vSphere Mobile Watchlist

Recently I had written a small blog about VMware Fling: vCenter Mobile Access which is a small virtual appliance and a iOS application to interface into vCenter.  A few days after this VMware released vSphere Mobile Watchlist on the face of it performs a very similar role to the fling namely an interface to vCenter from your mobile device it doesn't have the requirement for the virtual appliance and talks directly to vCenter. Unlike vCenter Mobile Access which is available for iOS only and for both iPhone and iPad, vSphere Mobile Watchlist is iOS if for iPhone but not iOS iPad, it is available for Android.

When accessing my homelab vCenter which is default setup with default SSL to connect via vSphere Mobile Watchlist requires me to Trust All Certificates.

Once you look a little closer as the name suggests vSphere Mobile Watchlist you connect to vCenter and target to monitor specific virtual machines. To do this is pretty simple just change to Watchlist tab and select the VMs to monitor.

When selecting you can get more information about each VM by clicking the i info button

You can choose to monitor them using celluar network as well as wifi in the general settings tab.

It provides event based alerting and a method of powering off \ on, restarting VMs,  if this meets your usecase and your vCenter server has internet routable IP connectivity then great.  Unfortunately for me my work environment is secure and for my homelab the fling offers me greater flexibility.

Configuring Synology for iSCSI ESXi host access

Unlike NFS by default iSCSI support is enabled,  first step to configure is to use Storage Manager,  change to iSCSI LUN and click create

Use wizard to give the LUN a name,  specify which volume it will reside, whether you want it thick, and its size, if this is your first iSCSI LUN ensure iSCSI target mapping is Create a new iSCSI target

Leave all defaults for target

Once completed,  edit the new target and ensure all LUNs are mapped which you would want to present to ESXi

If you now create a iSCSI adapater and point it to the Synology IP to dynamically discover the LUNs as shown here.

Configuring Synology for NFS for ESXi host access

The function of my NAS within homelab is to provide shared storage for my ESXi hosts, as I'm studying for VCAP it would be great to use both iSCSI and NFS. By default NFS is disabled on the DS213J,  first step is to enable it.


Open Control Panel -> Win/Mac/NFS -> Check the box Enable NFS

Once NFS is enabled,  we can create a folder and share this out via NFS,

Open Control Panel -> Shared Folder -> Create

Still within "Control Panel -> Shared Folder" click the folder you created and click Privileges -> NFS Privileges use Create \ Edit \ Delete to add the IP address of all your ESXi hosts.

Ignore part which says you may specify a host in three ways,  the only method I found which works presently is adding each IP address for each host.  This is a bit annoying as my home network is all DHCP so while the ESXi host addresses are relatively stable they can change which means I have have to revisit this configuration.  If network segment was working then I would in theory never need to return here.

To then add this as an NFS mounted datastore use vSphere client -> Inventory -> Hosts and Clusters,  and select the host you want to add this to,  then in right pane change to Configuration tab,  Storage section and click Add Storage button.

Add the details of your NAS and the shared folder you just created

Your Synology NFS datastore should now be mounted.

One of the nice things about the Synology operating system is that it allows easy transfer of files using any method you please.  For example if I have a VM \ OVF \ ISO on USB which I want to transfer to my homelab I just plug in the USB direct to the NAS and file copy to my NFS folder.  Or if I want to transfer a file from Windows to my NFS datastore,  rather than mount the NFS volume I can use WinSCP to copy the files.  When working in homelab especially in my portable laptop based lab where 2x ESX and 1x vCenter are bridged using VMware workstation to my wireless network,  network throughput for file copies is obviously very poor the flexibility of the Synology means I can work around this easily.

Mac Mini change of role

My home lab used to be a couple of ESXi VMs running under VMware Fusion on a Mac Mini. Since moving much of my home lab to be portable and adding the NAS I am finding I no longer run these VMs.

After a bit of thinking,  I decided my best option would be to look to make a boot able ESXi Embedded USB key,  then if I needed to host more VMs I can just boot it straight to ESXi.

To create a boot able ESXi Embedded USB key I used my Windows 7 laptop and VMware Workstation to create a new VM,  connected the VMware Installable ISO as CD drive and hard drive as physical disk then select the USB key.






I was a little worried when doing this that I had selected the correct as during selection there was no way of telling.





I did a double check during the early part of install of ESXi to ensure the drive size matched the USB key and not the HDD.  Other than that was pretty straight forwards,  just selected the country and password etc,  once it was build and running,  I powered it down,  delected the donor VM.

The downside I thought I would have when trying to boot the Mac mini is that to select boot from USB I needed to press Option key after POST,  however,  I only run a bluetooth keyboard so wasn't sure if this got picked up during boot up.

But hurrah,  not only did the bluetooth keyboard work for selecting alternate boot,  it also works within ESXi !