System Center Guide

Get best practices and end-to-end solutions for managing your virtual environment and virtualizing your mission-critical apps.

Microsoft Virtualization represents a game changing opportunity for businesses to cost effectively deliver application availability like never before. Leveraging Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, Failover Clustering and System Center along with partner capabilities in servers, storage, provisioning and replication, Microsoft delivers end-to-end solutions to keep your users happy and productive.

Participate in in-depth training sessions, meet premier virtualization technology vendors in the virtual expo hall, network with your peers, and get your questions answered – and do all of this directly from your computer, for free, with no registration fee! Whether you’re new to virtualization or you’ve been deploying in production, this in-depth virtual event produced by Windows IT Pro will provide all you need to know around the best way to virtualize Microsoft applications like SQL Server, SharePoint and Exchange on highly resilient virtual infrastructure. We’ll provide detailed information about:

• Best practices for virtualizing Microsoft applications to ensure performance and availability
• Tips and tools for local high availability in virtual environments
• Architectures for Microsoft Site Recovery Solutions delivering disaster recovery for application hosts and data

Don’t wait! Please join us for this exclusive online conference! Get solutions from independent virtualization experts and Microsoft partners. Improve performance with highly available applications in virtual environments.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=363323459991&ref=nf

This lab is intended for IT Professionals who would like to deliver virtual desktop computers using Microsoft Hyper-V Server, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Citrix XenDesktop. Users will work through the steps to simulate deploying multiple virtual desktops, and will first capture a reference image using the Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops.

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

Looking at Desktop Virtualization including VDI? Thinking about migrating to Windows 7? Want savings, but unsure of the tradeoffs? Have more questions than answers on the topic? Join this moderated televised discussion for an hour full of virtualization insights.

Save the date: http://www.desktopvirtualizationhour.com/

There is a new feedback email alias for the App-V docs team. If you have any questions or comments regarding the documentation for Microsoft Application Virtualization, please email the team at:

appvdocs@microsoft.com

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

Feature-complete version of Windows Server 2008 virtualisation technology made broadly available to customers and partners.

View the full press release here

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}.

Sorry I haven’t been very active with blogging in the past couple of weeks but I’ve been busy getting ready for my System Center presentation the Microsoft Launch event being held tomorrow at the Tripod, Harcourt Street, in Dublin. There’s three 2-hour sessions beginning at 12PM and then repeating at 3PM and 6PM. So, if you’re an Irish reader, come on by and check out what’s coming from Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. Plus, if you pop into my session, you’ll get a sneak peek at the latest member of the System Center product family – due to go to beta very soon!

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.

With the consent of the Microsoft product group, I’m proud to present to you the underlying architecture of the next version of Virtual Machine Manager, which will proudly support both Virtual Server and VMWare virtual machines:

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