Here’s a heads up on another interesting article I found over in the TechNet Wiki. This one is by Microsoft Partner Kristian Nese and it talks about all the cool new features that are part of the library in SCVMM 2012:
With all the new features in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, you will most likely use the library more intensively than you did in VMM 2008 R2. The library contains some very interesting things you'll want to be aware of…
You can continue reading Kristian’s article here.
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
Hi everyone, I just wanted to give you a quick heads up on a cool resource for SCVMM 2012 that a colleague turned me on to today. Our friends over on the Hyper-V.Nu blog have been busy at work putting the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 beta through it’s paces and as a result have created quite a bit of documentation describing the new features and their experiences using the product. I haven’t had a chance to go through all of it just yet but what I’ve seen so far looks fantastic. If you’re wanting to get a little more insight into SCVMM 2012 then head on over and check these out:
Installing SCVMM 2012
SCVMM 2012 Beta & Dynamic Memory
SCVMM 2012 – Deep Storage Integration
SCVMM 2012 – Guest OS Profiles
SCVMM 2012 – Setting Up Run As Accounts & Profiles
SCVMM 2012 – Out of Band Management (OOB)
SCVMM 2012 – Adding HP iLO as an OOB provider
SCVMM 2012 – Preparing the Host Profile
SCVMM 2012 – Bare Metal Deployment of Hyper-V Servers
SCVMM 2012 – Creating a Hyper-V Cluster
Enjoy!
Microsoft Learning hosted another new and exclusive Jump Start virtual training event – Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals and we are thrilled to announce availability of the HD-quality video recordings – FREE – on TechNet Edge and soon coming to MS Showcase, the Zune Marketplace and iTunes! Additionally, every module will be made available (with assessment questions) on the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) in the next few weeks.
What’s the high-level overview?
Who is the target audience for this training?
Where do I go for this great training?
The HD-quality video recordings of this course are on TechNet Edge. Here are direct links to each module:
· Entire course on TechNet Edge: Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals
o Platform
o Management
o VDI
· Links to course materials on Born to Learn
Where can people learn more?
Virtualization experts worldwide are taking a new look at Microsoft Virtualization. After this Jump Start, we hope you will understand why. Check out the Microsoft Learning “Virtualization Training Portal” to better understand virtualization-specific certifications and where to find instructor-led classes to help you and your team. Additionally there is great training content on the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) where you can learn at your own pace, connect with other IT Pros and earn prizes & rewards.
OS Deployment of Hyper-V through SCVMM 2012 makes it very easy to turn bare metal machines into VM Hosts. The process deploys the OS and creates a consistent configuration to provide a layer of uniformity to your hosts even though there can be significant differences in hardware. It also makes it easy to redeploy if your host isn’t acting as expected.
In order to do this there are a lot of different technologies and components (IPMI, PXE, WDS, WinPE) that are working together to make this happen. Many of these components are setup and configured outside of the control of the VMM server, and if they aren’t setup correctly the process will fail. Once a good configuration is obtained, deploying multiple machines or redeploying to existing machines is very reliable.
In order to help understand where these configuration problems may be I’ve produced some helpful flowcharts to identify common problems that we’ve encountered when working on this feature.
First up is the UI for the add resource wizard. If you can’t find the computer you can’t deploy to it. This flowchart will help you through the process of understanding why discovery might fail. It will also help you to understand what options to choose in the UI:
Once you complete the add resource wizard a job gets created for deployment. If all goes well you can get lunch and when you return your host will be deployed and under management by VMM. If the job fails, that’s where the next flowchart comes in…
We welcome feedback on this process on the VMM forums in Technet. Let us know if you encountered a problem that isn’t covered here, or if this helped you to solve a problem.
Thanks!
Greg Cusanza -Program Manager-System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Microsoft SCVMM 2012 can manage Microsoft Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V) packages. In this blog post, we are going to explain what a Server App-V package means and how we can create Server App-V packages with Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Sequencer.
Prologue – What is Server Application Virtualization?
Server Application Virtualization is functionality that packages server applications into xcopyable images, which can then be easily and efficiently started and deployed without an installation process. This can all be accomplished without requiring changes to the application code. This virtualization process also separates the application and its associated state from the operating system thereby providing new approaches to deployment and management.
Server Application Virtualization is a core technology for the next generation of datacenter management capabilities from Microsoft, and is central to the service centric approach to management that will be enabled with System Center releases in 2012.
