Our very own Hector Linares just posted a great article over on his blog talking about how to visualize your storage environment by using a NetApp PowerShell script that generates a Visio diagram with aggregate, volume, and LUN information. This is something we get asked about a lot so if you want to try this yourself just cruise on over to Hectors blog and check it out:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/hectorl/archive/2011/03/30/using-scvmm-2012-netapp-smi-s-provider-and-visio-to-visualize-storage.aspx
J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer
The App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/ The WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/ The SCMDM Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mdm/ The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/ The SCOM 2007 Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/ The SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/ The MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/ The DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/ The OOB Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/oob/ The Opalis Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/opalis The Service Manager Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager The AVIcode Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/avicode The System Center Essentials Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials The Server App-V Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Ever since Windows Phone 7 was launched late last year there’s been a growing buzz surrounding Microsoft’s new phone OS, and with the recent announcement that the Windows Phone Marketplace had surpassed 10,000 apps in those 4-5 months and was growing fast (now well over 12,000) I took a look said “Hey, why not me too.” And with that The System Center Blog Aggregator was born.
So why make an app that simply feeds the System Center blog content to your phone when any old newsreader can be made to do the same? Well, I had a couple reasons. First, feedback suggested that many of our readers are IT pros who specialize in System Center and don’t necessarily follow a lot of other sites on a regular basis so they have no need to load up and configure a full blown newsreader just to stay up on our content. In addition to that, I was curious how the process worked and how hard it would be to create an app and get it published. Even though I work for Microsoft, the whole process was kind of a mystery to me.
Then a couple weeks ago I saw that AppMakr (no affiliation) announced their support for Windows Phone and I knew I could use that to easily whip up a cool content aggregator that customers as well as other Microsoft employees out in the field could use to keep up with the latest in the world of System Center. So long story short, a mere 48 hours later I had my app completed, tested, certified by Microsoft and published in the Marketplace.
Here are a couple screen shots to give you an idea of what it looks like. After you load and start The System Center Blog Aggregator you see the main screen that has our blogs listed in alphabetical order:
From there you simply select the blog you’re interested in and all the latest posts are viewable:
From there you can select and read any post you like. So there you have it, an app that allows you to follow our content quickly and easily right on your snazzy new Windows Phone. If you have a WinPhone you should load up The System Center Blog Aggregator and check it out. It’s free after all so what do you have to lose? The Zune link is http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=fe9b6ff1-8355-e011-854c-00237de2db9e but if you want to load it directly from your phone just search on “System Center” in the Marketplace and you’ll find it.
Oh, and what about other platforms besides Windows Phone? I should have a version for Android some time next week and as soon as it’s available I’ll let you know. As of now I don’t really have any plans on doing an iOS version due to the costs but if it turns out there’s any kind of demand for it I’ll definitely revisit it later on down the road.
Enjoy!
So you got your hands on the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 beta and it looks cool and all but now what? Time to start a pet shop. But not just any pet shop, the .NET Pet Shop. If you’re wanting to get a good taste of the power and flexibility that SCVMM 2012 offers then follow along with Maha Ibrahim from the VMM team as we deploy the Pet Shop 3-tier application as a service using the VMM 2012 beta:
Today I am pleased to announce the release to web of SCVMM 2012 MpsRpt Beta Tool that enables support for collecting trace logs in SCVMM 2012 Beta. SCVMM 2012 MpsRpt Tool was developed to provide a utility to manage, collect, and view various traces and diagnostic information in a VMM 2012 environment.
You can download the SCVMM General Troubleshooting Guide. Inside this guide there is a section for collecting traces using this new MpsRpt Beta Tool. Get the Documentation Now!
You must register with the VMM 2012 Beta program on Microsoft Connect to download the tool.
You can download the SCVMM 2012 MpsRpt Beta Tool from here: https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/Downloads
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.
We look forward to your feedback!
