System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (aka SCVMM vNext) is now available as a public beta. You can download it from http://connect.microsoft.com.
This is the first release of SCVMM to support Windows Server 2008 R2, also in beta.
Key new features in R2
SCVMM can now trigger live and quick migration of virtual machines on R2 clusters.
- Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV)
SCVMM can now place multiple VMs on a single LUN configured as a CSV
SCVMM can now use SAN migration mechanisms to move virtual machines in and out of clusters. Multiple LUNs per single iSCSI target are now supported, which lets SCVMM use certain iSCSI products from Network Appliance and EMC.
From 2008 R2 comes support for Virtual Machine Queues (VMQs) & Chimney (TCP offload engines). VMQs are a mechanism for the network cards to transfer data via DMA directly into the child partition's memory. Also, different processors can serve different queues, thus enhancing scalability greatly. For more details, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd434877.aspx
- Support for MAC spoofing
- Support for reusable port groups in VMWare VirtualCenter.
- Maintenance mode support
Maintenance mode is supported across all platforms: Hyper-V, VS and VMWare ESX hosts. Putting a host in maintenance mode triggers live migration (where possible) of all VMs on the host on Windows 2008 R2 and VMWare. Also,migrations for performance and resource optimization (PRO) to the host are disabled.
- Disjoint domains support
- BITS compact server support for network transfers