Getting Started with Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Sequencer
A Server App-V package is simply a self-contained software application. When you install an application, the setup program deploys files, registry values and Windows components to your machine. Now imagine all of that data contained in a single file. That single file is the Server App-V package. It contains the information required to run a software application when it is deployed to a machine. Once your package is ready, you can deploy it to thousands of machines without going for the product installation steps again. Deployment of a Server App-V package is a one click operation from the end-user perspective.
Customers can easily deploy a Server App-V package to a Windows Server and start using the software application that is contained in the package. Microsoft SCVMM provides the UI to configure and deploy Server App-V packages to your virtual machines. However, to create a Server App-V package, we must use Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Sequencer which comes with the Microsoft SCVMM installation.
Here are the five steps to create a Server App-V package:
1- Install Server App-V Sequencer 2- Start Server App-V Sequencer to monitor the system 3- Launch and install your application 4- Stop Server App-V Sequencer monitoring the system 5- Save the Server App-V package Install Server App-V Sequencer
1- Install Server App-V Sequencer
2- Start Server App-V Sequencer to monitor the system
3- Launch and install your application
4- Stop Server App-V Sequencer monitoring the system
5- Save the Server App-V package
Install Server App-V Sequencer
Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Sequencer installer is named SeqSetup.exe and distributed through Microsoft SCVMM 2012. Although the installation of Server App-V Sequencer is straightforward, there are important points that you need to be aware of:
o Always install Server App-V Sequencer to a clean machine. It’s important that the sequencer machine doesn’t have other installations prior to the installation of Server App-V Sequencer. Otherwise, sequencing process might be interrupted with other process activities. o Use a virtual machine. Doing so will make your life easier as you will have the chance to take snapshots of the machine during the installation of the application. o If you are planning to deploy a Server App-V package to multiple OS types, choose the lowest version of these OS types as the sequencing machine. For example, if you want to deploy a Server App-V package to both Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2, choose Windows 2008 as the sequencing machine.
o Always install Server App-V Sequencer to a clean machine. It’s important that the sequencer machine doesn’t have other installations prior to the installation of Server App-V Sequencer. Otherwise, sequencing process might be interrupted with other process activities.
o Use a virtual machine. Doing so will make your life easier as you will have the chance to take snapshots of the machine during the installation of the application.
o If you are planning to deploy a Server App-V package to multiple OS types, choose the lowest version of these OS types as the sequencing machine. For example, if you want to deploy a Server App-V package to both Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2, choose Windows 2008 as the sequencing machine.
Once you determine the OS and virtual machine, you can launch SeqSetup.exe and install Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Sequencer. After the installation completes, you will notice an extra drive letter in the system. This drive letter, by default named ‘Q’, is a symlink to a folder in your main hard disk drive, commonly labeled as ‘C’, and will be used as the primary sequencing location during the sequencing process.
Start Server App-V Sequencer to monitor the system
Once the Server App-V Sequencer has been successfully installed, you are ready to virtualize your server application. Your next step is to launch Server App-V Sequencer and go through the wizard to start monitoring the system. Server App-V Sequencer must be in “monitoring mode” as you install your application so that Server App-V Sequencer can capture the system changes that are being made by application installers and collect required information to create the Server App-V package.
When you launch Server App-V Sequencer, the welcome page will be displayed:
Here, we want to create a new virtual application package. Clicking “Create a New Virtual Application Package” will take us to the following page:
This page reports any issues that may potentially interfere sequencing process. Make sure that no issues are reported in this page. For example, if you have running applications on the system, close them. Otherwise, Server App-V Sequencer will warn about the processes running on the system. Clicking Next button at this page will take us to the following page:
Here, you can specify the installer that you want to run or you can choose a custom installation option. If you have only one setup program to execute, you can specify its path in the first option and sequencer will automatically launch the setup after monitoring starts.
Second option is useful if you want to launch setup programs or scripts manually. Sometimes, you may want to execute multiple executable or script files to perform installation and configuration of the applications. Selecting “Perform a custom installation” option and clicking Next button will take us to the following page:
We are almost there… In the above page, you specify the package name for the virtual application package. You should provide a valid name here: If you don’t change the “Primary Virtual Application Directory” setting, the package name will also be used as the root folder name for your package. So, make sure the package name you specify complies with the folder naming standards. Clicking Next button at this page will start the monitoring session for the sequencing process. You will see the following page after a progress bar hits 100%.
