Entries tagged with system center virtual machine manager - TechNet Edge

Top 10 Webcast Mayo: Como construir un datacenter virtual

Jorge Aristizábal — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:14:00 GMT

Mostraremos las consideraciones que debe tener para construir un datacenter virtual.
Orador: Felix González - Venezuela

Saving Money with Virtualization – Tech Focus August 2009

Alan Le Marquand — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:01:00 GMT

Do you find yourself looking at your machine room and wondering “Why are there so many machines in there?” Often it’s just a question of having to run legacy applications or applications that are just too time consuming and expensive to consolidate onto other machines. One possible solution to this is the use of Virtualization.

Virtualization is the hot topic at the moment, everyone is talking about it, but what virtualization technology should you use and when? Microsoft has some helpful information to enable you to make informed decisions about this technology.

In the Virtualization in a Nutshell webcast and the IPD guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology, we will explain each virtualization solution that Microsoft offers, from our server virtualization, presentation virtualization, storage virtualization through to our application virtualization solution, we will explain what they are and when to use them. In the Data centre by using Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper V, the IT Department can reduce the total number of physical servers running both Windows and Linux operating systems. Once the decision is made to virtualize servers what next? The one thing you can’t just do is virtualize it all at will, Selecting the Right Candidates for Virtualization will help you decide on what servers and workloads can be virtualized by using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) tool. Having used MAP you are now at the point where you can start to make decisions on what to virtualize. The first step is to pilot the process on not critical servers, Virtualizing Test and Development Environments for a Quick Return on Investment takes you through virtualizing servers that are easy candidates and can provide a quick result in terms of server reduction and improved service. With the knowledge and experience of how to virtualize servers we are at a stage where we can start to expand out and virtualization more servers and make virtualization a service provided by IT. Consolidation and Rapid Provisioning looks at how to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager to achieve this final objective.

Zane Adam: thoughts from the top on Virtualization

James O'Neill — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:13:00 GMT

Zane’s job title is “Senior director, Virtualization” , so I expected him to be an interesting chap and I wasn’t disappointed. This interview was recorded on his recent visit to London, when he was suffering from such a lack of sleep that he would have been within his rights to call the whole thing off. Not a bit of it... we had what I thought was a great talk - the video attached needed very little in the way of editing, even if it lacks a little in recording quality.

Community Q&A with Larry Orecklin at MMS

Adam Bomb — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:01:00 GMT

Larry Orecklin is a General Manager in the System Center organization at Microsoft. He dropped by the community lounge at MMS to answer questions, including his thoughts on the importance of community, where Microsoft is going with virtualization technologies, managing clients, including our newly announced online management offering and more.

SCVMM Self-Service Portal with Laptop Part 4 of 4: Running Self-Service Portal, Rapid-Prototyping of

yung — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:16:00 GMT

This screencast walked through the steps to install Self-Service Portal followed by presenting the user experience in creating a VM using an assigned template and operating the created VM via Self-Service Portal UI.

The demo environment included MYHOST (my laptop running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V Server Role) and 2 running virtual machines were APEX (the domain controller of contoso.corp) and SC (a member server with SCVMM installed) while MYHOST also joined the domain.

The following screencasts present the user experience and walk through the operations carried out from steps 5 to 11:

SCVMM Self-Service Portal with Laptop Part 3 of 4: Adding Library Server, Rapid-Prototyping of

yung — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:15:00 GMT

This screencast walked through the steps to add MYHOST into the SCVMM as a Library Server and the processes to create profiles, templates, and User Roles.

The following screencasts present the user experience and walk through the operations carried out from steps 5 to 11:

IT Manager Podcast #26 - Virtualization from the Datacenter to the Small Business

Rick Claus — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:01:00 GMT

In this episode of the IT Manager Podcast - I talk with the General Manager of a BC based Hosting Company called RackForce. Randal Robinson talks about their switch from dedicated hardware servers in 2003 to a more efficient resource distribution solution using a mixed Virtualization environment on hundreds of hosts running thousands of guests in their datacenter.

