System Center Guide

Diane Prescott, Product Manager for System Center, takes time to provide a quick update on the expected release date for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and also provides some key insights into changes in the System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) licensing. Expect a 10-15% increase to come soon, but read the following post for an explanation as to why.

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2008/07/09/virtual-machine-manager-2008-and-smse-updates-coming-later-this-year.aspx

As many of you will recall, I wrote a controversial post about VMware’s future in the virtualisation market. And, after quite a few discussions with Microsoft folks, fellow partner organisations and the end user community at the Dublin Wave Launch event this week, I have to question if Virtual Machine Manager v2 (codename: vNext) could be the last nail in the coffin for VMware’s dominance in the virtualisation market.

You see, I’ve been privileged to work with the product group over the past couple of weeks to get bits and pieces of the forthcoming solution to present during my three sessions on Managing Virtualisation at the Wave Launch. In a nutshell, here’s what you’re look at in the next version of Virtual Machine Manager:

1. Cross-platform support for Virtual Server 2005, Hyper-v and VMWare.
2. A single pane of glass to monitor all your virtual machines
3. Intelligent Placement capabilities across all your VM hosts
4. Automated maintenance and management using PowerShell scripts for all your VM hosts
5. Centralised Library of all your VMs, ISOs, VHDs, Scripts, and Templates.
6. Self-Provisioning of Virtual Machines using Templates and Quotas. 
7. Unified management experience of all your Virtual Center and VMM infrastructures.

Now, that’s only part of the story. When you combine other award-winning System Center technologies like Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007 and Data Protection Manager 2007, what you have is a complete suite of life-cycle management solutions that can carry a system from cradle to grave. That, my friends, is something you will not find from any competitive virtualisation solution.

If you want to go the route of virtualising your environment, please give a moment’s pause to consider whether you are buying a "point solution" that does only one thing or whether you want to buy into a full lifecycle management solution for not only the physical host, but also for the virtual machines running on those host and the applications running within those virtualised instances.

As Tom Bittman, VP & Analyst with Gartner, stated:

Virtualisation without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualisation in the first place.

Ask yourself the questions:

Once you’ve deployed a virtual server into production…

• How will you patch the OS?
• How will you update the SQL Server to the latest Service Pack?
• How will you supply updates to custom applications?
• How will you back up that live server with zero data loss?
• How will you monitor the Exchange role that is hosted on that virtual server?
• How will you make sure that not only the IIS instance of that virtual server is running but that end users can actually connect to it properly?
• How are you going to deploy other virtual machines?
• How will you ensure that their desired state will be maintained through the life of the system?

These are just a few of the things that a complete solution like the family of System Center products will offer you.

If you don’t have good answers to those questions, then please don’t buy a point solution just to say you’re virtualising servers. Buy a solution that fits your lifecycle management strategy. And, today… that solution is Microsoft System Center: Your systems {managed}.

The following is an early look at the architecture of Virtual Machine Manager v2, codename v.Next. While still approaching its Q2CY08 beta release, my personal viewing of the alpha product demos are indeed impressive!

Positioned as a heterogeneous virtual machine management solution, v.Next will support Virtual Server 2005, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX servers (with Xen server support in a future release).

Click the image above for a larger view.

If you want to see some exciting technology in the area of virtualisation, I would highly encourage you to attend anything you see in the upcoming months related to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM v2). I was privileged enough to view about a 10-min video of it in action today and all I can say is WOW! No, really, that’s all I can say on the matter. But, if you’re considering or have already deployed virtual servers (Microsoft or other third party solutions) it’s time to be looking for details on this exciting release!

I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Tomorrow I’ll be presenting at the Irish Computer Society on the topic of Managing the Virtual Environment. As you know, the introduction of Virtual Machine Manager into the System Center family has broadened the suite to the highly volatile realm of virtualisation. This topic will cover the following high-level areas:

• Microsoft’s Virtualisation Commitment
• Harnessing Virtualisation to Meet Dynamic Business Demands
• Effective Virtualisation: Creating the Foundation for Dynamic IT
• Business Solutions That Span Both Virtual and Physical Resources

If interested in attending, please visit the ICS website.

