How-to increase the default timeout value of vSphere Web Client

Timeout value of vSphere Web Client – how to change

The vSphere Web Client will become the main client for managing the VMware vSphere Infrastructures. There is a default timeout value which is 30 min, but it’s configurable. Think twice if you have a real reason, in production environment, to change this value.

In my lab environment I’m trying to work work more and more with the new vSphere Web client, which has been improved in vSphere 5.1. My lab VMs…. nobody except me does touches them. Why then to be slowed down 3-4 times a day when you have to re-login again? It’s not productive in my environment.

So quick search on the Internet brought me directly to the VMware Documentation page, where I found the solution right away. Depending of your vCenter configuration, if you’re running vCenter on Windows 2003, Windows 2008 or as a vCenter Server Appliance. The steps (or rather the paths) differs.

You’ll need to locate the webclient.properties file within the file structure, and modify the timeout value there.

The file is located in different file locations on the vCenter server. Here is a quick screenshot which I “borrowed” from the documentation page:

 

Then, when you locate the webclient.properties file, you just open it with notepad, uncomment, and change the default value, which is 120 min, to value that fits your needs.

Note that If you put 0 as a value (zero), then there is no timeout at all.

 

 

You’ll need to restart the vSphere Web Client service, through windows services.

 

If you’re using the vCenter Server Appliance, then you must restart the vSphere-client service for the changes to be validated.