Randal discusses virtualization in such a way that it very approachable and goes beyond it being used as a simple catchphrase. He goes through their transition to using virtualization, identifies challenges they had managing multiple virtualization providers and how they resolved provisioning issues. Randal closes with some important insight and recommendations for how you can effectively use virtualization in your environment, regardless of your overall size - from the small business to the enterprise.

More information about the IT Manager Podcast series can be found on the IT Manager Podcast web page.

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Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the IT Manager Podcast feedback alias at 1-800-693-3827

SCVMM Self-Service Portal with Laptop Part 2 of 4: Adding Host, Rapid-Prototyping of

yung — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:15:00 GMT

This screencast walked through the steps to add MYHOST into the SCVMM as a host.

The following screencasts present the user experience and walk through the operations carried out from steps 5 to 11:

SCVMM Self-Service Portal with Laptop Part 1 of 4: Overview, Rapid-Prototyping of

yung — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:14:00 GMT

A Self-Service Portal is basically a Web site to be installed on a web server with ASP.NET, IIS6 Metabase Compatibility, and IIS6 WMI Compatibility Server Role Services. By accessing the Self-Service Portal, authorized users can create and operate their own virtual machines (VMs) as permitted by each user's User Roles, while the created VMs are placed in a Library Server managed by the System Center Virtual Machine Manager, or SCVMM. A User Role here is essentially a policy with membership, authorized hardware and software profiles, allowed scope of operations, and assigned templates applicable for creating and manageing VMs using Self-Service Portal. In a Self-Service Portal session, an authorized user sees only those virtual machines that the user owns or is authorized to operate upon. And as a VM is created or deleted by a user, the user's quota points are subtracted or regained with the amount of quota points that the VM is assigned in an employed template. Once a user has quota points fewer than what are needed for creating a new VM, the user has reached the maximal number of VMs allowable for the applicable User Role to create.

Virtual Machine Host System Requirements

VMM Library Server System Requirements

VMM Self-Service Portal System Requirements

To prototype a Self-Service Portal using a laptop, here are the steps:

Install Windows Server 2008 in a laptop and enable Hyper-V Server Role
Create VMs and construct a domain environment
Install SCVMM on a target VM in the domain
Optionally join the laptop into the domain
In SCVMM admin console, add the laptop as a host in the Active Directory Domain
In laptop, create a network share for later sharing VM resources like sysprep generalized images, iso files, disks, etc.
In SCVMM admin console, add the laptop as a Library Server with the network share
In SCVMM admin console, create hardware/software profiles and template, as needed
In SCVMM admin console, create User Roles and add members
Install Self-Service Portal from SCVMM media on a target web server and associate the Self-Service Portal with the SCVMM (this step may be included in step 3 if both SCVMM and Self-Service Portal are to be placed on the same server)
Log in Self-Service Portal as a Self-Service Portal User and start creating and managing VMs as permitted by the user’s User Roles

The following screencasts present the user experience and walk through the operations carried out from steps 5 to 11:

System Center Virtual Machine Manager R2

Giovanni Marchetti — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:18:00 GMT

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

Live Migration

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

SAN enhancements

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.

Networking enhancements

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

Virtualization Quickly and Effectively Meets the Demands of Rapidly Changing Businesses

Microsoft IT Showcase — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:08:00 GMT

When challenged with optimizing its server infrastructure, Microsoft IT faces the same physical constraints, environmental sustainability challenges, and economic pressures as other enterprise organizations. Virtualization technologies and management products, such as the Hyper-V feature of Windows Server 2008 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, allow Microsoft IT to deliver on two goals: support the business needs of Microsoft and build a foundation for the Dynamic IT initiative. Virtualization is a key component of this infrastructure optimization strategy and reduces cost and server provisioning time. At the same time, virtualization enhances server resource availability.

