SCVMM 2012

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) -2012

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) in its new version: 2012, currently in

beta, to be released in the second half of 2011.

Download SCVMM 2012 Beta.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0fbb298-8f02-47e7-88be-0614bc44ee32

The Office Ribbon interface makes its mark in SCVMM 20212

What’s new in SCVMM 2012 – Not just VMs anymore

The biggest shift in SCVMM is the change from managing Virtual Machines (VMs) to

managing the entire virtualized datacenter.

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The shift is so dramatic that “System Center Data Centre Manager” might be a more

appropriate name. SCVMM can communicate with brand new machines with no OS

installed and do a bare metal installation, then configure them in a Hyper-V cluster as

well as talk directly to your SAN storage. This then becomes a private cloud inside of

SCVMM that abstracts hosts, storage, and networking into a unified pool of computing

resources.

Add to this the ability to use Server App-V to deploy applications through SCVMM as well

as SQL Server profiles to deploy customized database servers and Dynamic- and Power

Optimization. The latter allows SCVMM to turn off host machines when they’re not

needed and then turn them back on when the load increases whereas the former allows

SCVMM to automatically move VMs between hosts to balance the load. The concept of

multiple virtual machines working together (web front end servers, backend database

servers) is covered by a services concept where multiple machines can be provisioned

in unison; if the load increases scale out with additional VMs can be executed. Network

load balancer appliances are also recognized and supported directly in SCVMM.

Patching a host cluster is a difficult task as each node has to have its VMs migrated to

other hosts, the system patched and rebooted before the process is repeated on the

next host. SCVMM now orchestrates cluster host patching as well as integrating with

Windows Server Update Services and allowing you to define baselines of patches that

each host needs.

The list of managed hypervisors has grown, not only does SCVMM manage Hyper-V and

VMware, it now manages Citrix Xen server as well, covering all the major hypervisors on

the market.

Due to all the critical functionality of SCVMM it’s recommended to implement a highly

available system if your environment is large. This means that you need a smaller

cluster, separate from your production resources that will house instances of SCVMM.

This cluster needs to be on Windows Server 2008 R2 and it needs to be setup before

SCVMM is installed. It’s also good practise to setup a highly available SQL Server

database on separate hardware as well as storing the library on highly available file

servers. In this configuration the encryption keys that SCVMM use to protect data

transfers need to be stored in AD (so they’re available to all SCVMM nodes) and you

have to use domain accounts to run the different services.

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Installation of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

When planning a System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 deployment consider

the different roles. In a small environment these can all be located on the same server

but as the datacenter grows it’s beneficial to split the roles across multiple hosts.

The management server is the heart of SCVMM, whereas the library server stores

templates, VHDs, scripts etc. The console can run on the management server as well

as be installed on workstations for remote management, the self-service portal allows

designated users to create and manage their own VMs and finally the database resides

on an SQL Server machine.

Software that needs to be installed on the server is the usual suspects: WinRM 2.0, .NET

Framework 3.5 SP1, PowerShell 2.0 (for the console), IIS (for the self-service portal) and

Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7. Supported operating systems

are Windows Server 2008 SP2+ (x64 only) / 2008 R2 and the backend database needs

to be either SQL Server 2008 SP2+ or 2008 R2. This means that SQL Server Express is

no longer supported for the database server; it has to be a full version (Standard or

Enterprise).

Supported virtual machine hosts are the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 / 2008

R2, full installation or server core as well as the free Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Microsoft

Virtual Server 2005 R2 is no longer supported. VMware’s virtualization platform is

supported as it was in earlier versions through vCenter Server, now requiring version

4.1 with hosts running ESXi / ESX 4.1 and 3.5; ESX 3.0 is no longer supported. Citrix

XenServer is supported with version 5.6 with Feature Pack 1; there’s an Integration

Suite supplemental pack for SCVMM. The XenServer support will be useful when you

want to run Linux guests as the choice is wider than what’s supported in Hyper-V.

There is plenty new in SCVMM 2012 including:

Fabric Management – deploy, build and patch Hyper-V hosts and clusters. Manage

VMware and Citrix XenServer as well as network and storage management.

Resource Optimization – proactive VM load balancing, host level power management

and deeper PRO integration

Cloud Management – Build your own private cloud and delegate access and

enhanced self service provisioning

Service Lifecycle Management – Create a template that consists of VMs, OS images

and application packages and deploy as a service. Server App-V integration.

