2021 Flash End of Life & End of Support - vSphare Client Workaround

 As flash is end of life and end of support in 2021 many of you are not able to use the vSphere web client flash-based.

I still have some of my vCenter servers on 6.5 which support the VMware HTML5 web client however to manage some of my NSX 6.3.x task is not supported on it.

I have manged to run vSphere client on my chrome and internet explorer as workaround and below are the steps you need to perform.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/78589

To work this successful you need to make sure that you still have flash installed on your system

Internet explorer is using flash installed on system.

Chrome has its own flash installed in another location.

Check out the dates in the screenshot.

 

 

 Never click on the update plugin you need to click on the Run this time button

 

 

Here are the actual steps you need to do.

 Make sure your chrome still has settings for flash if not then you have upgraded your browser, you need to downgrade it to version 86.x

 

 

 

 

run chrome://version command in address bar and validate the flash version and path.

 

Create new file under below path with the name "mms.cfg"

 %windir%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg

and

%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg

(you will have to create system folder here if its not there)

 

Copy and paste below code in the file. (mms.cfg)

EOLUninstallDisable=1
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListPreview=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://FQDN_Of_The_vCENTER_System/

 Below are the location for the different browsers

Operating System and Browser	Location
Google Chrome on Windows	%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg
Edge Chromium on Windows	%localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg
32-bit Windows	%windir%\System32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
64-bit Windows	%windir%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
MacOS	/Library/Application Support/Macromedia
Google Chrome on MacOS	/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave Flash/System

Restart your browser and start using vSphere web client with flash.

Make sure to disable the auto update on Chrome and Firefox or it will stop working after upgarde.

Google chrome uses its own flash path if you upgrade chrome it will delete flash dll files which will not let you download the flash again.

Need any help? post comment.