Windows Server blog by Kurt Roggen [BE]

Bookmark the SCVMM Blog, so you can come back again and again to learn more about VMM 2012 Beta!
Eric Winner, Principal Program Manager on the SCVMM team just gave a great overview of what is included with VMM 2012 BETA.

VMM 2012 features deep investments in server application virtualization, service design and service modeling all of which can be used to efficiently offer an on-premises private cloud. This is not the SCVMM of yesterday. It is packed full of new and exciting features!

SCVMM 2012 offers key new features that include:

· Fabric Management

Hyper-v life cycle management (deploy to bare metal, configure, manage, patch)

Hyper-v Cluster Management (create cluster, configure, orchestrated patching of a hyper-v cluster)

Multiple Hypervisor Management (Hyper-v, VMware, Citrix XenServer)

Network Management

Storage Management

· Cloud Management

Private Cloud Management

· Self-service Usage

Self-service user experience enriched with ability to use the VMM console.

· Service Lifecycle Management

Author service templates

Deploy VMM authored services

Version and update authored service template

Apply new versioned service templates to deployed virtualized services using image-based servicing.

In general we expect customer to follow the below high-level scenario flow:

· Setup Virtual Machine Manager

· Create and configure the datacenter fabric

· Create and delegate clouds

· Author service templates, then deploy and update services running on the clouds.

Like I stated earlier, in the coming days the SCVMM team will publish a blog series that will focus on helping users get started with SCVMM 2012 beta. These blogs post simply highlight the features sets and provide useful tidbits from the feature area program manager’s on SCVMM team. For actual step-by-step guidance our top notch staff of technical writers have SCVMM 2012 Beta Documentation available on TechNet.

For now, I’ll leave you with a pictorial view of the areas for managing your fabric, clouds and services as well as our new drag-and-drop visual service designer. Stay tuned for more details in the days and weeks to come.

Datacenter Fabric- Server Management

Once you have VMM 2012 Beta installed lets take a walk through the SCVMM 2012 User Interface to help you understand the features within each workspace.

Below we start out in the Fabric workspace at the top node called Servers. Within the image below there is detail about the operations you perform in the Server Node within the Fabric Workspace.

Datacenter Fabric- Network Management

Next, while still in the fabric workspace we navigate down to the Networking Node. In the slide below there are details about the operations you perform in networking section within the fabric workspace.

Datacenter Fabric- Storage Management

Last but not least in the Fabric workspace is the Storage Section. The slide below provides you a screen shot of this space and details what operations are performed within the storage node in the Fabric workspace.

Private Cloud Creation

Now, we move over to the VMs and Services Workspace. Within this workspace depending upon your user role you will see virtualized workloads running on clouds or within host groups. In the image below see details about operations within private cloud node inside the VMs and Services work space.

Service Creation Designer

Once you have your SCVMM 2012 Fabric all setup to run virtualized workloads SCVMM provides you the ability to create virtualized services within the Service Designer tool. The below image details features within the Service Designer.

Resources and Feedback:

Use the SCVMM Community Forums to obtain general help, guidance, and assistance with the SCVMM 2012 Beta. You are welcome to submit suggestions or bugs via the feedback link on the SCVMM 2012 Beta Connect Site. When submitting bugs, please attach trace log details to help our team diagnose the issue. Information on collecting trace logs is provided in the SCVMM 2012 Troubleshooting Guide on SCVMM 2012 TechNet Library.

TechNet Library

· The SCVMM 2012 TechNet Library is the definitive content source for all step-by-step instructions.

We look forward to your feedback!

Eric Winner, Principal Lead Program Manager- SCVMM

Source: System Center Virtual Machine Manager Product Group Blog : SCVMM 2012 Beta Overview

Be sure to check out this 421 pages of documentation on VMM 2012 BETA installation, configuration, management, patch management and many more…
Probably everything you ever wanted to know about the SCVMM 2012 BETA.

Some topics covered:

• Installing a VMM Management Server
• Update Remediation using WSUS
• Creating Private Clouds
• Rapid Provisioning using SAN Copy
• Deploying, Managing and Servicing Services
• Scaling Out a Service
• Creating User Roles

Download here

On behalf of the SCVMM product team and I am proud to announce the availability of SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 RTM.

