• It’s going to be free (no word on support yet)
• Its usefulness is likely going to depend on the partner adoption rate and extensions they make available
• Largely based on PowerShell for automating data center operations
• It will be available the first half of 2010
• Includes self-service user/admin portals
• Integrates with System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Like I said, there’s not a lot of information about this yet. But, I’m sure more information will be made available at the Microsoft Management Summit. In the meantime, I’d encourage to visit the following resources:

DIT Homepage
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/en/us/private-cloud.aspx

Dynamic Data Center Alliance Team Blog
http://blogs.technet.com/ddcalliance/default.aspx

DIT Data Sheet
http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/D/3/DD35D5A7-1B78-4277-BCB6-0027A0196775/Datasheet_DIT-SC_Jan2010.docx

DIT-SC FAQ
http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/D/3/DD35D5A7-1B78-4277-BCB6-0027A0196775/FAQ_DIT-SC_Jan2010_updated.docx

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Could you or your customers benefit from this appliance based, Microsoft-centric approach to virtualization? Who do you think will be the next big vendor to jump on-board?

Read the full press release here.

The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises (DDCT-E) is scheduled to be released during the first half of 2010. It aims to address servers, networks and storage as a single set of available resources in the same pool, thereby reducing idle time. Automation through batch creation and provisioning of VMs is the key to the automation of the Microsoft environment. The focus is on automation of provisioning and proper tracking of those deployed resources. Microsoft provides a self-service portal along with role-based access control. Tracking and chargeback reports are also available. DDCT-E will be free, but it integrates with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, which carry steep price tags. Microsoft finds itself on the cusp of big developments in the private cloud, as well as in hybrid cloud models, but it hasn’t done much yet in the way of shipping products.

Pretty interesting stuff, uh? How would you vision using this toolset within your organization?

Next, the user will verify that the computer can be booted from a diskless client computer. The user will create multiple virtual machines using the reference computer as a template.

Finally, the user will use the Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to create a group of virtual desktops and deploy them to end devices. At the end of this lab, the user will have worked through all the steps required to implement Citrix XenDesktop using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

https://cmg.vlabcenter.com/default.aspx?moduleid=281742e3-2613-42da-bd58-2c3578f039b4

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

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}.

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.

Technorati Tags: System Center,Virtual Machine Manager,VMM,SCVMM

I promise you won’t be disappointed.