Just another of my personal experiences with VMM. I just completed a P2V of a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller. Actually, it was a V2V as I was using my virtual environment. Anyhow, one of the things to be aware of is that after doing the conversion and bringing the other system online it prompted to reactivate Windows due to the "significant hardware changes".

It also required a system restart due to the same newly detected hardware. Not a big deal, so to speak, but certainly a concern for production environments.

Lastly, I have to admit that the conversion process was not seamless. Because you’re transferring a live server to a virtualised version of the same, there are additional concerns that you have to tend to. Probably the most important of these is the need to properly reconfigure your network settings on the VM. While I updated my virtual machine settings to include the proper IP configuration settings, it actually took yet another restart for those settings to take effect. While I thought this odd, I was too tired and frustrated to try to figure it out.

Regardless of all this, I have to say that the P2V (or V2V as it actually was) is a painless experience. The real issues of the conversion process were updating the converted system to the newly appropriated virtual environment. And, that is the intent of this post. To alert you that the conversion process is not as cut-n-dry as the marketing material may lead you to believe. Conduct your own testing before you are forced to rely on the process.

Good luck and should you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them to the best of my abilities. You can contact me using the link above.

Take care,

Duncan

P.S. If you’re actually reading this blog, I’d really appreciate hearing from you. I realise I blog a lot of content for my selfish purposes of keeping a single-point-of-reference for my own self-serving purposes. But, if you’re reading this as well, I could use the encouragement to keep on keeping on.

Thanks!

Ran into this one as well this even, but I’ve seen it with other web applications as well when IIS is installed after you’ve updated your .NET framework. The IIS installation isn’t aware of the various .NET frameworks you have installed. So you must manually register them with IIS.

Navigate the C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 directory from the command shell and run the following command:

aspnet_regiis.exe -i

This will register the .NET 2.0 framework components with IIS and you’ll be laughing with your new Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal.

Like several others I’ve just ran into an issue with the Virtual Machine Manager installation. It would pass all prerequisite and then fail during the VMM portion of the setup with the following error message:

vmm ID: 205. Details: Fatal error during installation

Now, not being one to accept the 15-character limit description that TechNet refers to, I began searching some of the online forums and while they described doing things like renaming the box or - worse - removing a child domain from the FQDN, that didn’t make much sense to me either. While I could agree that DNS was a problem - especially when I noticed the degradation of my login time - I didn’t think changing the naming/domain structure would do it.

Sure, enough… after I had upgraded the server to Windows Server R2, SP2 it had changed the TCP/IP properties of my network adapter to DHCP-based settings. That’d be fine and good if my DHCP server was a real DHCP server. Instead, I’m using the DHCP servlet in my wireless router. Cheesy, I know. But it works and allows me to connect to my personal systems as well. So, after I changed my adapter properties to the correct TCP/IP settings… including a proper DNS server… I could once again access Active Directory properly and successfully complete the VMM installation.

So, if you’re still pulling your hair out with this one, try going back to the basics and keeping things simple.

This topic provides links to a variety of resources that provide useful information for performing daily operations in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM). You will find links to conceptual explanations of key features, planning information, configuration information, procedures, and targeted troubleshooting.

Topics include:

• Using the VMM Administrator Console
• Using Windows PowerShell - Virtual Machine Manager command shell
• Managing hosts
• Configuring the Virtual Machine Manager library
• Creating virtual machines
• Creating templates, hardware profiles, and guest operating system profiles
• Deploying and migrating virtual machines
• Managing virtual machines
• Setting up virtual machine self-service
• Setting up reporting
• VMM administration
• Community resources

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ie/library/bb963711(en-us).aspx

I posted a while back that I thought the VMM virtual hard disk had disappeared from the VHD website. But in Rod’s post today, he found the direct download link.

If you’re not familiar with the VHD programme, it’s Microsoft’s attempt to replicate the success of Linux’s LiveCD distributions that allow you to have immediate access to the platforms/applications. In the case of Microsoft VHDs, these files are used in conjunction with Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005 to save you the effort of building out the virtual environment for the purposes of evaluating the software. It’s a great first look, but most commonly you’ll still find yourself wanting to build from scratch yourself - that or I’m just a masochists in need of therapy. Anyhow, download to your heart’s content.

Get the VMM VHD

Get other VHDs