Launch and install your application
You are ready to install the application you want to sequence. At this time, sequencer is actively monitoring any system changes that are made by other processes. You can install and configure your application to the machine. Here are a few tips that will make your life easy
o Server applications may take time to install and configure. It’s easy to forget an installation step if you have a lengthy list of installation steps. To prevent a reset in sequencing process, you can take snapshots during installation phase regularly. Doing so will enable you to revert the machine back and continue sequencing from the last good state. o After installation completes, make sure the server application is running correctly. Running the applications during sequencing will allow you to understand the Server App-V package’s functionality once it is deployed to server machines.
o Server applications may take time to install and configure. It’s easy to forget an installation step if you have a lengthy list of installation steps. To prevent a reset in sequencing process, you can take snapshots during installation phase regularly. Doing so will enable you to revert the machine back and continue sequencing from the last good state.
o After installation completes, make sure the server application is running correctly. Running the applications during sequencing will allow you to understand the Server App-V package’s functionality once it is deployed to server machines.
Stop Server App-V Sequencer monitoring the system
Once you finish installation of the applications, select “I am finished installing.” and click Next button. Doing so will stop the monitoring session for sequencer. You shouldn’t do any installation step beyond this point. Once monitoring session is stopped, there’s no way to start it again. So, you must ensure that you are done with the installation of application before stopping monitoring session. If you are using a VM, you can take a snapshot before stopping the monitoring session so that you can revert it back if you want to do anything else in the monitoring session.
Clicking Next button will take us to the following page after a progress bar hits 100%.
At this page, we can see the shortcuts that were created by the application we just sequenced. You can launch each program to ensure sequencing is completed successfully. Server App-V Sequencer creates a default command prompt shortcut for the application sequenced. This command prompt can then be used to access the virtual resources such as virtual registry and virtual file system. Once you are ready, clicking Next button will take us to the final page of the sequencing wizard:
If Server App-V Sequencer finds any problem with the sequencing process, you can see them here in the report. Ideally, a successful sequencing process generates no warning or error messages. Clicking Close button at this time will close the wizard and take us to the main page of Server App-V Sequencer.
Save the Server App-V Package
At this point of time, we have a successfully sequenced package. To create the package files, we must use the ‘File’ menu and ‘Save’ button. Before saving the package, we can look at the list of deployment configuration items and create more of them if we need to. Once we save the package, we will have following artifacts stored in the save location:
o SFT file: This file has the .sft extension and contains the deployed files, folders, registry values and internal information that is required to deploy the package. Depending on the installation, file size may change from megabytes to gigabytes. o Manifest file : This file name has the {package name}_manifest.xml format and contains metadata information to add the package to the client. o Deployment configuration file: deploymentconfig.xml contains deployment configuration items that have been created in the sequencer side. o OSD file(s) : OSD files contain application information that installer created a shortcut for. OSD files are required in order to deploy the package successfully. o SPRJ file: SPRJ file is the Sequencer’s project file and used to open the package for edit/upgrade in Server App-V Sequencer.
o SFT file: This file has the .sft extension and contains the deployed files, folders, registry values and internal information that is required to deploy the package. Depending on the installation, file size may change from megabytes to gigabytes.
o Manifest file : This file name has the {package name}_manifest.xml format and contains metadata information to add the package to the client.
o Deployment configuration file: deploymentconfig.xml contains deployment configuration items that have been created in the sequencer side.
o OSD file(s) : OSD files contain application information that installer created a shortcut for. OSD files are required in order to deploy the package successfully.
o SPRJ file: SPRJ file is the Sequencer’s project file and used to open the package for edit/upgrade in Server App-V Sequencer.
Congratulations! We created our Server App-V package successfully. We can now import the package to the VMM library and start using it in our virtual machines!
Epilogue – Deployment Configuration Items
Deployment configuration items are an important feature of Server Application Virtualization. They give the administrator the power to configure the package while it's being deployed to a server. Imagine that you sequenced an application with IIS sites and applications. At the end of the installation, you noticed that IIS site uses http protocol with port 8080. Without Deployment Configuration Items, you wouldn’t have the chance to change either the protocol or the port number that is used by the site at deployment time. Server App-V Sequencer generates Deployment Configuration Items for specific components that are installed by the application installer so that you can deploy the package with custom settings.