Support for new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

• Dynamic Memory: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V supports Dynamic Memory enabling customers to better utilize the memory resources of a Hyper-V host. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines onto Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts and will report on the memory currently in use for these VMs where Dynamic Memory is enabled. Using Dynamic Memory for supported VMs allows for more efficient utilization of memory, with consistent performance, and higher consolidation ratios.

• Microsoft RemoteFX: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 introduces a new set of end user experience enhancements with Microsoft RemoteFX. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines with RemoteFX enabled to qualified Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts. This enables a rich, local-like desktop environment over the network.

GET IT NOW

Greg Cusanza- Program Manager, SCVMM

Source: SCVMM Product team blog

Related reading:

• TryCatch.be – SCVMM 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 features

This scenario is the installation of a standalone VMM Management Server, where both VMM Server and VMM Database (SQL Server only) live on the same box, actually a virtual machine in my case.
By placing the virtual machine in a Hyper-V cluster, you also achieve HA for VMM, but it will not provide any high availability at the application level (for both VMM and SQL).  So you are not protected from VMM failures or SQL failures…  There are many installation variations, but with VMM 2012 you are able to achieve complete high availability for VMM and it’s surrounding components (SQL, Library, Self-Service Portal).

VMM Setup is split up into several steps:

• Software and Hardware Pre-requisites check
• Database configuration
• Account configuration (Service Account and Distributed Key Management)
• Port configuration
• Library configuration (Default SCVMM Library Server and Share)

NOTE: If during the setup you encounter any problem, consult the log files that are located in the %SYSTEMDRIVE%\ProgramData\VMMLogs folder.

Using VMM Setup, you are able to do 3 things:

 

 
Both hardware and software prerequisites are checked. 
For more information, see System Center TechCenter: SCVMM 2012 System Requirements and Supported Operating Systems
 

Make sure you meet the Software Prerequisites: Supported versions of

• OS: Windows Server2008 R2 (Full Installation) only
• WinRM 2.0, PowerShell 2.0
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• WAIK 2.0 or above (for Windows 7)
• VMM Database: SQL 2008 SP2 or higher (NO SQL Express edition)
• VMM Self-Service Portal: IIS 7.5 components

WAIK (for Windows 7) no longer ships with VMM 2012 and need to be downloaded separately here.

 
Make sure you meet the Hardware Prerequisites:

• Memory: Minimum 2 GB
• Processor
• Disk space

Our installation scenario will have the VMM Database hosted on the SQL Server running locally on the same box as the VMM Server.
You require a full version of SQL Server 2008 SP2 or higher. SQL Server Express no longer ships with VMM 2012 and is no longer supported.

Service Account:

• If you plan to use shared ISO images with Hyper-V virtual machines, you must use a domain account.
• If you are installing a highly available VMM management server, you must use a domain account.

Distributed Key Management:

• If you are installing a highly available VMM management server, you must use distributed key management to store encryption keys in ADDS.

 
Assure that the specified VMM service account is member of the local group Administrators.
 

 
Still required to create a default SCVMM library share.  However, with VMM 2012 you are able to remove it once you have your “real“ library servers up and running.

Review of the installation summary

VMM 2012 Beta installation in progress.

Related reading:

• TechNet TechCenter: Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012
• What's New in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

The next generation of Microsoft’s virtual infrastructure management software is available for public download here

Download SCVMM 2012 Beta Evaluation sources here

Download SCVMM 2012 Beta Evaluation provisioned VHD here

SCVMM 2012 brings a lot of new functionality:

• Fabric Management
  • Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
  • Third party virtualization platforms - Add and manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
  • Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
  • Storage Management – Classify storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
     
• Resource Optimization
  • Dynamic Optimization (DO) – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
  • Power Optimization (PO) – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed.
  • Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors.
     
• Cloud Management
  • Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
  • Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
  • Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
     
• Service Lifecycle Management
  • Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, OS images and application packages
  • Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
  • Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
  • Service performance and health monitoring integrated with System Center Operations Manager
  • Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing.
  • Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V
    

For more information: SCVMM 2012 TechNet Library

In the upcoming weeks, you can expect some blog posts about many of the topics above…

IMPORTANT: SCVMM 2012 Beta is NOT Supported in production environments.