Carmen M. Summers, Senior Program Manager | Virtualization & Datacenter Management
Greetings,
Today I am announcing the Release to Web of an updated Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) (version 1524) that adds support for SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 and refines some troubleshooting for identifying the required hot fixes for SCVMM 2008, 2008 R2, and 2008 R2 SP1.
Overview
Customers have come to rely upon, and appreciate, the added value that VMMCA tool provides, so getting it out an update within weeks of SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 RTM is critical for customers to assist in helping plan implementation and then also provide value-add during the ongoing operational phase of SCVMM 2008, 2008 R2, and 2008 R2 SP1.
Note: VMMCA 2008 (1524) is NOT compatible with the current SCVMM 2012 Beta. A new VMMCA will be released within 60 days of VMM 2012 RTM.
Description
The VMMCA is a diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that either are serving or might serve VMM roles or other VMM functions. The VMMCA scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers you specify, evaluates them against a set of predefined rules, and then provides you with error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal for the VMM role or other VMM function that you have specified for the computer.
You can use VMMCA before installing VMM, to help you evaluate the configuration of computers that you might use for the following VMM roles:
· VMM server
· VMM Administrator Console
· VMM Self-Service Portal
You can also use VMMCA after installing VMM, to evaluate or troubleshoot the configurations of computers that you are now using or might use for the VMM roles listed above, as well as computers that you are using or might use for any of the following VMM functions:
· Windows Server–based host
· VMware Virtual Center Server
· P2V source computer
· Operations Manager agent
System Requirements:
Before you install the VMMCA, you must download and install the 64-bit version of Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer (MBCA). To download the MBCASetup64.msi file, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=97952.
Note
The system requirements for the MBCA indicate that only Windows Server 2003 is supported. However, the VMMCA and the MBCA have been tested and are supported on Windows Server 2008 64-bit.
You must install and run the VMMCA on the computer that either currently is or will become your VMM 2008 server. To review the system requirements for the VMM 2008 server, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=133516.
Download VMMCA Now
Common Usage Scenarios
The list of scenarios are not comprehensive, but will provide you with some common usage scenarios to provide you with an understanding of when to use VMMCA 2008.
Scenario 1 – I have a Windows Host that is in a not responding state. Use VMMCA 2008 to check the host for commonly known issues.
Scenario 2 – A Windows host shows a status of “Needs Attention”. Use VMMCA 2008 to check the this host for commonly known issues.
Scenario 3 – I am using SCVMM 2008 to manage a VMware environment, but I am unable to create new virtual machines on the VMware environment. Use VMMCA 2008 to evaluate the Virtual Center environment for commonly known issues.
Scenario 4 – I am using the integration between SCVMM 2008 and Operations Manager, but I am unable to see a particular VM or Host in the integrated mapping view. Use VMMCA 2008 to check the host or virtual machine for an operations manager agent.
Scenario 5 – I am using SCVMM 2008 to do P2V conversions and the job is failing. Use VMMCA 2008 to check the P2V source for commonly known issues.
Scenario 6 - I tried to create a Virtual Machine and it failed during customization and installation of virtual guest services. Use VMMCA 2008 on the Windows Host to find commonly known issues.
Hi, I am Hector Linares, Senior Program Manager on the SCVMM team. This blog is an overview of the storage automation feature set in System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012. The goal of this feature is to simplify and automate the discovery, allocation, and assignment of storage assets in a virtualized environment.
VMM 2012 introduces enhanced networking, storage, and physical server management that enables enterprises to create on premise private clouds. The key investments in storage include modeling and automation. Modeling helps administrators understand what storage assets they have and how the underlying SAN infrastructure relates to their Hyper-V environment. Automation helps streamline common storage workflows – provisioning new storage, adding capacity to a Hyper-V or cluster, and rapid provisioning of new VMs using the SAN.
