One more reason to own an iPhone

Last night I was changing my network configuration, moving ISA from a single-NIC to a back-firewall between my DMZ and my internal network. I made this change so wordpress wouldn’t see all the traffic as coming from my ISA IP. My concern was with comment spam, and it is always good to see the actual IP the visitors are coming from. (I know this can always be spoofed…)

As an added benefit I decided to configure ISA to allow VPN connections into my internal network. I didn’t really have a need for this, but I figured that since the technology supports it, and I have never had the opportunity to configure this aspect of ISA, I would play with it and see how it worked. It turns out it works pretty well. I fired up my iPhone and configured the native VPN client. In a matter of minutes I was on my internal network and able to browse some of the internal only web sites I have up and running. Although this was pretty cool, I was left with the thoughts of “What could I possibly do with this???”

It was a classic case of TLAR (Technology Looking for A Requirement). It was at this moment I remembered reading an article about a product from Wyse Technology called PocketCloud. I quickly installed the application and was up and logging into almost every server on my network. I thought I had woken up in a dream. The ability to quickly access my network and all the applications I support from anywhere I had cell service with no additional hardware other than my phone, definitely had to be something I had only seen while asleep…. PocketCloud was very intuitive and easy to navigate within my RDP sessions. I found the interface very easy to read and manage the entire desktop through the iPhone screen. I would recommend this product to anyone…. It is definitely worth the cost for anyone mobile and in IT. You can see screenshots below:

Enable VPN:	The Connections Screen:
Connection in Progress:	The integrated cursor.
Logging on to vCenter:	ESX Performance Graph: