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<\/p>\n<\/p>\nMicrosoft\u2019s big differentiator from the competition is management.\u00a0 Most people have never experienced System Center so they\u2019ve no idea by what I mean by management.\u00a0 They\u2019ve seen things like HP SIM, IBM Director or VMware Virtual Center.\u00a0 For me, those are incomplete point solutions but they\u2019re better than some of the freeware or \u201ccheapware\u201d solutions I\u2019ve seen on some sites.\u00a0 When I say management I mean knowing what is where, how it\u2019s performing, automation of deployment & configuration, backup\/recovery from cradle to grave and from hardware to application inclusive of virtualisation.\u00a0 Sounds like science fiction?\u00a0 Nope, it\u2019s a reality for some of us who\u2019ve gone down the System Center route.\u00a0 Even back in the early days, I had this sort of thing running in 2005.\u00a0 Me and my team of 2 others managed 173 worldwide servers and were 3rd line support for the desktops.\u00a0 That included doing all the AD management, PC image builds, patching and software deployment.\u00a0 That sounds like we must\u2019ve worked 24 hours a day?\u00a0 Nope, outside of project\/development work, we did around 3 hours a day between us.<\/p>\n
This was all thanks to the automation provided by Microsoft System Center.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t even called that back then \u2026 or the term had just been coined.\u00a0 We had SMS 2003 (now known as Configuration Manager 2007 R2).\u00a0 That allowed us to audit systems, generate license deployment reports, measure software utilisation and deploy software automatically.\u00a0 It could have done software deployment and patch deployment but those features were pretty crude prior to the current release of ConfigMgr.\u00a0 Instead we used WSUS and Remote Installation Services (now replaced by Windows Deployment Services).\u00a0 Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (now Operations Manager 2007 R2) gave us centralised monitoring of health and performance for our Windows Servers.\u00a0 This included HP hardware, operating system, Microsoft applications\/services and Citrix MetaFrame at the time.\u00a0 Combined with Active Directory and a carefully designed GPO and delegation model, we had complete control of everything, always knowing what was happening and being able to proactively respond to issues in the network.\u00a0 We had a frequently changing business so being able to respond quickly was essential.\u00a0 We had that.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s have a look at what MS has to offer now.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with Hyper-V in Server 2008 R2.\u00a0 That\u2019s Microsoft\u2019s enterprise virtualisation platform.\u00a0 You have the versions built into Windows Server 2008 R2and the free Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.\u00a0 You can run standalone machines with no hardware fault tolerance.\u00a0 Or you can create a cluster.\u00a0 This means that virtual machines can move from one host to another with only 10 milliseconds of an outage during the move.\u00a0 10 milliseconds is virtually nothing and no network application will notice.\u00a0 This is thanks to Live Migration.\u00a0 The R2 version simplifies storage by using Cluster Shared Volume (CSV).\u00a0 You can store many VM\u2019s on one large volume reducing the amount of time you need to spend talking to that pesky SAN administrator \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 or VMM allows you to manage your Hyper-V hosts, the placement of the VM\u2019’s and the configuration of the VM\u2019s.\u00a0 It can also manage ESX, ESXi and many VMware Virtual Center installations.\u00a0 VMM is based on PowerShell so it gives you a central place for scripting.\u00a0 There\u2019s a library where you can save those scripts and ISO\u2019s, VM configurations, VHD\u2019s (virtual hard disks), etc.\u00a0 There\u2019s a self service console that allows you to delegate the deployment and management of VM\u2019s.\u00a0 You can control delegated VM deployment using quotas.\u00a0 This really works now because the storage work is already done \u2013 it\u2019s not a real player in the pre-R2 release in the real world due to this complication.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the virtualisation dedicated stuff done with.<\/p>\n
System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 allows you to monitor the health and performance of Windows, Linux, UNIX, Microsoft services\/applications, distributed applications and synthetic transactions out of the box.\u00a0 You can add in support for things like ESX, MySQL, Oracle, Cisco, Juniper, etc using purchased 3rd party applications.\u00a0 HP, Dell and IBM provide free management packs for monitoring their hardware.\u00a0 The new *NIX support is perfect because we can monitor those SLES VM\u2019s we have now or the RedHat VM\u2019s that MS will probably start supporting before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
VMM integrates tightly with OpsMgr using Pro Tips, e.g. OpsMgr can detect a performance issue with a VM.\u00a0 It then notifies VMM to move that VM to another host with more available resources.\u00a0 Hardware vendors are adding to this, e.g. Brocade has a management pack where their HBA can report heavy utilisation of a fibre channel link by a VM.\u00a0 OpsMgr reports this to VMM and then VMM responds by moving VM\u2019s about on the cluster.\u00a0 Live Migration means that these VM moves have no impact on the application they host or the clients they service.<\/p>\n
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 SP1 is Microsoft\u2019s backup solution.\u00a0 Using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) writer for Hyper-V, it can snapshot a VM without it being brought offline.\u00a0 That\u2019s using an agent on the Hyper-V host or parent partition.\u00a0 You could also install and agent in the VM for a more traditional backup.\u00a0 OpsMgr will monitor that DPM installation for you.\u00a0 And you can more easily test your backup recoveries now.\u00a0 Snapshot a VM and restore it to an alternate location.\u00a0 Attach it to a private lab network.\u00a0 Then do some tests like database recovers or SharePoint recoveries.<\/p>\n
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 is a huge<\/em> product now.\u00a0 I\u2019m probably going to do it a disservice here.\u00a0 It can do your OS deployment, software deployment, security update deployment, custom update deployment, license usage reporting, hardware auditing, license usage reporting, desired configuration auditing \u2026 to be honest it can do anything you can do in a script or from a command prompt and on a controlled and scheduled basis.\u00a0 With this mad ability to deploy VM\u2019s at a moments notice, ConfigMgr gives you options for deploying the OS.\u00a0 Maybe you use a sysprepped VHD template.\u00a0 Maybe you use ConfigMgr to deploy an OS image over the network.\u00a0 A VM deployed using the self service console can be immediately configured by ConfigMgr with settings and security updates that are mandated by policy.\u00a0 Network configuration policy can be enforced by checking that customised VM\u2019s are up to scratch using desired configuration management.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a quick view of what\u2019s to offer.\u00a0 As you can see, it\u2019s pretty damned powerful.\u00a0 It also allows you to automate so much.\u00a0 You can focus on future developments, maybe even get onto that Windows Server 2010\/2011 Serer beta \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Microsoft\u2019s big differentiator from the competition is management.\u00a0 Most people have never experienced System Center so they\u2019ve no idea by what I mean by management.\u00a0 They\u2019ve seen things like HP SIM, IBM Director or VMware Virtual Center.\u00a0 For me, those are incomplete point solutions but they\u2019re better than some of the freeware or \u201ccheapware\u201d solutions … Continue reading “What\u2019s The Big Deal With Hyper-V and System Center?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t