The automation of storage in the context of a Hyper-V environment helps reduce the time to market of new virtual servers, reduce the complexity of using the SAN in a virtualization environment, and take advantage of all the capabilities of the underlying SAN while delivering excellent performance. This level of integration will help customers fully leverage the SAN for their Hyper-V environment.
VMM 2012 uses a new storage service that communicates to SMI-S based storage providers for active management of storage arrays. Leveraging an industry standard like SMI-S helps VMM deliver value-add functionality to customers across a wide range of storage devices while minimizing the engineering effort and time to market.
Virtualized workloads consume compute, storage, and network resources in a datacenter. Virtualization tends to consume large amounts of storage, requiring sufficient infrastructure to deliver the capacity and performance required. There are two types of storage that VMM 2012 is aware of – local and remote. Local storage is great for low cost virtualization solutions, while remote storage delivers higher levels of capacity and performance while being cost effective. Which type of storage is used depends on the needs of the virtualized workload. Some environments might even deploy both types of storage. For this reason, VMM 2012 can model, deploy, and manage virtualized workloads in a datacenter efficiently and at scale, independent of which storage type is used. With this objective in mind, it is also important for VMM 2012 to help simplify and automate storage operations common in a virtualized environment. Please keep in mind that the storage automation features only apply to Hyper-V.
There are two types of storage infrastructure that gets deployed in a datacenter – local and remote. Local storage represents storage capacity available inside of a server chassis or directly attached to a server. Local storage is typically cheaper to deploy with minimal management required. Workloads deployed on local storage have less stringent requirements on having hardware-based backup, recovery, replication, block copy, de-duplication, or thin provisioning. Using local storage depends more on the operating system and other software to deliver some or all of these services and capabilities.
Remote storage on the other hand, offloads work from the operating system to a storage array. In this case, it’s the “hardware” that delivers advanced capabilities. SAN arrays deliver large amounts of capacity, performance, and centralization of workloads. A SAN array might require additional infrastructure as well. Unfortunately, over the years, the “SAN” has become a black box that virtualization administrators have very little visibility into and minimal influence on how or what gets implemented. This perception will change with VMM 2012.
Virtualization together with automation makes it easy to deploy virtual machines at scale. With more enterprises focusing on private (on-premise) cloud computing - minimizing human error, lowering costs, and increasing efficiency are critical requirements.
Virtualization together with automation makes it easy to deploy virtual machines at scale. With more enterprises focusing on private (on-premise) cloud computing - minimizing human error, lowering costs, and increasing efficiency are critical requirements from the storage perspective.
Creation of a new logical unit from available capacity is very useful when a pool of storage is available to you. This means you have control of how many logical units you create and the size of each logical unit. Creating a writeable snapshot of an existing logical unit is one way to rapidly create many copies of an existing virtual disk. This allows you to provision many virtual machines in a small amount of time with minimal load on the hosts. Depending on the array, snapshots can be created almost instantaneously and are very space efficient. Creating a clone of an existing logical unit offloads the work of creating a full copy of a virtual disk to the array. Depending on the array, clones are typically not space efficient and can take some time to create. Which of these provisioning methods you decide to use depends on the array you have and the virtualization workload you need to deploy. VMM 2012 supports all of these methods to give you the flexibility to choose the best method.
Creation of a new logical unit from available capacity is very useful when a pool of storage is available to you. This means you have control of how many logical units you create and the size of each logical unit.
Creating a writeable snapshot of an existing logical unit is one way to rapidly create many copies of an existing virtual disk. This allows you to provision many virtual machines in a small amount of time with minimal load on the hosts. Depending on the array, snapshots can be created almost instantaneously and are very space efficient.
Creating a clone of an existing logical unit offloads the work of creating a full copy of a virtual disk to the array. Depending on the array, clones are typically not space efficient and can take some time to create.
Which of these provisioning methods you decide to use depends on the array you have and the virtualization workload you need to deploy. VMM 2012 supports all of these methods to give you the flexibility to choose the best method.