Below is a snapshot from a sequencing that contains IIS applications:
As you can see from the image, Server App-V Sequencer generates items to allow you to change the configuration of MYSite’s certificate, port number and protocol information. This information is saved to deploymentconfig.xml file and can be edited through the SCVMM’s UI. When a Server App-V package is being added to client machine, deploymentconfig.xml file is being consumed and the items in the deploymentconfig.xml file are applied to the client machine.
In conclusion, Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Sequencer allows you to create virtual packages. You can create deployment configuration items to change the configuration of the system once a package is deployed to a client machine. SCVMM 2012 can import your Server App-V packages and deploy them to your virtual machines with a user friendly user interface.
Alp Emre Kanlikilicer- System Development Engineer- Server App-V Team
Here’s a heads up on another interesting article I found over in the TechNet Wiki. This one is by Microsoft Partner Kristian Nese and it talks about Dynamic Optimization and Power Optimization in SCVMM 2012:
VMM brought us a lot of new stuff. We will take a closer look at the optimization options this time. We have ‘Dynamic Optimization’ and ‘Power Optimization’.
Requirements:
To support dynamic optimization, you must have a well configured cluster that also supports live migration. For power optimization, the computers must have a baseboard management controller (BMC) that enables out-of-band management. (Power optimization is an optional feature of dynamic optimization). So what`s the benefits here, and why should you care?
The answer is short: Server utilization….
Hi Everyone, this is Nitin Bhat and Hector Linares from the fabric management team in SCVMM. While talking with TAP customers we got some great questions that we wanted to share with you all.
·Q: How does the SMI-S connection occur between VMM2012 and the SAN array? In other words, what protocol is used and what access is required on the SAN?
A:CIM-XML is used to communicate with the underlying SMI-S providers. VMM never communicates with the SAN arrays themselves.
·Q: How to set up communication between SMI-S provider and the SAN?
A:SMI-S Providers are vendor specific. Each one will have a different setup process. At a high level, here are the series of steps.
1. Install SMI-S provider 2. Add array to the provider using SAN credentials 3. Add user account to the provider that will be used by VMM to access the provider 4. Add provider to VMM using credentials in #3
1. Install SMI-S provider
2. Add array to the provider using SAN credentials
3. Add user account to the provider that will be used by VMM to access the provider
4. Add provider to VMM using credentials in #3
· Q:What kind of topology is supported?
A:Right now it is single machine. Providers are not HA capable. It is important to understand that an SMI-S provider is for management only and is not in the critical path for day to day array functionality. If the provider is down for any reason… the array continues to work. SAN admin tool will continue to work as well (unless of course you also use the SMI-S provider)
HP EVA provider is HA. If you start multiple instances it knows and only allows one active instance.
· Q:Are there any best practices for provisioning storage to the virtual hosts? I’ve been told that CSVs could create large disk queuing. Does SCVMM2012 have the ability to take small LUNs and combine them together into a larger volume (and present them to the hosts)?
A:VMM team will have more guidance/best practice around RC timeframe. This content is more of reference architecture for SANs, VMM, clusters, and SMI-S providers.
Windows + Hyper-V do not offer a native way to aggregate small LUNs and present them as a CSV (unlike VMware that supports this). So the CSV will have to be sized/designed for the expected workload.
· Q:Guidance around Storage Admins managing SAN’s to allow connections from the SMI-S providers?
A:Adding a storage array to an SMI-S provider will expose all of its pools and LUNs. SAN admin should know that upfront when setting up the SMI-S provider.
Operations Manager Integration and Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) Background
System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 uses System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor the health and availability of the virtual machines and virtual machine hosts that VMM is managing. VMM also uses Operations Manager to monitor the health and availability of the VMM server, database server, library servers, and self-service Web servers, and to provide Diagram views of the virtualized environment in the Operations Manager Console. Integration with Operations Manager is also a prerequisite for enabling Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) in VMM.
Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) ties specific alerts from System Center Operations Manager 2007 to remediation actions in VMM. For example, a customer might perform load-balancing of virtual machines between physical hosts when specific thresholds are exceeded, such as transactions per second, CPU utilization, e-mail message delivery SLA, and so on. Alternatively, a customer might want to migrate virtual machines when a hardware failure is detected (for example, a fan failure).
