time format changes (see new app.formatDateTime and app.onDateTimeFormatChanged APIs).
• Local and Remote plugins can open a lightweight confirmation modal (see new modal.openConfirmationModal API).
• Ability to navigate from one remote plugin to another (see new app.navigateToRemotePluginView and app.getRemotePluginNavigationMap APIs).
• Allow remote plugin views to retrieve their proxied plugin server origin (see new app.getProxiedPluginServerOrigin API). This is a relative location enabling the plugin to properly reference its resources.
• Support for SHA-256 thumbprints for plugin extensions with the vCenter Server. Using SHA-1 thumbprints is still supported.
• Increased maximum height of a modal dialogs for modals which require more space.

Development environment improvements

• Ability to redeploy local and remote plugins in dev mode. When the URL parameter pluginDeveloperMode=true is set the Client Plugins view contains a REDEPLOY button which triggers plugin re-installation.
• Improved local and remote SDK samples:
  • New versions of the referenced libraries: Clarity Design System 1.1 and Angular 7.
  • More standard UX patterns following the UX Design Guidelines for vSphere Client Plugins.
  • Linking a Summary section with a Monitor or Configure view for more details.
  • Plugin view navigation with custom data.
  • Integration with user settings for theming and date formatting.

Resolved Issues

Plugin requests fail with missing user session.

Symptoms: The front-end or back-end API used to retrieve the current user session returns null.

Fix: Session info is no longer cached and when the user session has expired the vSphere Client automatically displays a modal dialog indicating the user needs to login again. This prevents failing plugin UI operations caused by a missing user session. 

Custom objects of local plugins are not displayed properly when they have no icon.

Symptoms: The icon of custom objects is optional but when it has not been specified the custom object is displayed without a name.

Fix: Custom object names are displayed correctly even when no icon is specified.

Reloading the views of sample plugins through the browser "Reload frame" context-menu action does not work.

Symptoms: Reloading the views of sample plugins through the browser "Reload frame" context-menu action leads to an HTTP 404 error instead of the content being displayed.

Fix: Sample plugin views now display correctly after using the browser "Reload-frame" context-menu action. The sample plugins now use the HashLocationStrategy Angular routing strategy instead of the default PathLocationStrategy.

The shutdown.sh script does not work on Mac OS in local development mode.

Symptoms: On Mac OS the shutdown.sh script does not stop the server locally and subsequent execution of startup.sh script would fail to start the server (although it reports success).

Fix: The shutdown.sh script has been fixed to run correctly on Mac OS.

The pickup folder is not available by default to deploy bundles in local development mode.

Symptoms:By default, the pickup folder is missing and cannot be used for development.

Fix: The property pickup.deployer=true is added to your webclient.properties file when the server-registration scripts are run.

Plugin Management UI fails to create vCenter Server tasks for plugins present in the plugin-packages folder.

Symptoms: Logs contain an exception that a vCenter Server task could not be created for a given plugin.

Fix: Creation of vCenter Server tasks is not required and has been disabled for plugins in the plugin-packages folder as this is not a supported Production deployment scenario.

Known Issues

vCenter Server registration script for setting up development environment sporadically fails.

On rare occasions the server-registration(.sh/.bat) script is unable to copy the development setup files to the folders expected by the local vSphere Client instance.

Symptoms: The vCenter Server registation script folder contains a temp folder with all files generated and downloaded from the vCenter Server. It is normally deleted upon successful completion of the script.

Workaround: Copy the generated temp files to VMWARE_CFG_DIR/store.jks, VMWARE_CFG_DIR/vsphere-client/webclient.properties and VMWARE_CFG_DIR/vsphere-ui/config/ds.properties respectively.

Plugin Cards are missing from the secondary VM Summary page design.

The new VM Summary page design is a card container-based layout which is Off by default. It can be switched on by the user but does not support plugin cards yet.

Symptoms: No plugin cards are shown when switching to the new VM Summary page layout.

Workaround: Use the default VM Summary page layout.

Two portlets in the same plug-in cannot share the same URL.

When a vSphere Client plug-in contains two portlets, they must specify different values for their attributes. Otherwise, a global refresh operation updates only one of the portlets.

Symptoms: Global refresh updates only one of the extensions having the same URL.

Workaround: Assign different URLs to the two portlets. For example:

   <extension id="portlet1">
          ...
                  <url>/vsphere-client/chassisa/resources/host-portlet1.html</url>
          ...
   </extension>
   <extension id="portlet2">
          ...
                  <url>/vsphere-client/chassisa/resources/host-portlet2.html</url>
          ...
   </extension>

Memory leak with Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.

vSphere Client's memory consumption increases steadily when using Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 with iframes in vSphere Client plug-ins. This is a known general issue with iframes on Internet Explorer.

Symptoms: Memory increases on IE11 with each opened plugin iframe leading to OutOfMemory error after some time.

Workaround: Use other browsers supported with the vSphere Client, such as Chrome or Firefox. List of supported browsers includes Microsoft Edge version 38 and later, Google Chrome version 50 and later, and Mozilla Firefox version 45 and later.