Day 3: Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Advanced Features

The speaker is Edwin Yuen, Senior Technical Product Manager from MS.  This is a level 300 session compared to yesterday’s level 200.  See that post.

The vast majority of people in the room are running VMware.  Maybe 20% of those are looking at using VMM 2008 to manage ESX – hence get a better management experience, not necessarily as complete as with Hyper-V.

Here we go again on Powershell 😉  See previous posts.

The focus here will be on the management of Virtual Center using VMM 2008.  High Availability for Hyper-V using VMM – you need to know what to do in storage/Windows and what to do in VMM.  VMM can’t do everything, e.g. provision LUN’s.

VMware

Support for VMware covers:

  • VC 2.5
  • VC 2.0.1
  • ESX 3.5
  • ESX 3.0.2
  • ESX 3i *new to RTM*

VMM will be the manager of managers.  You can have many VC instances managed by a single VMM 2008.  Uses:

  • VI SDK API’s.
  • SFTP: File operations on ESX 3.5 and 3.0.2.
  • HTTPS: File operations on 3i

More features:

  • Secure mode is on my default.  This uses SSL for management using the VI SSL cert.
  • Host credential operations requires root SSH to be enabled. to move certain operations from "OK (Limited)" to "OK" (status of ESX host in console): power state, VM configuration, VMotion, Checkpoint, save state and migration.  Add credentials into the properties (security tab)  of the host in VMM to complete the configuration of the host.
  • Enabling PRO on ESX is possible – that surprises me to be honest and is impressive. You should not turn on PRO and DRS.  They will definitely conflict with each causing constant VMotion of VM’s.
  • There is a new network diagram view in the RTM release for 2008.
  • Do your host/VM installs in VC and then do day-day operations in VMM 2008.  Resource Pools are manageable within VMM.
  • You can do P2v and V2V of a VMware VM to Hyper-V.
  • Powershell can be used to manage VMware.
  • Do your VMware trouble shooting from within VC.
  • VMotion is referred to as Live Migration in VMM 2008.  Usable from within the console.  VC is still a requirement for VMotion.

Clustering Hyper V Step by Step

In server:

  • Configure Node (BIOS, Ent/DC per node), add failover clustering.
  • Storage: (iSCSI or Fibre Channel, Storage must suppoort persistent reservations, recommended 1 GUID LUN per VM).
  • Networking: 2 NIC’s recommended.
  • Add/remove nodes to/from cluster.

In VMM:

  • Add host cluster
  • VMM handles all future node additions/removals
  • Surface available disk

Clustering the VM i now a tick box in the properties of the VM.  Use intelligent placement strategy to place it on a suitable host.  A VM can be moved to a library but it retains the HA property for when you return it to the cluster, e.g. a template of a highly available VM.  If you tick the box on a VM that’s not on a cluster then you’re prompted by intelligent placement (IP) to move the VM to a suitable host.

Refresh the cluster in VMM after adding storage.

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