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Virtualization Virtual Machine Manager Figure 4: Privileges in the self-service portal: The Web Admins user group is allowed to manage its own virtual machines. solutions. To use the configuration analyzer for SCVMM, you also need the free Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. The Management Console The SCVMM management console allows administrators to handle a full set of host and virtual machine administrative tasks. The management console is clear-cut and configurable in many places. The console is divided into three areas (Figure 2). The left-hand panel contains the navigation aids for the various SCVMM subsections (Hosts, Virtual Machines, Library, Jobs, and preferences). After selecting a subsection, its objects are listed in the central panel of the console. The righthand panel shows you the actions available for the selected subsection. The Hosts and Virtual Machines subsections give you a perfect overview of the status of all your systems. If you manage a large number of systems, you can use the filters in the navigation area on the left to restrict the number of systems shown. The Jobs subsection is used to check all active SCVMM jobs (Figure 3); Again, you can use the navigation aids to filter on various criteria. This helps you quickly identify and resolve errors and issues. groups access to virtual machines or provide templates for creating new systems by way of a web-based interface. This system means you can allow developers to restart a test system themselves or allow them to create a new virtual machine based on templates from the library, without requiring that they access the management console. Additionally, you can assign privileges for the portal individually for various groups or users, thus allowing certain users to manage or access a virtual machine but not restart it or switch it off (Figures 4 and 5). After logging in to the self-service portal, the user sees all the virtual machine assignments. To open a connection and manage a virtual machine, an ActiveX control is installed on the client side; the control requires Internet Explorer. Using shared templates, users can create new virtual machines based on the template in the portal. The host is then assigned by the built-in intelligent placement function in SCVMM. Also note that to control virtual machines on VMware ESX hosts, SSL authentication must be enabled on the host side or the VMware ActiveX control must be installed on the client from which you will be managing the host. Command Line-Based Controls PowerShell [2] is an extension of the well-known Windows command line; it offers a plethora of administrative commands for script-based Windows management. SCVMM includes more than 150 PowerShell commands, or Cmdlets, which you can use for command line-based management and administration without having to launch the management console (Figure 6). Thus, you can use scheduled tasks on Windows to run tasks at a predefined time on the management server – for example, to store the status of a virtual machine. Intelligent Placement One of SCVMM’s most practical features is intelligent placement of virtual machines. Because the management server monitors the load on the hosts, it automatically displays a host statistic when you add a new machine so that you can easily see which host is best suited to the task. You can customize the automatic host The Self-Service Portal With the SCVMM self-service portal, you can grant individual users or Figure 5: The self-service portal lets non-privileged users manage virtual machines. 62 Admin 01 www.admin-magazine.com
Virtual Machine Manager Virtualization evaluation function for intelligent placement. Libraries and Templates The library component in SCVMM is a shared directory of virtual hard disks, ISO images, hardware, and guest operating system profiles. Templates automatically provision Windows client and server systems quickly. A template comprises a virtual hard disk and predefined hardware and operating system profiles. The hardware profile lets you specify the minimum requirements for the CPU type or the amount of RAM the virtual machine needs. When a new virtual machine with the specified CPU type is created, SCVMM automatically searches for a host with resources to match the hardware profile requirements. The operating system profile helps automate operating system provisioning. Besides selecting the operating system, you can also configure the administrator password, a license key, the computer name, and the domain membership. P2V Conversion SCVMM also converts physical systems to virtual machines on the fly with physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration. For this, simply install a small client on the machine; the client checks the system and displays po- tential issues before using the volume shadow copy service to create an image. On-the-fly conversion works with client systems as of Windows XP and for server systems as of Windows Server 2003. For older systems, you have only an offline conversion option. After conversion, you can shut down the physical system and boot the system as a virtual machine. Higher Availability with Clustering Host clustering is a useful way to guarantee system availability. Instead of expensive SAN memory, the data is provided by cheaper iSCSI solutions. To create a Hyper-V cluster, you need two host systems, both of which access the same SAN or iSCSI storage. Live migration introduced in Hyper-V R2 means you can move a virtual machine between clusters without taking the virtual machine offline. The previous version only supported virtual machine migration if you used the same processor type in both clusters. Although this restriction has not been completely lifted, it only applies to the CPU vendor, thus improving support for a variety of hardware in the cluster and offering more flexibility. Resource Monitoring SCVMM can be combined with the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 [3] for monitoring host and virtual machine availability. In this case, SCVMM not only uses its own agent to monitor the systems but also provides performance analysis and reporting for a host or virtual machine. The performance and resource optimization (PRO) function built into SCVMM can use Operations Manager 2007 R2 to collect performance data down to the application layer and thus suggest optimization strategies, which are displayed as PRO tips in the management console. Conclusions Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 greatly facilitates the management and administration of homogeneous or heterogeneous virtual infrastructures under Windows. Automated provisioning of new client and server systems can be done in minutes with SCVMM. Thanks to the integration of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, SCVMM also directly supports performance and availability monitoring for hosts and virtual machines. Because system management always takes a great deal of your time, whether you have five or 50 host systems, it makes sense to plan a centralized solution for all aspects of virtualization, which is exactly what SCVMM offers. n Info [1] Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2: [http:// support. microsoft. com/ kb/ 974722] [2] PowerShell: [http:// www. microsoft. com/ windowsserver2003/ technologies/ management/ powershell/ default. mspx] [3] Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2: [http:// www. microsoft. com/ systemcenter/ en/ us/ operations‐manager. aspx] Figure 6: Using the PowerShell to move virtual machines between hosts. The Author Björn Bürstinghaus is a system administrator with simyo GmbH in Düsseldorf, Germany. In his leisure time, he runs Björn’s Windows Blog, a blog on Microsoft Windows topics located at [http:// blog. buerstinghaus. net]. www.admin-magazine.com Admin 01 63
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