Well, those chaps over in Palo Alto are at it again. A new Aye-PAD application – this time its for managing vSphere. Anyone would think that VMware had shares in Apple – or vice-versa. Sadly, this won’t put a stop to a thread on the VMTN Forums where Apple MAC users continually belly-ache about the lack of Apple Mac vSphere Client. I rather foolish made a comment on the post – which means I get endless emails about how VMware doesn’t care about its customers… Occasionally it slips into the whole Windows-Mac-Linux debate – I mean aren’t there more important things to worry about.

Anyway, I digress – for those with the might tablet of hope – you can now download the vSphere Aye-PAD Client from the Apple Store.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmware-vsphere-client-for/

VMware has already put together a Community Forum for those looking to troubleshoot and ask questions here – http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/ipadclient

The UI of the vSphere Aye-PAD client looks like this:

Don’t expect the Aye-PAD vSphere app to have all the features and functionality of the fully blown vSphere Client for Windows. Expect to find that that the 80% of the most common vSphere Admin tasks are there such as:

• Search for vSphere hosts and virtual machines
• Monitor the performance of vSphere hosts and virtual machines
• Manage virtual machines with the ability to start, stop and suspend
• View and restore virtual machines’ snapshots
• Reboot vSphere hosts or put them into maintenance mode
• Diagnose vSphere hosts and virtual machines using built-in ping and traceroute tools

There’s a couple of requirements for the App to function. Firstly, you need an Aye-PAD (OK, I’m joking) but more importantly you need the vCMA virtual appliance from VMware. If you have ever read my vSphere4 book – I covered it there – Basically its Mobile Access appliance that in its standard form presents a web-page of vSphere that’s viewable to most smartphones. The Aye-PAD App connect through the vCMA to then connect to your vSphere environment which then populates the UI of the Aye-PAD application.

The IPAD 2 is available in Europe from the 25th March. Rumors are already circulating that there will be heavy delays caused by excessive demand. When the first IPAD was released they delayed the world-wide launch in order to first deal with a backlog in the US. I’m not sure if that will happen this time around  – there may be some existing IPAD users who happy with the G1, and will carry on using it until it breaks (which is what I would I do if I had IPAD 1).  But there should be plenty of folks like me who decided the functionality of IPAD 1 made it a non-starter, and decided to wait for the IPAD 2…

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 8:13 am and is filed under Mac, vSphere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.