How to connect to a VM created by ESXi remotly

Question

I'm new to VMware and ESXi and this question might be very basic. But it seams I can not find a way to do it. I installed ESXi 6.5 on a server and installed 3 Ubuntu 16.0.4. I can access them through VMWare client and ESXi Web using the console but the question is: how can I access these VM using the VMWare Workstation or anything that allow me to access the Ubuntu GUI without login to ESXi server?

I even setup static IP for each Ubuntu VM but VMware workstation doesn't give me an option to access remote VM's (It has an option to connect to a server?! and I tried VM IP or name and Ubuntu password but it can not connect and just hang there without error message.

Any help appreciate, -Thanks

Answer 1

Can you ping the IPs ? On the ESXi 6.5, for each VM, right click settings, you have to check if you have assigned the network adapter. Then inside the VM, ifconfig, check if the IPs have been well assigned.

Update the VMware tools of the VMs, then ping them. If you won't update the vmware tools, use e1000 network adapters for each VMs. you should be able to ping them and putty on them

Answer 2

My question was accessing the Ubuntu Desktop the same way that VMware workstation allow you when the image is on your local computer.

After some research it seams we can not use VMware workstation to connect to an Linux created by ESXi so if your user like to have a Ubuntu desktop(The Putty is not enough for them) then they need to use a tool like VNC or xRDP and setup a remote desktop.

Also there also some ways to give user permission to access through ESXi client or web but it has some licencing involve and not possible with just ESXi free. There are also some tools that give user some combination of command line and UI like mobaxterm: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/