PRO leverages the management pack infrastructure of Operations Manager. When a PRO monitor in a PRO-enabled management pack identifies an opportunity for optimization, a PRO tip is generated in VMM. The PRO tip can include a remediation script that is to be run in VMM. A VMM administrator can manually approve and implement PRO tips, or the VMM administrator can configure PRO to automatically implement PRO tips.
In VMM 2012, we’ve made significant improvement in our Operations Manager integration and PRO infrastructure. We’ll touch on several of the notable improvements in this post.
Simplified Integration
In VMM 2008 R2, setting up integration with Operations Manger required several steps and had a couple of notable prerequisites. First, the Operations Manager Root Management Server needed to be installed in an Active Directory Domain which had a two-way trust relationship with the domain that contained the VMM server. Second, the “Configure Operations Manager” option of the VMM 2008 R2 setup had to be run on the Root Management Server. Finally, a VMM admin console needed to be installed on the Root Management Server as well as all other management servers in the management group.
With VMM 2012, we’ve made a number of significant improvements to the integration experience. The two-way trust requirement has been removed, as has the need to install a VMM Admin Console on any Operations Manager management server - including the Root Management Server! That leaves us with the following prerequisites:
- PowerShell 2.0 on all Operations Manager management servers
- Operations Manager console installed on the VMM server
- Microsoft SQL Server Management Pack
- Microsoft Windows Server (IIS) 2000/2003/2008 Management Pack
One great improvement is that we’ve incorporated the integration setup directly into the VMM Admin console, simplifying the experience of getting your VMM and Operations Manager systems talking to one another. In the Settings space, simply navigate to the System Center Settings node and access the Operations Manager Server setting. VMM will detect that there is no current integration and will walk you through a simple wizard to setup the connection:
Once you confirm the settings and click Finish, the connection will be established, PowerShell remoting will be enabled on the VMM server (which is why we do not require a VMM admin console on any Operations Manager management server), the VMM management packs will be imported into the Operations Manager system, and VMM will begin publishing data to Operations Manager.
We’ve also enhanced the connection object itself to return both the current condition of the connection (including any errors should the connection be in a warning or error state):
We also display the currently installed VMM management packs along with their version:
Enhanced Diagram Views
As you’re probably aware, VMM 2012 has an exciting new feature called Services, which are essentially connected sets of virtual machines along with applications running inside those virtual machines (e.g. Web Deploy IIS sites, Server App-V virtualized applications and SQL Server DAC packages) which together deliver a business service, such as a Stock Trading application. One benefit of integrating VMM and Operations Manager is that VMM can keep the service model of the service up to date in Operations Manager, including dynamically updating the service diagram due to scale out (e.g. add a web server to a load balanced web tier) or scale in (e.g. remove a business logic server from a load balanced middle tier) as well as display the health of the virtual machines, tiers and the overall service in Operations Manager. For example, here is a diagram of a typical three tier application which has a scalable web tier along with single instance mid and data tiers:
I mentioned that VMM will dynamically (and nearly immediately) update the diagram to reflect changes to your running instance. For example, here I’ve gone ahead and scaled out a single instance service tier to be a two instance tier in response to load. Notice how VMM accurately represents the state of the new virtual machine instance as “creating” and will not initiate monitoring of that object until the object creation has been completed, preventing unnecessary alerts during the virtual machine provisioning phase:
Of course, we’ve also introduced monitoring and diagram views for our other new VMM features such as private clouds, IP address pools and Storage pools.
Improved PRO Configuration
In the previous releases of VMM (2008, 2008 R2 and 2008 R2 SP1), PRO Tips could only be enabled or disabled for a specific host group, cluster or the VMM server itself. The net effect was that all the monitors that targeted PRO objects within the host group, cluster or VMM server were either enabled or disabled. In VMM 2012, we have introduced the concept of a PRO monitor configuration to give users fine grained control over the PRO monitors and resulting PRO Tips. Using the PRO monitor configuration, users can choose to enable or disable individual PRO monitor and auto-remediation for specific objects such as Host Group, Host Cluster, Cloud, Service instance or specific Virtual Machines. What’s more, we’ve allowed the Administrator to specify if Self-Service Users should receive PRO Tips for the objects they own!
