What a difference a week makes !! Geez, this is what I really love about being in
IT and specifically getting to work with VMware products. Last week I published a quick blog on “How to Monitor vSphere 5 from your iPad”. Essentially this is a tool that VMware released that allows you to monitor and power on VM’s using the vCenter vSphere Client for iPad. The version of the vCMA I was using at the time of the blog was 1.1.0.55 and the iPad client was 1.1.0.
Fast forward to yesterday (Oct 17th – VMworld Europe) and Mr. Steve Herrod CTO (And fellow Texan) tweeted out about the update.
I thought for sure I was running the latest and greatest version since I just published my blog the week before but sure enough, no new features !! So off I went to download the new bits:
Download the OVF from here: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/ipadclient
Then go to your iPad and check for updates:
As far as how to install all of this into your VMware vSphere 5 home lab, read this blog I did last week: https://vtexan.com/2011/10/how-to-monitor-vsphere-5-from-your-ipad/ – it will walk you through it step by step.
Once everything is squared away and installed, your VMware vSphere Client for iPad should be at 1.2.0 and all the goodness that comes with it.
So I actually have a task I wanted to do. I recently posted a blog on “How to install SQL 2008 R2 in your vSphere 5 Home Lab” and realized I was running a lot of VM’s on one host and wanted to spread them out. I could let DRS handle it, but what fun would that be. Let’s use this new feature for iPad to do the work for me.
Bust out your iPad and lets have some fun with vMotion.
1. When you first sign in from you iPad you get the familiar vCenter login info, once you get passed it you should see your vSphere hosts.
2. My particular SQL server was on my esxi5-2 hosts so lets click on it and dive deeper:
3. Click on the “VMware Actions” button at the top and notice the choices I have.
4. Click on vMotion – then select the vSphere host you want to move it to. In my case, I only have 2(ea) hosts so only the other host shows up.
5. Opps I’m getting an error that the “Host is incompatible with Windows SQL 2008” – hmm lets click details and see what the issue is.
6. Details: “Errors: Virtual Machine is configured to use a device that prevents the operation: device “CD/DVD drive 1” is connected device with a remove backing. DOH !! I just installed SQL last night and forgot to disconnect the SQL ISO media. Easy fix. (Just go to the vSphere Client – open up the console – and remove the media)
7. Slide to begin.
8 – once it starts, it will take you back to the main VM screen and you can see the notes in the “Latest Events” section.
9. Just to double check, I logged into vCenter to check if it kicked off the process:
10 – looks like it’s done !!
So EASY PEASY !!! LOVE IT. Other then my stupid mistake on not disconnecting the CDROM after my SQL install this went about as easy as it could get. Can’t wait to see what they put into this next.
vtexan.com 
Did you see that you can vMotion from a Host details view too? Just put two fingers on a VM card and toss into the tray that slides down. One finger to scroll VMs, two fingers to toss VMs. You can even vMotion a bunch of VMs off of a host at once.
Of all the things that have made me reject getting an ipad it may be this cool vmware client that changes my mind 🙂