I downloaded and imported the VMware vCenter Mobile Access Appliance and one of the first things I wanted to check was, if this would work with both ESX3 and vSphere.  I am happy to report that this is the case.  I was able to get the appliance to connect and control both versions.  Getting the appliance up and running was about the easiest thing possible.  I downloaded the OVF version of the appliance and then had vCenter import it directly.  I do not have DHCP running in my lab so I had to assign an IP to the appliance then voila, fully configured appliance which is now and up and running.

Once I started to explore the appliance I noticed right off the bat that it will save the connection information for vCenter or ESX hosts that you connect to.  If you had to type out all that connection information every time, that would be a very painful experience after each timeout disconnection of the appliance from vCenter.  You have all the power controls available for the virtual machine as well as the controls and ability to perform a cold migration as well as vMotion.  You also have the ability to take and remove snapshots for the virtual machines.  Moving over to the host controls, you can start, stop, standby, reboot and place the host in Maintenance Mode as well as see performance graphs.  You have the ability to see alerts, alarms and to run scheduled tasks with the appliance, and with a little search window you can search for specific things within your infrastructure.

I personally think this is going to be a great addition to my virtual toolbox.   So many times as an administrator I would find myself tethered to the laptop to perform some task or another like creating a snapshot before the application team performed any updates.  Sound familiar?   On my iPhone I can now control my infrastructure and also have the ability to SSH if needed.  Granted the SSH option gets painfully tedious to try to type, but if I have to do any task more than once and  a new script should magically appear, I would just need to enter a script name and define the variable for the task to run.   Life just keeps getting better and better for the virtual administrators as we continue on our virtualization journey.  Remember virtualization is not a project but yet a journey.

ESX, mobile, vCenter, VMTN, vmware

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Virtual Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.