You can configure the vSphere Web Client to live refresh the recent tasks and the alarms that result from operations that other users perform in your environment.

By design the vSphere Web Client displays tasks initiated by other users and the resulting alarms from these tasks only when you manually refresh the vSphere Web Client. If you want to see the tasks from other users, or monitor alarms resulting from other users actions, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. On the computer where the vSphere Web Client is installed, locate the webclient.properties file.
    The location of this file depends on the operating system on which the vSphere Web Client is installed.
    Operating System File path
    Windows C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\vsphere-client\webclient.properties
    vCenter Server Appliance /etc/vmware/vsphere-client/webclient.properties
  2. Open the webclient.properties file, add the following configuration line, and save it. 
    live.updates.enabled=true
    Live refresh of recent tasks and alarms is enabled for the vSphere Web Client.
  3. Log out from the vSphere Web Client.
  4. Use https://hostname:9443/vsphere-client/ to log in to the vSphere Web Client.

    hostname stands for the name or the IP address of the host where vCenter Server system runs.

    If you log in to the vSphere Web Client by using the https://hostname/vsphere-client/, you will see no recent tasks or alarms under the respective Recent Tasks or Alarms portlets in the vSphere Web Client.

Results

In an environment with multiple vCenter Server systems that are connected to the same vCenter Server Single-Sign On domain, the vSphere Web Client that you configured for live refresh displays recent tasks and alarms for all the vCenter Server instances in the domain. However, if you log in to a different vSphere Web Client, you will not see live refresh for recent tasks or alarms for any of the vCenter Server systems in the vCenter Server Single-Sign On domain.

Example

In this example, you have two vCenter Server instances (A and B) connected to the same vCenter Server Single-Sign On domain. With each of the vCenter Server instances, you installed a vSphere Web Client instance.

You log in to vSphere Web Client A by using https://hostnameA/vsphere-client/.

You log in to vSphere Web Client B by using https://hostnameB/vsphere-client/.

You enable live refresh of recent tasks and alarms on vSphere Web Client A, and log out from it.

You can observe the following results:
  • You log in to vSphere Web Client A from https://hostnameA/vsphere-client/. You do not see any recent tasks or alarms in the respective Recent Tasks or Alarms portlets.
  • You log in to vSphere Web Client A from https://hostnameA:9443/vsphere-client/. You can see live refresh of recent tasks and alarms for all the users currently performing operations on both vCenter Server systems in the vCenter Server Single-Sign On domain.
  • You log in to vSphere Web Client B from https://hostnameB/vsphere-client/. You can see the recent tasks and alarms of only operations that you perform on vCenter Server system A or vCenter Server system B. Only after you manually refresh the vSphere Web Client B you see the latest recent tasks and alarms that result from operations performed by other users on vCenter Server system A and vCenter Server system B.