VMM 2012 leverages the storage automation features explained in this document to deliver unique value-add in a private cloud environment. The scenarios described below are supported directly in the VMM 2012 administrator console and PowerShell interface.
In the administrator console, you can create stand-alone virtual machines or service- based virtual machines using rapid provisioning. You can also integrate rapid provisioning into your own provisioning tools using PowerShell.
VMM 2012 can provision one VM at a time through the administrator console.
So what do you need to take advantage of all of these capabilities? There are both hardware and software requirements you need to be aware of.
Windows Server 8 introduces a new WMI-based API called the Storage Management API (SMAPI) and corresponding set of PowerShell Cmdlets. These provide storage management primitives to manage direct attach storage on the OS as well as external storage arrays. The PowerShell Cmdlets replace tools like diskpart and diskraid. The API is comprised of a WMI object model along with the corresponding set of methods and properties. Storage partners plug into the new API either by:
1.Implementing the SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) industry standard for storage management called SMI-S (Storage Management Initiative –Specification)
2.Implementing a new provider model called the Storage Management Provider (SMP)
Future versions of SCVMM will use the SMAPI and be able to use both SMI-S and SMP providers.
For more information on standards based storage management, check out read Jeffrey Snover’s blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/10/14/windows-server-8-standards-based-storage-management.aspx
Hi, I am Alex Perez Balboa, System Development Engineer on the SCVMM team. Today I am going to provide an overview of some of the new networking concepts in SCVMM 2012 Beta.
A Logical Network is a way of representing networks in your datacenter that have the same connectivity properties (DMZ, public network, Intranet , management). The Network Admin needs to tell SCVMM what VLAN ID belong to each Logical Network so the hosts can be configured to indicate the networks they are connected to. If you come from SCVMM v2, Logical Networks replace network locations and take it a step further. SCVMM now allows the administrator to give a logical meaning to each of the VLANs existing in their datacenter.
Logical Network Definitions are each of the items that form a Logical Network. Logical Network Definitions scope the Logical Networks to a specific set of host groups. Logical Network Definitions are composed of Subnet-VLAN pairs. This way you can indicate what VLAN belongs to what Logical Network on each host group. When you make a Logical Network Definition available on a host group, all descendant host groups also have access to the Subnet-VLAN pairs defined in the Logical Network Definition.
The VLAN id is used to know what VLAN to use when connecting a Virtual Machine to the network on the host. This is the physical configuration for a specific virtual network adapter.
The subnet is the IP subnet that is linked to the specified VLAN ID. The subnet is an optional parameter. The subnet is needed by SCVMM to configure static IP addresses during virtual machine creation.
When SCVMM creates a virtual machine and connects it to a specific VLAN ID according to the Logical Network configured on the virtual machine hardware properties , SCVMM knows that the IP to set on the virtual machine should be within the subnet specified.
What different combinations are allowed and when to use them?
·
Empty subnet
Subnet with value
This configuration can be used when you reuse private IP addresses across different locations
VLAN 0 means you want VLAN disabled. Use this setting when you don’t care about VLAN IDs.
Normally this means you have your hosts configured on Access mode.
Hi, I am Nitin Bhat, Program Manager on the SCVMM team. Today I am going to provide you with an overview of how to integrate a load balancer into your SCVMM 2012 Beta environment for use in deploying VMM created services.
In SCVMM 2012 Beta administrators can create IP pools that provide the capability to reserve IP addresses which could be allocated as Virtual IP Addresses for load balancers. This helps you to deploy, for example, a Web Tier Service using VMM2012 service creation feature behind a load balancer. Hence, whenever a service is deployed within SCVMM 2012 and one of the tiers is associated with a load balancer, the virtual IP address (VIP) is checked out automatically from the VIP reservation done within the IP Pool.
SCVMM 2012 beta supports different types of load balancer vendors. The interface to integrate these load balancers from different vendors is based on PowerShell and we have worked with different various vendors like F5 and Citrix to make the providers ready for SCVMM 2012 Beta.
