System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 RTM – Now Available!

I’m pleased to say, that just a few months after the R2 release of System Center Operations Manager R2, and only weeks after the RTM of Windows Server 2008 R2, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is here.

I blogged a few weeks back, about the improvements seen from Beta to RC, but now’s the time to get hold of the finished product!  So, what’s in there?

Overview

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized datacenter. It enables increased physical server utilization, centralized management of virtual machine infrastructure, and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator, delegated administrator, and authorized end users.

VMM 2008 R2 can manage all the platforms managed by VMM 2008 and adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.
Windows Server 2008 R2 includes significant feature improvements to Hyper-V. VMM 2008 R2 leverages these new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Host Management

• VMM 2008 R2 creates and manages virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts. When you add a host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 that does not have Hyper-V enabled, VMM 2008 R2 automatically enables the Hyper-V role on the host.
• VMM 2008 R2 supports the following new features of Windows Server 2008 R2:
  • Live migration between Windows Server 2008 R2 clustered hosts. With live migration, you can migrate a virtual machine from one node of a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to another node in the same cluster without any downtime. Because the virtual machine does not experience any downtime, the move is completely transparent to the users that are connected to the virtual machine.
  • Network optimization detection during virtual machine placement. VMM 2008 R2 supports both Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney, which are Windows Server 2008 R2 features that improve network performance for virtual machines.
  • Network adapters that support the VMQ feature are able to create a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter and then connect that queue directly to the virtual machine’s memory. This connection routes packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine, bypassing much of the processing in the virtualization stack.
  • Network adapters that support the TCP Chimney feature are able to offload the processing of network traffic from the networking stack. Both of these features increase network performance and reduce CPU utilization.
  • Hot addition and removal of virtual hard disks (VHDs). In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V allows users to add and remove VHDs from a virtual machine while it is running.

• Live Migration Support
• Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) support that enables multiple Highly Available Virtual Machines (HAVM) per LUN.
• Hot Add/Remove of VM Storage
• Support for VMware vSphere 4 (VMware VI3 feature parity only)
• SAN Migration into and out of clustered hosts
• Processor flexibility
• Network optimization
• Quick Storage Migration
• Maintenance Mode for Hosts
• Support for 3rd Party Clustered file system, Sanbolic Melio FS
• Support for 3rd Party Storage Class Resource, Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows
• Expanded support for iSCSI SANs
• Support for VMware port groups for Virtual Switches
• Support for Virtual Machine Permissions assigned in Hyper-V
• Dynamic Policy Based Load Balancing

Where can you get it?  RIGHT HERE!

Other useful resources include:

• System Requirements
• Supported Configurations
• VMM TechNet Home page
• VMM Home Page
• VMM Documentation

Again, download the evaluation here!