Posted on Thursday, 11th June 2009 by Heiko

vmca_title

This post will be a relatively short one about VMware vCMA, short for VMware vCenter Mobile Access. After downloading the vCMA virtual appliance from the VMware site, importing it into the VMware ESX 4.0 host by using the vSphere client, it is possible to just start it up and use the web-interface to administer the VMware vCenter Server using your mobile phone! In my case, the mobile phone is an Apple iPhone.

After downloading the 290 MB big zip-file, extracting it, I was able to import it onto the VMware ESX 4.0 host I am running, by choosing the “Deploy OVF Template…” option in the VMware vSphere Client under “File”. After choosing this option, you have to point to the freshly downloaded OVF-file, and simply click “Next” a few times.

Deploy OVF Template

After the deployment is done, you can boot up the virtual machine (installed with CentOS), and your vCMA server is running! Adjust some necessary settings like ip-settings, dns-server settings and so on by pointing your browser to the given address: https://<ip_of_vcma_server>:5480 and log in by using the default username and password:

  • Username: root
  • Password: vmware

It’s also possible to log in to the console by using the username and password above. After you changed the settings, it is time to log in to the vCMA web-interface and VMotion some virtual machines :-)

Log in by using your mobile browser to go to http://ip_address_of_vcma/vim and log in using the ip, password and username of the VMware vCenter Server.

I will post 2 images below (clickable) who can will bring you to a small gallery containing screenshots made on my Apple iPhone:

vCMA_on_iPhone

My first impression: it works like a charm! Even VMotion works like it should, initiated from my iPhone over the 3G network of T-Mobile Netherlands. VMware ESX 4.0 admins no longer have an excuse not being able to monitor or adjust host configurations anymore! Imagine yourself, standing still in a traffic jam, still being able to administer your VMware ESX hosts on your mobile phone!

Related posts:

  1. Free shared NAS/SAN storage using Openfiler 2.3 NFS on VMware ESX 4.0
  2. Installing a Citrix Access Gateway on VMware Workstation
  3. Running a HA / DRS ESX 4 cluster on a single HP ML110 G5

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