It may sound a paradox but in the coming future the remote access to large data centers will happen through tiny mobile devices:
- Intel is investing in VirtualLogix, one of the earliest mobile hypervisor developers on the market
- Citrix is about to release a Receiver for the Apple iPhone (codenamed project Braeburn) and it’s investing Open Kernel Labs to boost the development of their mobile hypervisor
- VMware acquired Trango and it’s working to offer their mobile hypervisor (now called Mobile Virtualization Platform or MVP) in the near future
But the trend is not just about accessing the computing power that data centers offer. The mobile management of large virtual infrastructures is as much interesting.
The Virtualization Manager Mobile for the iPhone, developed by Andrew Kutz is an early example.
Soon many vendor may want to provide mobile version of their hypervisors control panels.
The first one may be VMware which just announced an upcoming new component for the vSphere 4.0 platform: vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA).
The tool, coming as a virtual appliance, will allow to search for VMs, migrate them using vMotion, launch Site Recovery Manager (SRM) recovery plans, check the vCenter alarms and events, etc.
The tool may be very useful for emergencies but, as said many times, unless the market can produce embedded devices with larger screens (at a reasonable price), using these tools is going to be a pain.
Maybe the much rumored 10” netbook/tablet that Apple is developing will open new possibilities.
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