Had a problem with Firefox and attempting to access a virtual machine (VM) console within Lab Manager. Who uses Lab Manager I hear you ask? Yes well I do. For the most part it works well. It allows infrastructure development and testing teams in our organisation to self service virtual machines. And before you ask, yes we are currently developing a vCloud replacement.

Even though Lab Manager provides a link to install the VMware Remote MKS plugin I receive an error relating to being unable to contact the Lab Manager server. I followed the VMware KB article 1016560 to add the Lab Manager alias, hostname and fqdn to the security configuration to allow connectivity. With no effect.

After much hunting and gathering found the location on the Lab Manager server to where the Firefox plugin files were located. The *.xpi files can be found in the following location:
C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Lab Manager\WebSrvr\ControlPanel\Machines\MachineDetails\ActiveXControls\ViewerXVNC\

So I copied vmware-mks-windows-ff-nprt.xpi from the server to my desktop.

Then dragged and dropped the xpi file onto a Firefox window. The plugin installed.

Restarted Firefox and now the console view works.
Note: I am unable to attach the file in Word Press for security reasons. It is probably better that way than downloading a file off some random blog.