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System Center Virtual Machine Manager:
The Answer to Virtualisation Manageability!

‘VM Stall’ has been defined as ‘the tendency for virtualisation deployments to stall once the low-hanging fruit has been converted’ and includes possible causes such as Risk Aversion, Resourcing, Scalability, and Manageability.

If your business is looking for a software solution that will take on the challenges of this latter cause, then Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager will scale to handle your virtualisation deployments:

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 helps enable centralised management of physical and virtual IT infrastructure, increased server utilisation, and dynamic resource optimisation across multiple virtualisation platforms. It includes end-to-end capabilities such as planning, deploying, managing, and optimizing the virtual infrastructure.

Benefits

  • Centrally creates and manages virtual machines across the entire datacenter
  • Easily consolidates multiple physical servers onto virtual hosts
  • Rapidly provisions and optimises new and existing virtual machines
  • Performance and Resource Optimisation (PRO) enables the dynamic management of virtual resources through management packs that are PRO enabled. As an open and extensible platform, PRO encourages partners to design custom management packs that promote compatibility of their products and solutions with PRO's powerful management capabilities.

Overview

A member of the System Center family of system management products, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 provides a straightforward and cost-effective solution for unified management of physical and virtual machines, Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) for dynamic and responsive management of virtual infrastructure, consolidation of underutilised physical servers, and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by leveraging the expertise and investments in Microsoft Windows Server technology.

  • Maximised Data Center Resources - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 delivers end-to-end support for consolidating physical servers onto a virtual infrastructure; fast and reliable physical-to-virtual machine conversions; Intelligent Placement of virtual workloads on physical host servers that match workload requirements and a centralised console for resource management and optimization.
  • Rapid Provisioning and Agility - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM 2008) enables rapid deployment of virtual machines, centralised control of the “building blocks” of the virtual data center, and delegated self-provisioning by authorised end users. New in this version of VMM is Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), which can dynamically respond to failure scenarios or poorly configured components that are identified in hardware, operating systems, or applications.
  • Leverage Data Center Expertise - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 utilises IT’s existing Windows expertise while minimizing the need for extensive retraining of administrators and help desk personnel.

Top Ten Benefits

The latest version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager incorporates all the functionality of its predecessor and brings exciting new capabilities to the management of virtual machines. Here are ten of the most valuable benefits that Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (VMM) can provide to your customers organisation.

1. Designed for virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server

Hyper-V is the next-generation hypervisor-based virtualisation platform from Microsoft, which is designed to offer high performance, enhanced security, high availability, scalability, and many other improvements. VMM is designed to take full advantage of these foundational benefits through a powerful yet easy-to-use console that streamlines many of the tasks necessary to manage virtualised infrastructure. Even better, administrators can manage their traditional physical servers right alongside their virtual resources through one unified console.

2. Support for Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware ESX

With this release, VMM now manages VMware ESX virtualised infrastructure in conjunction with the Virtual Center product. Now administrators running multiple virtualisation platforms can rely on one tool to manage virtually everything. With its compatibility with VMware VI3 (through Virtual Center), VMM now supports features such as VMotion and can also provide VMM-specific features like Intelligent Placement to VMware servers.

3. Live Migration allows your datacenter to be dynamic

Live Migration enables you to move virtual machines between Hyper-V hosts with no downtime and reduces the planned downtime associated with routine system maintenance. When Live Migration is coupled with VMM’s Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) feature, you can create a dynamic IT environment, automatically reallocating virtual machine workloads based on resource utilization and available capacity. In addition, VMM 2008 R2 supports queuing live migrations; this improvement allows you to now define multiple live migrations and run them one after another in sequence without waiting for the current live migration to complete.

4. Hot-add and removal of storage

Hot-add and removal of storage reduces planned downtime associated with adding disk storage to your virtual infrastructure to accommodate increased storage requirements. The new Hot-Add and Removal of Storage feature in VMM 2008 R2 allows an administrator to dynamically add and remove VHDs from a running virtual machine with no interruption of service.

5. Maximise datacenter resources through consolidation

A typical physical server in the datacenter operates at only 5 to 15 percent CPU capacity. VMM can assess and then consolidate suitable server workloads onto virtual machine host infrastructure thus freeing up physical resources for repurposing or hardware retirement. Through physical server consolidation, continued datacenter growth is less constrained by space, electrical and cooling requirements especially with Windows Server 2008 R2 power management enhancements.

6. Support for Clustered Shared Volumes and third-party CFS

Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 that provides support for live migration. CSV enhances the virtual infrastructure by allowing multiple Hyper-V hosts to access multiple VMs on a single LUN simultaneously. CSV support also enhances Live Migration by allowing individual virtual machines to be moved to different hosts without affecting the other VMs running on that host. With CSV, there is no need to move the virtual machine’s virtual hard disk files to another LUN. In addition, unlike the earlier storage model that required one VM per LUN, the new CSV storage permits multiple virtual machine files to be stored on the same LUN, making storage management much easier. VMM 2008 R2 can also detect and support third-party Clustered File Systems such as Sanbolic.

7. Machine conversions are a snap!

Converting a physical machine to a virtual one can be a daunting undertaking—slow, problematic, and typically requiring you to halt the physical server. But thanks to the enhanced P2V conversion in VMM, P2V conversions will become routine. Similarly, VMM also provides a straightforward wizard that can convert VMware virtual machines to VHDs through an easy and speedy Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) transfer process.

8. Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO)

Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) enables the dynamic management of virtual resources though Management Packs that are PRO enabled. Utilizing the deep monitoring capabilities of System Center Operations Manager 2007, PRO enables administrators to establish remedial actions for VMM to execute if poor performance or pending hardware failures are identified in hardware, operating systems, or applications. As an open and extensible platform, PRO encourages partners to design custom management packs that promote compatibility of their products and solutions with PRO’s powerful management capabilities.

9. Quick storage migration

Quick storage migration enables an administrator to move a virtual machine’s storage to a different LUN or even to a different host while the VM is running, both with a minimum of downtime. Typically, the amount of downtime required for quick storage migration is less than 2 minutes, though the actual amount of downtime depends on the virtual machine’s activity level during the move. In addition, VMM 2008 R2 can now take advantage of VMware’s Storage VMotionTM feature for moving VMware virtual machines to different storage locations with no downtime. Quick storage migration is especially useful for customers taking advantage of the new CSV feature in Windows Server 2008 R2.

10. Windows PowerShell provides rich management and scripting environment

Download this 10-minute video describing how VMM can manage physical, virtual, and heterogeneous hypervisor environments, like Hyper-V and Vmware.