By default, the vSphere Web Client accesses online Help on the Web at pubs.vmware.com. This ensures that the client is always accessing up-to-date content.

If you do not have internet access from the systems you use to access the vSphere Web Client, you can download and deploy a local copy of the vSphere Web Client online Help, and reconfigure the vSphere Web Client to link to the locally-deployed Help.

Note. Downloadable Help for vSphere 5.1.0a is not yet available. It will be available soon.

VMware vSphere Web Client 5.5.x
VMware vSphere Web Client 5.1.x

Install the downloadable help file as follows:

1. From a computer with internet access, download the zip package for your version of vsphere:
• For vSphere 5.1, download the vsphere-51-tc7.zip package from http://download3.vmware.com/software/help/vsphere-51-tc7.zip.
• For vSphere 5.5, download the vsphere-55-tc7.zip package from http://download3.vmware.com/software/help/vsphere-55-tc7.zip.
  
2. Extract the contents of the .zip file and rename them to help.war.
   
3. Copy the help.war file to one of the following locations on the vSphere Web Client system:
   • Windows: C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphereWebClient\server\pickup\
   • vCenter Server Appliance: /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/server/pickup/
4. Edit the webclient.properties file in one of the following locations to change the help.url property to help.url=/help/:
   • Windows 2008 system: C:\ProgramData\VMware\vSphere Web Client\
   • Windows 2003 system: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\vSphere Web Client\
   • vCenter Server Appliance: /var/lib/vmware/vsphere-client/
5. Restart the vSphere Web Client service.

To restart the vSphere Web Client service on Windows:

1. Select Start > Administrative Tools > Services.
   
2. Right-click VMware vSphere Web Client and select Restart.
   

To restart the vSphere Web Client service on the vCenter Server Appliance:

1. Use a Web browser to connect to the vCenter Server Appliance management interface at http://<ip-or-hostname>:5480.
   
2. Log in to the management interface with an administrator username and password.
   
3. Select the vCenter Server tab and select the Summary tab.
   
4. Under services, click Stop next to the vSphere Web Client.
   
5. When the service has stopped, click Start to restart it.
   

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: ダウンロード可能な vSphere Web Client ヘルプをインストールする (2107407)