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Before you can install SCVMM 2012 you need to know the recommended requirements

which include:

CPU – Dual Core 2.4GHz (5-10 hosts) or Dual Core 2.8 GHz (11-20 hosts)

RAM – 2GB (5-10 hosts) or 4GB (11-20 hosts)

Disk – 40GB (5-10 hosts) or 50GB (11-20 hosts) PLUS library space

OS – Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 SP2

DB – SQL 2005 SP3 or SQL 2008 or SQL 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise Edition (no

Express Edition)

Software add-onso PowerShell 1.0 or 2.0

o WinRM 1.1 or 2.0

o .NET Framework 3.0 or 3.0 SP1

o Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK 1.1)

o IIS 7.0 or 7.5 (only required for SSP) including

IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility

IIS 6 WMI Compatibility

Static Content

Default Document

Directory Browsing

HTTP Errors

ASP.NET

.NET Extensibility

ISAPI Extensions

ISAPI Filters

Request Filtering

With that all in place you are ready to start the installation. If you are missing anything the

pre-requisite checker will let you know and you can fix it before proceeding. With the media

loaded you can click Install to begin the procedure.

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Next agree to the EULA, enter your organizations information and then turn on Microsoft

Update for SCVMM 2012. Next input your database configuration information.

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Next provide the information on the service account you have created for SCVMM 2012.

Rather than use a default domain admin account I would highly recommend creating a

custom service account for each of the System Center services (as well as others) in your

organization. If you are on 2008 or R2 AD then managed service accounts take away any

reason not to use them. You will also need to use a domain account if you wish to make

your SCVMM 2012 server highly available.

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Configure your SCVMM library. As with 2008 you can specify a local share or a share on a

file server.

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Review the summary and click Install

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Once complete click Finish.

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After you click Finish the console will launch and you will choose what account to log in

with. There is much finer grain control over accounts in SCVMM 2012 and the console but to

start only an Administrator role exists.

Once logged in you should see a shiny new SCVMM 2012 console!

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Private Cloud in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

You will learn how a private cloud works in SCVMM 2012, how the fabric makes up the underlying components of a cloud and how the library has been improved as well as the new Run As account and Run As profile features.

In SCVMMs terms a cloud provide the following characteristics; self-service to allow

administrators to delegate provisioning of VMs in the cloud, resource

pooling and opacity because users need no knowledge of the underlying physical

hardware. It’s also elastic as it’s easy to add resources to increase capacity and private

clouds can contain hosts from all three supported hypervisors, you can even create a

SCVMM cloud from a VMware resource pool.

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Creating a private cloud in SCVMM is a matter of a simple wizard (and some planning!)

For private clouds you can specify quotas with maximum number of VMs, virtual CPUs,

storage and memory. Maximum storage is based on the max size of dynamic virtual

hard disks if they’re in use and maximum memory is measured against running VMs

only.

The fabric in SCVMM refers to all the infrastructure pieces that are necessary to host

VMs. The fabric is made up of hosts, host groups, the library, networking and storage.

Grouping hosts together lets you control placement weights, dynamic optimization and

power optimization, reserves, network and storage resources for the group as a whole.

You can build a hierarchy of host groups where child groups inherit these settings from

the parent host group.

Library services in SCVMM 2012

The library has been enhanced to support services (see part 5), sharing of resources in

a private cloud; drivers for bare metal deployments, SQL data-tier apps and web deploy

packages. Custom resources are now indexed and visible if you copy a folder with

the .cr extension to the library share.

Another addition to the library is resource groups which allows users to group

equivalent sets of resources in separate geographical locations. A Windows Server 2008

R2 .vhd file might be stored on different continents and be added to a resource group.

In templates and profiles you can now reference the group rather than a specific .vhd

which will make life easier for administrators in distributed enterprises.

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The library also houses Application profiles and SQL profiles which is a way to

deploy applications and databases to VMs after the base image is deployed; application

profiles can be server App-V packages, web applications or SQL data tier installations.

The library centralizes storage of all the building blocks of your virtualized infrastructure

Managing accounts and security in SCVMM 2012

A welcome addition to SCVMM is the concept of Run As accounts and Run As

profiles. These are stored credentials that allow you to delegate tasks to junior

administrators and self-service users without exposing sensitive credentials. There are

six different categories of Run As accounts: host computer accounts provides access

to Hyper-V, ESX or XenServer hosts, BMC accounts talks to Baseboard Management

Controller (BMC) on hosts for out-of-band management, external accounts are used

for external systems such as Operations Manager and network device accounts

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connects to network load balancers. Profile accounts are used in Run As profiles for

service creation, in OS and application profiles as well as SQL and host profiles.

