SCVMM 2012 – What does it mean to your business?

I`ve read in several places, that there is no such thing, as a private cloud.

Ok. What do you mean?

“To have an elasticity that could be used in a cloud-scenario, our organization would have to invest in some serious hardware”

Yes – it`s all a matter of cost, right? (Maybe I should have use the correct terms here. CapEx and OpEx)

The thing about cloud, is that you should start small, and think big.

SCVMM 2012 fits in right here.

·         Bare-Metal deployment of your Hyper-V servers, as well as creating Hyper-V servers using your existing Windows 2008 R2 servers (everyone is using virtualization today. If not, become the hero of the day and start on Monday)

·         Create Hyper-V clusters

·         Extended library – VM templates, ISO files, scripts, VHD`s + +

·         Create logical and virtual networks

·         Support of more hypervisors – Hyper-V (Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V role enabled, Server Core with Hyper-V enabled, and Hyper-V 2008 R2), XenServer (version 5.6 with Feature Pack 1), VMware (vSphere through vCenter (4.1) and hosts with ESXi/ESX 4.1 and 3.5) Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is no longer supported in VMM 2012

·         You can optimize your hosts and clusters

·         You can create a Private Cloud . This is the underlying physical resources (infrastructure) that is pooled together, available in a self-service manner for your users.

·         Deploy services to your private cloud, with the ability to scale out and in (elasticity)

·         Orchestrate updates of your Hyper-V cluster nodes (using WSUS dedicated for your cloud, configured in the Fabric)

·         Deep storage integration (see hyper-v.nu for some details around this. Hans Vredevoort is lucky enough to have a SAN that support the SMI-S provider, that is required for this scenario J )

·         Self-service portal – let the guys on accounting test a new CRM system, a new idea – just when they want no, with no interference from IT.

If you have the NIST definition of cloud computing in mind when you`re reading the list above, you`ll see that how it fits into the big cloud thing.

So if you do not have a so called cloud today, what can SCVMM 2012 do for you?

You could:

Start to deploy some virtualization in your environment, convert your physical workloads to virtual, virtual to virtual (from VMware to Hyper-V, or just add the VMware host into SCVMM 2012).

SCVMM 2012 is not only a rich management tool for your enterprise datacenter, it`s also the first stepping stone towards your private cloud. With a focus on resource pooling and resource optimization, it suddenly starts to sound economic as well.

A private cloud facilitates not only for better server utilization, but also a better exploitation of your IT-department

I will fill in a FAQ on SCVMM 2012 on this post next week, so it will be updated on a regular basis from now on.

Cheers,