How to Fix vSphere Recent Tasks Not Showing Up

Case: vSphere web client not showing Recent Tasks pane?

Many VMware administrators tend to use vSphere web client to access ESXi hosts, create new virtual machines and manage resources. As you can see, the vSphere web client presents a graphical user interface (GUI) with an object navigator, the main workspace, the recent objects, recent tasks, and alarms panels. These panels can be adjusted, moved, collapsed, and closed.

If you find that your vSphere Recent Tasks not showing, there are many possible factors could lead to it, such as service overflow, browser scaling, incompatible extensions, or simply because you accidentally closed it, as in the case above. So, how to bring it back? Next, this article will show you the steps to recover it.

How to fix vSphere recent tasks not showing

To fix the issue of vSphere Recent Tasks not showing up, or some other layout issues, vSphere web client provides some customize the layout setting, or change to default layout.

1. Log in to vSphere Web Client, and click the user name at the top of the window, select Layout Settings.

2. In the Layout Settings window, select the panes that you want the UI to display. Or you can select Reset to default layout.

3. Click OK to save the changes.

If this option cannot solve your problem, you can still try the following methods:

• Clear your browser cache: Clear your browser's cache and cookies, then try logging back into the vSphere Web Client.
• Try a different browser: If clearing your cache doesn't work, try logging in with a different browser to see if the issue is with the current browser.
• Restart vSphere Web Client services: Try restarting the vSphere Web Client services on the vCenter Server. You can do this by navigating to the vSphere Web Client service in the vSphere Web Client, then right-click and select Restart.
• Check the vSphere Web Client logs: Review the vSphere Web Client logs to see if there are any errors or warnings related to the recent tasks pane. You can find these logs on the vCenter Server.
• Contact VMware support: If none of these steps solve the issue, you may want to contact VMware support for further assistance.

A dedicated vSphere backup software – AOMEI Cyber Backup

You may need an effective backup software for VMware vSphere to protect your virtual environment and gain the ability to quickly recover your VMs when needed. Here I will introduce an efficient vSphere backup software - AOMEI Cyber Backup, which enables you to backup multiple VMs managed by vCenter Server or standalone ESXi host.

It simplifies the backup process and present the steps with intuitive GUI interface. In addition, it offers you the following benefits.

✦ Agentless Backup: create complete and independent image-level backup for VMware ESXi and Hyper-V VMs.
✦ Flexible vSphere Backup: batch backup large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server, or multiple VMs on a standalone ESXi host.
✦ Multiple Storage Destinations: backup to local drive, or network destinations like Windows share or NAS.
✦ Automated Execution: create backup schedules to automate backups daily, weekly, monthly.
✦ Role Assignment: allows one administrator to create sub-accounts with limited privileges.

AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi 6.0 and later versions. Next, I will show you how to perform vSphere VM backup and restore via AOMEI Cyber Backup. You can click the following button to download the free trial.

*You can choose to install this VM backup software on either Windows or Linux system.

Steps to perform vSphere backup and restore via AOMEI Cyber Backup

▶ Backup multiple VMs:

1. Bind Devices: Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, navigate to Source Device > VMware > + Add VMware Device to Add vCenter or Standalone ESXi host. And then click … > Bind Device.

2. Create Backup Task: Navigate to Backup Task > + Create New Task, and select VMware ESXi Backup as the Backup Type.

3. Set the Task Name, Device, Target, Schedule and Cleanup as needed.

• Task Name: you can change the task name or use the default name with an ordinal.
• Device: batch backup multiple VMs on vCenter or standalone host within one backup task.

• Target: select to back up to a local path, or to a network path like NAS.
• Schedule (optional): perform full, differential, or incremental backup, and automate execution according to the frequency you specified.
• Cleanup (optional): automatically delete the old backup copies that exceed the retention period you specified.

4. Run Backup: Now you can click Start Backup and select Add the schedule and start backup now, or Add the schedule only.

Created backup tasks will be listed and monitored separately for restoring, progress checking and schedule changing.

By selecting Restore to new location option, you can create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup to perform out-of-spacre recovery, saves the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.

Summary

VMware provides options for you to customize your vSphere Web Client UI. If you accidentally closed your Recent Tasks pane, or just find somehow vSphere Recent Tasks not showing up, you can reset it via Restore to default layout option. This article showed you how to find this option.

There are many other errors like this caused by mishandling. If you want to protect your important data, you can try AOMEI Cyber Backup to backup your VMware ESXi VMs regularly.