Mike's Realm

VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) is a cool fling from VMware Labs. It allows mobile access to your vSphere environment via your vCenter(s).  Setting up vCMA takes very little effort as it is packaged as a virtual appliance.  You simply download vCMA as an OVF, deploy the OVF Template, and power on vCMA.  Once powered on, config the network and your ready to go.  Note that vCMA does not use a service account or static connector to vCenter, each user will login to vCenter via vCMA with their own credentials--think of vCMA as a web-based version of the vSphere  Client.

Installation

1. Download vCMA OVF from VMware Labs
2. Unzip download
3. Launch vSphere Client and click File -> Deploy from OVF Template
4. Select Deploy from file and browse to the extracted OVF & Click Next
5. Accept license agreement and click next
6. Give it a name, pick a location to deploy to and click next
7. Select the Port Group you want to vCMA to connect to
8. Click finish to deploy OVF
9. Once the OVF is deployed find the VM and power it on
10. By default it will attempt to grab an address via DHCP, you can configure the network settings to give it a static address via the console (default user/pass is root/vmware)
11. You should also change the root password at this time
12. Test the vCMA by browsing to https://vCMA-IP/vim (http or https should both work)
13. Enter your vCenter, username and password and login
14. Bounce around and see the functionality vCMA offers

Usage

There is a short YouTube video that does a great job giving an overview of the vCMA:

Disable SSL (HTTPS) for older BlackBerrys

Harish Dhurvasula, one of the developers of vCMA posted these instructions to disable SSL on vCMA:

1. Login via the vCMA console using root/vmware if you haven’t changed it--why haven’t you changed it by the way?
2. Enter “vi /usr/lib/vmware/mobile/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.28/conf/server.xml”
3. Locate the Connector tag with port=”80″ — you can hit esc then type /port=”80″ to search (quotes required)
4. Remove the “address=”127.0.0.1″ and “redirectPort=”443″ attributes for that connector
5. Enter “vi /usr/lib/vmware/mobile/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.28/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/web.xml”
6. Locate security-constraint tag and comment -out or remove the section — you can hit esc then type “/security-con” to search (comment out with “<!--” at the beginning and “-->” at the end
7. Enter “vi /usr/lib/vmware/mobile/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.28/webapps/vim/WEB-INF/web.xml”
8. Repeat step 6
9. Enter “service mobile restart” to bounce the service
10. Connect via http://vCMA-IP/vim