You can obtain a list of supported load balancers from the SCVMM 2012 Public Beta connect site. https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/Downloads
Note: you will be directed by the document to correct location to download the provider. These providers are MSI based installers and will require installation on the SCVMM 2012 server.
Once you have installed them, to check the status of the providers, select “Settings”
Under settings, click on the configuration Providers.
Once you have installed the configuration providers, this is how they would show up in the SCVMM 2012 Admin console.
In this example, both the providers for F5 and Citrix are depicted with details of version, publisher, model and manufacturer.
Go to the Fabric Workspace and under the networking node, you will find the Load Balancers Node.
Click on the ribbon button “Add Load Balancer”. A wizard pops up.
1. Here you will need to specify a Run as Account which is used to communicate with the load balancer instance.
2. Select the host group affinity for the load balancer.
3. Select the model and manufacturer
In the example here I have selected a F5 load balancer.
4. Specify the DNS address for the load balancer instance along with the port number
Link to the TechNet Library with additional information on SCVMM 2012
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=209605
Have a great day!
Nitin Bhat, Program Manager, SCVMM
Hi, I’m Kerim Hanif and and I work as a Program Manager on the SCVMM team. Today I am going to talk about the High Available VMM server (HA VMM) feature in SCVMM 2012 Beta.
During the evolution of the VMM server product from VMM 2007 to VMM 2008 R2 we saw many customers tying their workflows to VMM and even more using VMM to carve out and give compute resources to their internal departments. One consistent evolution fact of the product is that we see more and more VMM servers used as mission critical servers in customer environments. This fact makes VMM service’s highly availability feature very important for many customers, with this new feature VMM is able to sustain a failure on the VMM Service Level.
In previous versions VMM was unable to provide this feature and the workaround was to install VMM in a highly Available Virtual Machine, so that if something was to happen to the host, the HA VM could failover to another host in the cluster. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take in account the problems that could go wrong with the VMM service itself or problems with the operating system that the VMM is running on, if something goes wrong in these places, VMM service would go down.
So a huge ask from our customers was to make VMM service itself cluster aware, and in VMM 2012 version did exactly that.
Here are the pre-requisites for a HA VMM server installation:
1. Failover clustering feature added, cluster created and configured (Windows Server 2008 R2 is the minimum OS version supported as node servers)
2. Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 installed on all nodes that will be used as VMM servers http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=696dd665-9f76-4177-a811-39c26d3b3b34&displaylang=en
3. Server and instance name of a SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 cluster or remote SQL server (best practice to use clustered SQL Server with HA VMM servers)
4. For our DKM (Distributed Key Management) requirement, either logged on, installing VMM with an account that has “edit” permission on the Active Directory container (can be a lower level container doesn’t have to be the root) or DKM group pre-created on Active Directory and its name available to provide at setup (more on DKM requirement later)
HA VMM Installation Steps
When we were designing this feature we wanted it to be very easy and simple. Installation of VMM in an HA or standalone fashion is very similar and it is integrated into the usual standalone installation.
1. To install VMM in an HA fashion you just need to start installation of VM on one of the clustered nodes, and select install from our splash screen.
2. After accepting our EULA you will get our feature selection screen, as you can see one of the setup improvements that we did for this version of VMM is to chain the various VMM installations together.
3. Once you select VMM Server feature, we will detect that you are running this server on a failover clustering node and will offer you to start HA VMM setup instead, you will need to select YES at this dialog to start HA VMM setup. Note that it is supported to install VMM in a standalone fashion on a cluster node; all you have to do is select NO at this dialog box.
4. Once you select YES to the HA VMM opt-in question, setup will select the features that you need for this installation. In this version of VMM, regardless of its high availability aspect, it is a requirement to install VMM Console on all machines that VMM Server is installed; therefore in this dialog we will select VMM Server and VMM Console. Another important thing to note here is that we actually do not recommend selecting Self-Service Portal during HA VMM installation, but it is allowed at Beta code, this will be fixed at RTM timeframe and we will gray out Self-Service Portal selection in this view.