An Introduction of Upcoming TechNet Live Event Content

yung — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:45:00 GMT

The TechNet live events of this quarter are just about to start. For IT Pro track, a team of IT Evangelists will be making a contact and delivering content to various IT Pro communities in cities throughout the U.S. starting late January as the following:

Session 1: Where the Web meets local software: Cloud computing with Software-plus-Services
Session 2: Master your environment with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Session 3: Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – A Technical Overview

These terms: Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS), Software-plus-Services (S+S), Microsoft Online Services, Microsoft Azure Service platform, Microsoft Business Productivity Office Suite (BPOS) can be sometimes confusing. Exactly what is Cloud Computing? Is apps accessible through clouds Cloud Computing? What do SaaS and S+S really mean to IT Pros? Session 1 will bring clarity to you in a 30-minute discussion on how these concepts complement one another, and demo how the architectural components integrate and work together to give a user an integrated experience on "connect, communicate, and collaborate with anywhere access."

Recently virtualization has been coming with a big wave and bringing IT with much momentum and excitements. Some virtualization solutions provide not only the ability to run applications, but also with deployment mechanisms. And as an IT Pro, one must recognize it is so critical now to have a system management solution in place. And any IT infrastructure projects going forward should include considerations on how to manage and integrate newly introduced resources, physical and virtualized, with existing ones in a transparent and systematic way. System management is an area that IT Pros must keep their skill up to date and not to overlook. Session 2 offers an operational aspect on System Center Configuration Manager 2007 on deploying and managing resources as well as Network Access Protection (NAP). In 90 minutes, the scenario-based demos will give you a realistic view with insights of enterprise configuration management. Get a pen and a notebook ready, there is so much included in this session.

With the employment of virtualization, deploying and managing virtual machines is a topic with much visibility. To increase ROI and reduce TCO of a virtualization solution, in addition to virtualizing resources, the management of a virtualization solutions (such as requesting, configuring, deploying, patching, and revoking virtual machines) must be implemented with minimal impact upon and maximal integration with and applicability to IT resources already put in place. This is also why Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 has become such an essential component to realize the benefits of a virtualization solution. Session 3 is 90 minutes packed with demos of SCVMM 2008 and walks through various scenarios on managing Microsoft and non-Microsoft virtual machines with a consistent user experience and your already developed Windows skills.

Notice the slide decks are soon to be released, then they can be downloaded from TechNet Event resource page.

So are you ready to be a rock, and not to roll? Come, join us.

TechNet Radio: BitLocker

Eric Ostrowski — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:16:00 GMT

On this episode of TechNet Radio, we talk with Paul Cooke about BitLocker. We find out what’s new for BitLocker with Windows 7. We also feature our tip of the week with Chris Avis.

TechNet Radio: System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Eric Ostrowski — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:37:00 GMT

Keith Combs talks with senior product manager Edwin Yuen about Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. We also feature another installment of our "tip of the week" with Chris Avis.

SharePoint Disaster Recovery with Michael Noel

Adam Bomb — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

in this third interview with MVP Michael Noel, Kelly and Michael talk about disaster recovery, backup, and restore options available in SharePoint.

They talk about the features in Data Protection Manager and the ability to take snapshots to quickly restore a SharePoint farm. Michael also talks about the ability to do item level restore or restore just some components of a site to specific locations.

Combined with SCVMM for provisioning, you can deploy an easily provisioned, highly available, recoverable SharePoint Environment. Cool!

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 RTM!

Adam Bomb — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

RTM = Release To Manufacturing. It means the product is done and the binaries have been sent to the CD printer.

SCVMM = System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Integrated, multi-vendor management for virtual environments, including Virtual Server, Hyper-V and VMware ESX. VMM 2008 also includes a new feature, Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) which enables customers to dynamically manage the performance of their virtual hosts and guests. It provides optimization awareness down to the workload level enabling customers to take either manual or automated remedial action once an unhealthy or inefficient machine state is identified.

Ok, what’s new in this version? Well, a couple of things:

· Now manages Hyper-V, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and the new Hyper-V Server 2008

· Now manages VMWare – if you can do it in the VMWare console, you can do it in SCVMM

· New key features: Cluster support, Delegated Administration and resource optimization with PRO

Can I get an eval copy? Sure. You can download it today here: System Center Virtual Machine Manager