For large environments with a multitude of administrators Run As accounts and Profiles

will be extremely useful

Logical networks in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012:

You will learn how System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 will make it a LOT easier to manage networks with new automation features, how it integrates with hardware load balancers and SAN storage.

A logical network with one or more logical network definitions groups together IP

subnets and VLANs to simplify network management in SCVMM 2012. Typical networks

would be backend, frontend, management or backup. When you provision a host or VM

you associate it with a logical network and it automatically receives a fixed IP address

and mac address. Logical networks can span geographies with one or more logical

network definitions for each location. You can also use DHCP instead of controlling IP

address allocation through SCVMM if you so desire. Each NIC on a host needs to be

associated with a logical network in either trunk or access mode. In the latter only a

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single VLAN ID is allowed whereas in trunk mode multiple VLAN IDs can be used in

different VMs that share the NIC.

The logical network system allows assignment of addresses to Windows based VMs

running on all three supported hypervisor environments. Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses

are supported but not in the same address pool.

For anyone who’s had to manually manage networks in large Hyper-V installations the

new logical network features will be a godsend

Hardware load balancers are now recognised by SCVMM and through creating one or

more virtual IP (VIP) templates specific type of traffic can be controlled. A VIP template

can control HTTP traffic behaviour on a BIG-IP from F5 for instance. In this beta the only

load balancers that are recognised are BIG-IP from F5 and Citrix’s NetScaler but expect

this list to grow, including support for Microsoft’s own Network Load Balancing in

Windows Server.

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Not only does SCVMM give you logical networks, it also integrates tightly with your

hardware network load balancers

If you’re integrating with VMware’s environment be aware the SCVMM doesn’t

automatically create port groups on ESX hosts, this has to be done in vCenter to match

the SCVMM logical network definitions.

Storage Integration in SCVMM 2012

SCVMM can discover and provision remote storage on arrays in the console and

available storage can be classified. An 8 Gb Fibre channel SAN could be called

“platinum” whereas a slower iSCSI SAN could be known as “silver”. SCVMM uses

Storage Management Initiative – Specification (SMI-S) to communicate with external

arrays and a provider for your SAN vendor needs to be installed on the server to unlock

this functionality. Once communication is established you can create logical units (MBR

or GPT), allocate them to host groups and then assign them to individual hosts or to

clusters as Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). In the beta EMC Symmetrix & CLARiiON CX,

HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) and NetApp FAS are supported but

many more are likely to follow.

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Storage groups are a new concept; they bring together host initiators, target ports

and logical units. The SAN array integration is only available for Hyper – V hosts, storage

for VMware and XenServer hosts have to be provisioned outside of SCVMM.

SCVMM 2012 also supports SAN technologies for deploying VMs

like snapshot and clone: simply create a template (from a new or existing VM) that’s

SAN copy-capable and the SAN will duplicate the LUN that contains the source .vhd file.

Bare Metal Configuration in System Center Virtual Manager 2012

One really cool feature in System Center Virtual Manager 2012 that will be popular in

large environments is the concept of provisioning new host hardware without visiting

each new server.

Bare Metal Configuration of new hardware, cluster creation from within

SCVMM 2012 and the new Dynamic Optimization feature for balancing the

load in a cluster as well as Power Optimization for automatic shutdown of

nodes during low load times.

Through integration with Base Board Management (BMC) controllers, Windows

Deployment Services (WDS) and the new boot from VHD feature in Windows Server

2008 R2 this magic can happen.

The BMC on new servers need to support one of the following protocols:

1. Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 1.5 or 2.02. Data Center Management Interface (DCMI) 1.03. Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) 1.04. HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) 2.0 isn’t built into the beta but available as a

download

Preconfigure DNS with the names of the servers that are going to be created but don’t

pre-create accounts in AD. SCVMM can integrate with the PXE server in an existing WDS

server and will only respond to requests from computers that you have designated as

new hosts so the WDS server can continue to service other OS deployments.

