vSphere Client on OS X

I wanted to be able to use my MacBook to connect to the vSphere client back on my desktop.  Sure I could fire up the old IBM Thinkpad and connect that way, and run the client natively under Windows XP.  But really what fun would that be?   I used my favorite search engine to see if such an environment existed.   Many of the initial hits had you firing up Fusion (the Mac VMware Workstation ) and from the virtual windows box, run it that way.   Too cumbersome, eats too much memory on this MacBook (only 2GB Memory).

There had to be a better way!

Sure enough, the folks at Punching Clouds had found a way to integrate the client seamless to your OS X desktop.   Here is the write-up and procedures right here.   Also a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a quick snap of my MacBook desktop.

If you look closely, you will see across the top, the OS X menu bar.  Also on the bottom you will see your typical Windows XP task bar, start menu etc.   While this takes a bit to setup, and get running, the instructions provided at Punching Clouds is spot-on.  This coupled with the better VPN Client installed on this machine (the free IP-Securitas) made this MacBook the platform of  choice for all of those remote hours spent testing and analyzing data for my employer.

Here is a video of the setup in action