VM /ETC

Image via Wikipedia

With all the recent talk about the software from Rove and VMware that provides mobile device access to managing VMware Infrastructure, administrators now need to consider how they will actually connect mobile phones to vCenter and ESX hosts behind the firewall. Fortunately, a thread from the VMware vCenter Mobile Access Technology Preview Community sheds some insight on how VMware actually tested the vCenter Mobile Access virtual appliance (vCMA) with several different mobile devices.

From The official “how will I connect to this thing” thread:

1. BlackBerry, with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). This is by far the easiest way, because BlackBerries that are connected to a BES are already on their company’s intranets. Loading the app should be as simple as pointing at the app URL (the format of which will be documented at release).

2. Iphone. We tested two methods successfully. The first was to create an ipsec vpn connection to our intranet. Once we were in things worked flawlessly. The second method worked on every device we tested but is slightly specific to our setup. We used our generic ssl/vpn gateway to authenticate, then we used the web proxying feature of the vpn landing page to get to the url we needed. The resulting app ends up with a vpn “bar” at the top since the page is hosted in this case but functionality is not impaired.

3. Symbian/Nokia. The ssl/vpn solution worked well. There might be vpn solutions out there, check with your network administrator.

4. WinMo. The ssl/vpn solution worked well. We couldn’t get the built-in vpn client to negotiate with our network but it certainly seems possible.

5. Android. The ssl/vpn solution worked well. There might be vpn solutions out there, check with your network administrator.

6. BlackBerry without BES. Can you guess? The ssl/vpn solution worked well. There might be vpn solutions out there, check with your network administrator.

I would guess that the majority of admins will have a Blackberry on a BES (Enterprise Server) like me (scenario 1 above). A quick test to make sure that your Blackberry device can see internal servers in this case would be to open your phone browser and go to the FQDN or ip address of a vCenter or ESX server. You should get the VMware web interface. I was able to do this on my Blackberry 8900 Curve. Now I am wondering why I never thought to do this sooner?!!

VMware announced yesterday that the vCMA is now available for download as a technology preview beta. Rove’s Mobile Admin is available in a 14 day trial.

Related Posts

• Restore Connectivity To ESXi 4 Management Network After Adding Second NIC (4)
• VMware vCMA Looks Like a VI Client for the Mobile Phone (5)
• Disable Debug Mode In VMware Player Or Workstation Betas (7)
• 24 Hour Timeout Prevents Removing ESX vNetwork Distributed Switch (1)
• Simply Automating Virtual Machine IP Addressing For Disaster Recovery Sites (without scripting) (18)
• Increase Allowed Simultaneous VMotions of VMware Guests (3)
• Don’t Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del On the ESX 4 Console (14)
• vSphere 4.0 Best Practices (9)
• Windows 7 Beta VirtualBox Install hosted on Ubuntu 8.10 (8)
• Frustrated with Installing the Hyper-V Manager to remotely manage Hyper-V Server 2008 (18)