5. After this page we will ask you standard questions about registration information, product key (another improvement; you can pass this product key section empty in VMM 2012), Microsoft Update configuration (if not configured previously), installation location and we finally we will come to the database configuration page. In the database configuration page you will need to provide the server name, instance name and database name that setup will use.
There are many options here:
1. You can ask setup to create a new database (logged on user needs to have permission to create a database on the server name provided)
2. Use an existing database (if logged on user don’t have permission to create a database, database admins can pre-create an empty database and VMM can add its tables to that database during installation)
3. Provide different credentials other than logged on users credentials Please note that as mentioned before the best practice is to use a clustered SQL server for HA VMM installations. If you leave a port or instance name boxes empty in this page we will use the defaults for that box (e.g. if you leave port number empty we will use 1433, or if you leave the instance name empty we will use default instance on the SQL server that you provided.)
We will use the provided SQL server instance’s defaults for log and database file locations, if you like to provide different locations you can;
1. Pre-create an empty database with its log and database file locations pointing to where ever you want them to, and then provide this empty database to VMM as existing database during install.
6.
6. After database configuration page you will come to an HA VMM specific cluster configuration page. This page will be different for different configurations, for example for IPv6 and DHCP configured servers you will not see the second portion of the page and will only provide the cluster service name.
Cluster service name here basically is the name in active directory the users and admins will use to identify this HA VMM service. When choosing this name, make sure that it is a unique name that is easy to identify the HA VMM service.
7. Another important setup page in HA VMM installation is the account configuration page.
There are two things that are mandatory in this page for HA VMM installations:
a. HA VMM server installation requires a domain account as a startup account for the VMM service. You won’t have the choice to use a local system here. It is best practice to use a dedicated domain account created just for VMM as a service account here. b. The other mandatory place in this page is for VMM to store its encryption keys in AD.
a. HA VMM server installation requires a domain account as a startup account for the VMM service. You won’t have the choice to use a local system here. It is best practice to use a dedicated domain account created just for VMM as a service account here.
b. The other mandatory place in this page is for VMM to store its encryption keys in AD.
As mentioned at the beginning of the blog we use Distributed Key Management (DKM) to let users and processes running on different machines securely share data. Once an HA VMM node fails over to another node, the VMM service on that failed over node starts accessing the VMM database and uses the encryption keys conveniently stored under a container in AD to decrypt the data that is being held securely encrypted in the VMM database.
· The AD container distinguished name that will contain DKM data needs to be written in the LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) at this screen. · If the logged on user has permission to create a container in AD then the group won’t have to be pre-created. The group name can be anything VMM admin chooses, and the container in AD doesn’t have to be a root container.
· The AD container distinguished name that will contain DKM data needs to be written in the LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) at this screen.
· If the logged on user has permission to create a container in AD then the group won’t have to be pre-created. The group name can be anything VMM admin chooses, and the container in AD doesn’t have to be a root container.
Example#1: If domain name is contoso.com and the DKM group name was decided to be “VMMDKM”, user can writer CN=VMMDKM,DC=contoso,DC=com under the DKM and since the logged on user has permission to create this container, VMM setup would create this container in contoso.com domain.
Example #2: If user has no permission to create a container in AD then he/she needs to coordinate with the AD admins to create this group and get the container’s “distinguished name” from AD admins prior to HA VMM installation. Make sure to ask AD admin to provide the following rights to the setup user;
1. Generic Write
2. Generic Read
3. Create Child
One convenient way to get this information from AD admin could be to give him/her a ready script to run in his/her environment. This way you don’t have to explain much, they would just run the script and let you know when it successfully executes.
