Summary
Note: The Onyx download, information, and community is currently being maintained at VMware Project Onyx. .
Onyx is a standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later, this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script.
System Requirements
Note: The Onyx download, information, and community is currently being maintained at VMware Project Onyx. .
To run Onyx you must have the .NET Framework 3.5 installed. If you do not have the .NET 3.5 framework, please visit the Microsoft website to download the distribution.
Instructions
Note: The Onyx download, information, and community is currently being maintained at VMware Project Onyx. .
In order to install Onyx, complete the following:
- Download the zip from the download section.
- Extract it to a folder of your choice and run Onyx.exe.
- To connect to a server, click the following icon *
- Enter the IP of the vCenter Server on which you want to work and click Connect.
- Connect with any of the following clients:
- For vSphere Client in the "IP Address" field enter the following address: http://[IP of the machine where Onyx is running] : [listening port]
- For vSphere PowerCLI, run the following command: Connect VI Server [IP of the machine where Onyx is running] - protocol HTTP - port [listening port] -User[username] -Pass[password]
Video
Change Log
Engineers
![]() | Ignat IgnatovWorks in the Datacenter Intelligence & vCenter User Interface QE group. | |
![]() | Yavor BoychevWorks in the Datacenter Intelligence & vCenter User Interface QE group. |


Any plans for an update?
Thank you,
gb
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Neither of the videos do us much good here at work, as YouTube is blocked. I’ll try to remember to look tonight from home.
Hi,
when I try to connect to Onyx I get this error in the VSphere Client logfile:
[ :Error ] 2010-04-28 11:18:00.234 Error retrieving clients.xml
System.Net.WebException: The operation has timed out
Server stack trace:
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
Exception rethrown at [0]:
at VpxClient.Login.ClientsXmlLoader.TryDownloadAllPorts(Exception& activeError)
at VpxClient.Login.ClientsXmlLoader.Download(Object obj)
Connection from Onyx to vCenter seems to be fine.
Happens with Onyx running on vCenter server as well as running on the client machine.
Any idea what the problem might be?
Thanks Christian
Hi Christian,
To me it seems like a connection problem. I will advice you to check your firewall settings. Make sure that the Onyx ports are not blocked by the firewall. You can find the port numbers in the Settings\Connection (by default are used 1545 and 1546). If this doesn’t solve your problem I’m recommending you to start a thread in the Onyx community (http://vmware.com/go/onyx).
Regards,
Ignat
This is very cool. Great job guys!
Here’s a quick video showing Onyx in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bANfdjuH4wk