Test Drive Results for VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist!!

VMware has recently released a great mobile tool for Administrators who love to manage their vSphere Infrastructure on the move. The tool is called VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist.

VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist allows you to monitor the virtual machines you care about in your vSphere infrastructure remotely on your phone. Discover diagnostic information about any alerts on your VMs using VMware Knowledge Base Articles and the web. Remediate problems from your phone by using power operations or delegate the problem to someone on your team back at the datacenter.

IMPORTANT NOTE: A VMware vSphere installation (5.0 and above) is required to use VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist. Access to your vSphere infrastructure may need a secure access method like VPN. Contact your IT department for further assistance.

FEATURES:

EASILY CREATE VM WATCHLISTS

Select a subset of VMs from your VMware vSphere VM inventory to tell the app what VMs to track. Use multiple lists to organize these important VMs.

VMS AT A GLANCE

Review the status of these VMs from your device including: their state, health, console and related objects.

SUGGESTED KB ARTICLES

Got an alert on your VM? Let VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist suggest what KB Articles might help you or search the web to gather more information.

REMEDIATE REMOTELY

Use power operations to remediate many situations remotely from your device.

DELEGATE TO YOUR TEAM

For those situations where you are not able to fix an issue from the device, VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist will enable you to share the VM and alert information along with any suggested KB articles and other web pages relevant to the current problem. Your colleagues back in the datacenter can use this context to resolve the issue.

For more details refer to the following link - VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist

TEST DRIVE RESULTS

The entire reason behind me writing this post was the results of the Test Drive which I did with the product. To get this tool for FREE is absolutely awesome. The screenshots below explain why I think so.

You can download and install the tool from the following links:-

Google Play - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vmware.beacon&hl=en

iTunes          - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmware-vsphere-mobile-watchlist/id792869677?ls=1&mt=8

I installed the Android version and here is how the tool interfaces:-

You can connect to your vCenter Server from here, given you are either VPN'ed or connected to your work network. Once logged in you get the option to create your watchlist for VMs which you would like to monitor or perform maintenance tasks on. 

The entire inventory of the vCenter will be listed and you are free to select VMs by placing a check in front of them as show below in the screenshot.

I have selected my vCenter Server and my proxy system which I use to RDP in my lab on my watch list. Here is how my watch list looks like:-

I can click on this thumbnails and further drill down to monitor the related objects and perform maintenance tasks on the VMs in my watchlist.

I can monitor the utilization and get details:-

I can get to the console of the VM.

I was also able to see the objects related to this VM such as ESXI Host, Cluster, Datastore etc.

Lastly, I was also able to run maintenance tasks:-

All in all a great experience since this app is very light and smooth. Highly recommended for the Modern Sysadmin. Go Get it!!

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