One easy way to create an ADSI script is to use “ADSI Scriptomatic” tool to create a script; you can get this tool from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=39044e17-2490-487d-9a92-ce5dcd311228&DisplayLang=en
8. Once you are done with these pages you will see VMM port selection page and after that you will see the library creation page. For HA VMM installation this page is just there for warning purposes because setup does not create a default library share after HA VMM installations.
The reason behind this is that when creating high availability for VMM servers, it is important that not only the VMM server feature but all components that constitutes VMM service are also highly available (hence the best practice recommendation for clustered SQL Server in the previous step)
After HA VMM installation, a new library server and share needs to be added to VMM . It is best practice to use a HA file server for HA VMM library server.
9. After going through the installation summary page your installation will start and in couple of minutes end with a successful installation of the first node of your HA VMM server.
10. After the first node installation you can easily add another node to this HA VMM cluster that you just created, to do that simply start the VMM setup on the second node where you want to install HA VMM.
After going through the EULA page and selecting the VMM server feature checkbox you will see a similar popup as the first node installation, but this time we will detect the HA VMM and ask “if you want to add this server as a node”. If you say YES, there will be minimum amount of pages of setup and your second node will be added. You will need to repeat this on all of the nodes that you want to add to this HA VMM installation.
Important SCVMM 2012 HA VMM Facts
a. It is a fault tolerant service feature, but this not does increase scale/performance b. There can be as many as 16 nodes in an HA VMM installation but there can be only one node active at any time. c. When VMM console connects it asks for a VMM server name and port number. Make sure to provide the cluster name of the HA VMM service instead of a node name here. Connecting to a node name will not be allowed. d. You can do a planned failover (i.e. to install a patch, do maintenance to a node etc..) using failover clustering UI; there is no way to failover HA VMM service using the VMM console in this version of VMM. e. You can only see the active node of the HA VMM service from the failover clustering UI or using Get-SCVMMServer PowerShell commandlet at beta timeframe.
a. It is a fault tolerant service feature, but this not does increase scale/performance
b. There can be as many as 16 nodes in an HA VMM installation but there can be only one node active at any time.
c. When VMM console connects it asks for a VMM server name and port number. Make sure to provide the cluster name of the HA VMM service instead of a node name here. Connecting to a node name will not be allowed.
d. You can do a planned failover (i.e. to install a patch, do maintenance to a node etc..) using failover clustering UI; there is no way to failover HA VMM service using the VMM console in this version of VMM.
e. You can only see the active node of the HA VMM service from the failover clustering UI or using Get-SCVMMServer PowerShell commandlet at beta timeframe.
PowerShell Commands
There are three new parameters under Get-SCVMMServer
1. IsHighlyAvailable – True/False 2. FailoverVMMNodes – FQDN of all nodes that this HA VMM installation contains 3. ActiveVMMNode – FQDN of the active node
1. IsHighlyAvailable – True/False
2. FailoverVMMNodes – FQDN of all nodes that this HA VMM installation contains
3. ActiveVMMNode – FQDN of the active node
Failover
When you do a planned failover make sure to do following:
Always perform inside a maintenance window that is communicated to SCVMM users. All running tasks and all connections to VMM consoles and Self-Service Portals will be stopped at failover time. Running jobs that failed due to the failover will not start automatically after failover. If the particular job supports restarting it will be possible to restart this job but this process will not be automatic. Ensure that when connecting VMM console the VMM cluster service name is used to enable reconnecting to the VMM service after planned failover.
Uninstall HA VMM Service
Hi, I’m Eric Winner, Principal Program Manager on the SCVMM team. Just last week at MMS 2011 we announced the public beta for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta. Today, I’m going to provide a high-level overview of the features and in the days to come we will continue to post subsequent blog postings offering detailed explanations of specific product areas.
Bookmark the SCVMM Blog, so you can come back again and again to learn more about 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
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.
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.
· 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.
Eric Winner, Principal Lead Program Manager- SCVMM