For example, here’s a set of PRO Monitors which have been retrieved for a specific host group:
If a specific monitor is enabled in VMM, an override for that monitor is created in Operations Manager for the specific scope. The override is stored in a separate Management Pack (called the working MP) that has the name of the PRO Pack followed by the word “Working”. The “Remediate” checkbox will create an override to enable auto-remediate. If the remediate option is unchecked, the user will be given the option to manually implement the PRO Tip, should one be generated.
Note the “Other PRO Monitors” section. We’ve included this category to help ensure that the investment you’ve made in existing 2008 R2 PRO packs will “just work” with VMM 2012 - note that in this case, the VMM 2008 R2 requirement of having a VMM admin console on each Operations Manager management server still applies. Thus, we strongly encourage you to upgrade those PRO packs to work with our enhanced target types.
New PRO State
In VMM 2012, we’ve enhanced the PRO feature to report the health state of individual PRO monitors. The health state reflects the current health state (Warning, Healthy, Critical or Uninitialized) of the monitor in Operations Manager for the specific object of interest (Host, VM, Cloud, Service Instance, etc). Along with the health state, the current configuration of each monitor is displayed:
Other Enhancements
We’ve added a number of new PowerShell options to not only make testing the PRO infrastructure easier, but also to simplify updating Operations Manager with the latest data from VMM. We’ve also modified our PRO Tip infrastructure to allow the use of custom Operations Manager resolution state.
Here are a couple of new cmdlets:
Test-SCPROTip
For diagnostic purposes, VMM 2012 offers a cmdlet to create a test PRO Tip – a round-trip test that checks whether the VMM to Operations Manager integration is setup appropriately to receive PRO Tips.
Write-SCOpsMgrConnection
This cmdlet will push all the objects that were previously undiscovered to Operations Manager. As an aside, the discovery refresher runs every 6 hours in VMM to push objects to Operations Manager at regular intervals.
In VMM 2008 R2, PRO Tips were set to active only if the status of the corresponding Operations Manager alert was “New” (value = 0). Any alert values between 1 and 255 did not set the PRO Tip status to active which resulted in PRO Tips not being triggered in VMM. Customers have, however, told us that they frequently use custom resolution states in Operations Manager. As such, VMM 2012 will support both the Operations Manager default alert resolution state as well as any user-defined alert status (note that this support is also available in VMM 2008 R2 SP1):
Wrapping Up
We hope you agree that our new Operations Manager integration and PRO infrastructure improvements are valuable and that we are definitely providing a “better together” experience between our System Center products. Please feel free to submit feedback through the Connect site and ask questions on the VMM forums. Also, make sure to visit the VMM 2012 TechNet Library!
Thanks,
Stephen Baron – Program Manager- System Center Virtual Machine Manager Prasanna Sridhar –Software Development Engineer- System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Just a quick FYI on another interesting article by Leandro Carvalho that showed up in the TechNet Wiki yesterday. This one discusses how to use VM Templates in SCVMM 2012 to deploy a server incredibly quickly and easily:
Automation! This is a word that defines one of the best qualities of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (VMM Server). In some places it is normal some policies to be used to provide a server in the production environment such as prerequisites, installation, configuration, and others that are necessary, but it takes too much time to be fulfilled. For a Windows basic installation, including updates, usually we need four hours, but with those policies sometimes take days. Compatibility and hardware requirements, applications, configurations and updates are some examples of the bureaucracy that may exist during a server installation. One of the features of the VMM Server to resolve this dilemma is the creation of virtual machines templates, enabling the automated installation and configuration of servers. So we can dramatically reduce the time to release a server and automate all these processes in a simple and uncomplicated method.….
You can continue reading Leandro’s article here.
Here’s another interesting article that showed up in the TechNet Wiki yesterday, published by Microsoft Partner and MVP Leandro E. Carvalho. This one discusses how to use the Dynamic Optimization feature in SCVMM 2012 to save energy and save money:
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (VMM2012) brings new features related to the Green IT called Dynamic Optimization. With it VMM moves virtual machines to other hosts in accordance of physical server resources, providing load balancing across the cluster hosts and better hardware utilization between them.
An interesting Dynamic Optimization feature is the Power Optimization. With it the VMM server can also move (using Live Migration) all virtual machines (VMs) to another host that is free to turn it off soon after. If the system needs it again, the VMM will turn it on and the VMs will be migrated back to the host. Both are great resources for return on investment (ROI), with energy savings achieved through Dynamic Optimization and using, in a automatically way, the Green IT Best Practices….