Alternatively you can setup a WDS server just for SCVMM. The library has new

functionality for housing drivers needed by new hosts. Creating a host profile ties

together BIOS, network, disk and driver settings along with OS settings and all that

remains to do is provide IP addresses of the new hardware to the wizard to allow

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SCVMM to discover the new hosts. Only Windows 2008 R2 is supported as the host OS

for these deployments as it uses the boot from vhd feature.

SCVMM 2008 could manage clusters but these had to be created outside of SCVMM and

then brought under management, this can still be done in 2012 but the ability to create

a Hyper-V cluster with just a few steps in a wizard directly within SCVMM 2012 is really

useful. It’s also a logical step after a bare metal installation and cements SCVMM’s

position as a total solution for the virtualized data centre.

Dynamic and Power Optimization in SCVMM 2012

Perhaps the most awesome new features of SCVMM 2012

are Dynamic Optimization and PowerOptimization and they’re supported across all

three hypervisors. They replace the host load balancing that’s available through

Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) in SCVMM 2008 R2.

By default VMs are live migrated amongst host every 10 minutes with low

aggressiveness (options are low, medium and high) to balance the load across hosts in

the cluster when Dynamic Optimization is enabled. You can also manually

choose Optimize Hosts without configuring ongoing Dynamic Optimization for a

particular host group.

For host groups that have Dynamic Optimization enabled you can also optionally enable

Power Optimization. Provided SCVMM has access to hosts through BMC and can thus

power them on and off this allows SCVMM to shut one or more hosts in the cluster down

during times of lower load and then power them on again as the need arises. It happens

24×7 by default but you can choose to only implement the feature during certain days /

hours of the week.

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http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-boot-from-a-vhd.aspx


Any business aiming to reduce their environmental impact (and power bill) will be

helped by a datacentre that turns off hosts automatically during times of lower load

Integrating SCVMM 2012 with VMware’s platform.

You will learn how SCVMM 2012 integrates with VMware’s and Citrix’s platforms as well as the new features for patching cluster nodes in a safe way.

There are some key differences in how SCVMM 2012 integrates with VMware’s infrastructure compared to SCVMM 2008. It no longer imports, merges or synchronizes the tree structure from vCenter to SCVMM, instead you manually add ESX servers to any VMM host group.

When you import a VMware template to the library the .vmdk file is left in the ESX data store and only the metadata is copied to the library. HTTPS is used for all data transfers between ESX hosts and the VMM library which means there’s no longer the need to enable root Secure Shell (SSH) access to ESX hosts to support the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).

SCVMM Services can be deployed to ESX hosts but they’re not compatible with VMware

vApps, likewise ESX hosts resources can underlie a SCVMM private cloud but it’s not

compatible with vCloud. SCVMM supports up to 8 virtual CPUs for VMs on ESX/ESXi 4.0

hosts and up to 255 GB of memory and also recognizes VMware fault tolerant machines.

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Integrating SCVMM 2012 with Citrix XenServer

Unlike VMware, XenServer hosts and pools are managed directly from SCVMM 2012 so

there’s no reliance on the XenCenter server. Migrations are supported through Citrix

XenMotion, the equivalent of Hyper-V Live Migration. Both hypervisor and

paravirtualization in XenServer is supported. If you have XenServer vhd files stored in

the library set the virtualization platform to XenServer to distinguish them from Hyper-V

vhd files.

Small catches to be aware of in this beta is that your hostnames have to match exactly

(including case) to the self-signed certificates that XenServer creates and all the

different virtual network switches that XenServer creates are represented as one switch

inside of SCVMM.

Patching cluster hosts in SCVMM 2012

One of the trickier things to manage in a clustered environment is updating the hosts.

While management platforms such as Systems Center Configuration Manager can do it

they’re not cluster / virtualization aware and are likely to push out patches to all hosts

simultaneously, causing an outage as they all reboot. SCVMM works around the issue by

integration with a dedicated 64 bit WSUS 3.0 SP2 server and orchestrating cluster

patching by Live migrating VMs to other nodes, patching and rebooting the host,

moving VMs back and the repeating the process on the next cluster node. The actual

patch requirements are determined by Update Baselines which specify which patches

are required on hosts, library servers, PXE servers and the SCVMM management server

itself. Once you have assigned a baseline to a group of computers they’re scanned to

determine if they’re out of compliance and patching can then take place to make them

compliant. There’s also an option for exemptions if a particular patch is causing issues

on one or more hosts.

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Documents

SCVMM 2012