Now the Party Starts...Introducing Virtual Machine Manager 2008...

I'm so pleased that this is finally released, as, for me, it was the final piece of the puzzle that was needed to really drive adoption of Microsoft's Hyper-V platform.

"Microsoft has announced the formal name and beta availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, a member of the System Center suite of server management products. The announcements came April 29 at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, which showcased the beta of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM), managing both Hyper-V and VMware virtual infrastructure. Additional functionality new to this version of VMM includes Performance and Resource Optimization (Pro), which dynamically tunes virtual infrastructure, simplified virtual host cluster support, and other improvements and enhancements"

I've been playing with this for a little while now, and it's awesome.  The Self-Service Portal is a big improvement, and the management of VirtualCenter is also very impressive for those organisations who want that single pane of glass for managing their entire infrastructure.

So, what's new in VMM 2008?  Well, this document details the changes in VMM 2008.

Key points I'll pull out include:

• VMM 2008 provides comprehensive support for VMware VI3 included moving virtual machines
  among virtual hosts with no downtime via VMotion, through integration with VMware’s Virtual
  Center

The key for me, and this is absolutely brilliant, is PRO:

• Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) is a feature of VMM which can dynamically
  respond to failure scenarios or poorly configured components that are identified in hardware,
  operating systems or applications.
• Working through PRO-enabled Management Packs and in consort with System Center Operations
  Manager 2007’s deep monitoring capabilities, PRO can either alert an administrator of an
  unhealthy system or application state and its proposed recommended corrective action or it can
  respond automatically creating a system that responsive and self healing.
• Because of the much more granular level of monitoring available to PRO, a wide range of
  hardware, operating system or application variables can trigger PRO to take corrective action.
• As a feature of VMM 2008, PRO’s capabilities are also available to VMware ESX or Virtual Server
  hosts thus allowing administrators to manage their entire virtualised environment regardless of
  the virtualisation platform they are using.

One word.  Awesome.

Other resources to read:

• Datasheet
• Q&A
• General Overview
• Top 10 Benefits

Get hold of VMM 2008 here:

http://connect.microsoft.com/

You should see it listed in the directory.