VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist

Around the 2nd week of February this year, VMware announced a cool little app that allows you to monitor your virtual infrastructure from your phone or tablet. Pretty sick right?! Of course it is.

VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist

The app is called “VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist” and is currently available for Android & iOS devices. The app allows you to view alerts and it will suggest KB Articles from VMware that may help you fixing those pesky alerts faster. You can also save those KB Articles with a bookmark for quick reading later when needed again.

As far as the VM controls you can do the basic VMware Tools type tasks such as Power Off, Suspend, Reset, Shut Down Guest OS, Restart Guest OS. The app will display the VMs Resources (CPU, RAM, Storage) and some basic details like, IP, DNS Name, Guest OS version, if VMware Tools is running or not, and any “notes” you may have listed for that VM. I wish you could take snapshots with it which would be cool also! But not in this version, maybe the next.

VMware does note that “A VMware vSphere installation (5.0 and above) is required to use VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist.” They also mention accessing your infrastructure via your office VPN if you are so inclined (I did and it works just fine) – “Access to your vSphere infrastructure may need a secure access method like VPN.”

Checkout this preview…

I made a short video here showing how it works on my iPhone 5: (no there is not sound)

VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist Feature Set: (borrowed from VMware’s blog HERE)

• 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.