VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘scvmm’

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft Virtualization Team Senior Technical Product Manager, has introduced Hyper-V’s latest feature closely emulating VMware’s virtual infrastructure enterprise product offerings. Quick Storage Migration (QSM) is being added to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2. SCVMM 2008 R2 Release Canidate was recently released to the public. Hyper-V’s final release was integrated in Windows Server 2008 SP2.

Quoting Yuen’s post on the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog titled System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 – Quick Storage Migration, here are some high level notes about QSM:

• QSM enables the migration of a VM not only between storage locations but also from one SAN to another
• QSM relies on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
• QSM can move the virtual disks of a running virtual machine independent of storage protocols (iSCSI, FC) or storage type (local, DAS, SAN), with minimal downtime
• QSM will not be available on the free Hyper-V Server 2008 version and requires Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
• Quick Storage Migration is included with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 both in the Enterprise Edition and the Workgroup Edition
• A VM can remain running for the almost the entire duration of the transfer of its virtual disks from one storage location to another. The post estimates the VM downtime to be under 1 minute in most cases assuming W2K8 R2.
• The VM is put into save-state (Hyper-V snapshot) for a brief interval to migrate its memory state and associated differencing disks.

Yuen’s post provides a feature comparison table of QSM versus VMware’s Storage Vmotion. The following is a screen shot of the table. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been well publicized that Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) can manage VMware Virtual Infrastructure. In fact, Microsoft has demonstrated that SCVMM can initiate virtual machine (VM) VMotions between VMware ESX hosts. However, Eric Gray points out on his VCritical blog that if you use SVCMM to VMotion VMs that are members of ESX Cluster Resource Pools the Resource Pool membership disappears afterwords.

The following was taken from Eric’s post Don’t know much about resource pools:

“Now, let’s say that one of your fellow administrators wants to use SCVMM to manage this VMware environment.  He uses the SCVMM console to migrate a QA virtual machine from one ESX host to another in order to perform maintenance.

The VMotion completes without incident and everything seems OK…

Before too long, a QA engineer is on the phone asking what happened to his VM.  From his perspective, the VM has disappeared.

It’s not really gone, it has just been moved out of the resource pool.  Fortunately, you can log in with the VI Client and fix this problem by moving the VM back to the resource pool.”

I must first admit I have not done this personally, but I assume 2 things are happening here.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is a summary of the Microsoft virtualization training and certification options announced along with the availability of Hyper-V Server 2008 last week. There are several free courses to jump start your Hyper-V training and an exam Second Chance offer when testing for certification. I’m trying to be clever and stick to my site theme with the “/ETC” play on words.

Microsoft Helps Customers Overcome Barriers to Virtualization and Get Virtual Now

The press release recaps how CEO Steve Ballmer announced the general availability of Hyper-V Server 2008 “during a TechNet Server and Tools event keynote address in London”. The release also introduces “a new offering of specialized assessment and implementation services available from the Microsoft Services organization that help customers use server virtualization, and separate new training and certifications from Microsoft Learning for IT Professionals.”

For the new services part of the announcement, Rick Becker, vice president of Software and Solutions at Dell, is quoted explaining how Dell is now offering server, storage, and implementation services around Hyper-V and SCVMM.

The new training and certification portion of the release are summarized in the following quote:

“Building on the strength and valued reputation of the Microsoft Certified Professional program, Microsoft is also delivering a new series of global virtualization training and certification offerings for IT professionals covering desktop, server and management environments. Complete details on these programs are available at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/virtualization and the Microsoft Learning Community blog at http://blogs.technet.com/mslcommunity/archive/tags/virtualization/default.aspx.”

Following the link to the Microsoft Learning Virtualization Portal provides more details on the free virtualization offerings. I’ve also created a cut and pasted summary of the various links to the Microsoft training and certification information in the rest of this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although it’s VMware’s conference, every year I’ve attended Microsoft (and various other virtualization competitors) has always had a booth in the Solutions Exchange and/or presented their own session. VMworld 2008 was no exception. In fact, this year Microsoft’s presence was a little more noticeable than in the past. Starting with a marketing stunt of handing out $1 casino chips with anti VMware propaganda on Day 1, continuing throughout the conference with activities in the Solutions Exchange at their booth, and finally ending the week with their own session, Microsoft did their best to grab the attention of the attendees.

On Thursday 9.18 at 2:00 pm I sat in on Microsoft’s Virtualization session hosted by David Greshler and Edwin Yuen. The presentation was informative and entertaining with David explaining Microsoft’s server and desktop virtualization products and Edwin providing some great demos of Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. This post is a summary of my notes along with numerous links to related videos, blogs, and sites.

What’s New in Microsoft Virtualization? Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has announced two new training and certification programs that align with their new virtualization products. In the news release Climbing the Ladder of Success with Microsoft Certification: New training and certification programs help IT professionals develop mastery of Microsoft technologies, Microsoft hints at the availability of the new certifications.

“… Jim Clark, senior product planner, and Per Farny, director of advanced training and certification, will be at Microsoft Tech-Ed 2008 in Orlando, Fla., this week to unveil two new training and certification programs from Microsoft Learning. Scheduled to begin later this year, the programs are designed to prime the pipeline of skilled workers and help companies maximize their technology investments.”

A general outline of how the curriculum will be be delivered is also discussed.

“The virtualization training will be delivered in a variety of virtual, distance learning, and instructor-led options that focus on the fundamentals of virtualization, the underlying principles of virtualization architecture and the specifics of Microsoft’s technology.”

In this same release Microsoft also announced Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Lowe is live blogging from TechED 2008 in Orlando, FL this week, and his Tech-Ed 2008 Keynote Liveblog post from this morning’s opening Keynote reports on some interesting cross virtualization vendor management capability of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). I’ve blogged previously about how I believe the future virtual data center will a combination of ESX, XenServer, and Hyper-V hosts, so the idea of a single managment server for all platforms is very exciting.

Read all of Scott’s post at the link above, but here’s a few quotes that give a good overview of how the demo worked:

“At this point, Rakesh Malhotra comes on the screen to show off using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage Hyper-V, Virtual Server, and VMware ESX. Rakesh launches the VI Client to show that there is a three-node ESX cluster. Flipping over to SCVMM, Rakesh showed that the same ESX cluster shows up side-by-side with a Hyper-V cluster.”

“In the next part of the demo, Rakesh uses SCVMM to perform a VMotion operation on the ESX cluster. Here, at least, Rakesh alludes to the fact that VMotion provides no downtime to the user, whereas Quick Migration does not. Bob chimes in to remind users that live migration will be added to a future version of Hyper-V.”

The Offline Virtual Machine Serving Tool appears to be Microsoft’s equivalent to VMware’s Update Manger for ESX – in some capacity. The Solution Accelerator tool schedules and automates updates of virtual machines that are not normally powered on in your virtual infrastructure. The tool powers up the VMs allowing them to receive updates such as antivirus definitions, security updates and patches. Unlike ESX 3.5’s Update Manager, the tool only manages the offline VM updates. Server 2008, Hyper-V, and running VM updates will be handled via WSUS and normal Windows Update processes.

The Executive Overview page provides some more information: Read the rest of this entry »