I’ve been in the process of updating my VMware home lab (future blog alert) and with that I’ve decided to do a lot of “fall cleaning” of stuff. About the only thing I’m keeping is my ActiveDirectory and DNS VM and everything else is getting a brand new install including vSphere 5.0, vCenter 5 etc to the latest approved bits. One of the cool little VM’s I like to play around with is the vCenter Mobile Access server (vCMA) which is packaged as a virtual appliance. If you are not familiar with vCMA it gives you the ability to somewhat manage (limited) and monitor your lab using your mobile device. My mobile device is an iPad 2 so this is a quick install guide on how to download, install and setup to work with your device.
Go to http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma and Accept the Technical Preview Agreement (their version of a get out of jail free card – in other words, if this screws up your system its all on you 🙂 ) – then download the OVF.
After you download follow these quick screen shots:
1: Open up vCenter – click on File – and Deploy OVF Template:
2: Browse to the folder you saved the OVF file to:
3. Review the Product information and click Next
4. Accept the EULA
5. Choose where you want to install it
6. Pick the datacenter you want to install it to
7. Now let’s pick the datastore you want to install it on.
8. Choose the type of disk format you want – I chose Thin
9. Last chance to double check everything
10. Now lets watch it go !!!
11. – Looks like it’s completed
12. Now lets open up the console and power on our VM
13. vCMA grabs a DHCP address and you can see it here: NOTE the :5480 extension
14. Let’s surf over to the site – and accept the untrustedness of it 🙂
15. Login is Root and Password vmware
16. at this point, the install is complete – now if you want to move away from DHCP click on Network
17. Add your static IP information here:
18. Now let’s bust out our iPad and go to the iTunes store and download vSphere Client – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmware-vsphere-client-for/id417323354?mt=8
19. Open up the app and the first thing you need to fill out is the vCMA IP info
20. Once that is done, it will ask you to enter your vCenter Information
21. If everything went well, the next screen should look like this:
12. You can drill into your hosts, in this case I fired up a Win7 VM from my iPad
13. You can also view performance statistics from the app
vtexan.com 
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