SCVMM - Not just a sysprep tool for your virtual machines anymore!

WOW!

TechEd is running this week in North America and we have scratched the surface of some huge upcoming releases.

I have paid closely attention to Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 content, and especially fabric related stuff like clustering, Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager.

VMM, which is my second home, is about to blow any boundaries it may have had previously.

Let us just stop and think for a second. A couple of years ago, we were managing our Hyper-V environment with SCVMM 2008 R2. What was the great benefits here?

·         Creating and deploy Virtual Machines from VM templates to the proper hosts

·         Integration with SCOM for PRO tips

·         Live Migration and Quick Storage Migration management

·         P2V and V2V

And that was about it.

There is no need to dig into the details, but SCVMM 2008 R2 did not have the best Windows Server integration we have seen. With that, I mean that cluster management, as well as general hypervisor management was poor. You would rather rely on Failover Cluster Manager to have an updated view of your configuration, since SCVMM 2008 R2 didn’t seem to keep up with it.

This has changed dramatically over the last years.

I have already covered the great enhancements of both SCVMM 2012 and SCVMM 2012 SP1 previously on this blog, and will therefor jump right ahead to the upcoming release, SCVMM 2012 R2.

This will be the component for your entire fabric infrastructure and cloud. You can quote me on that whenever you would like.

Let us just mention some of the features we can expect:

·         Datacenter abstraction layer (dal) will be the key for integration with third parties, hardware and software. A standard based management API will make our lifes easier in the future, and SCVMM will give you an instant, consistent and consolidated view from one console

·         Fabric management that covers “everything” related to storage and networking. It gives you end-to-end management of switches (TOR, gateways, IPAM, network virtualization, NIC teaming, QoS), storage (FC, SMB3.0, virtual SAN, virtual FC, deployment of storage, zoning, maskin, trim, mask, unmask, ODX support) and a lot more!

·         VM templates on steroids = Service Templates. Service Templates will be your best friends when it comes to infrastructure deployment where the roles are living within a virtual machine. Deployment of the other System Center components through Service Templates, as well as much more flexibility in general.

·         Integration with Windows Azure for Windows Azure Recovery Services. Hyper-V Replica plays a huge role in the next Win 2012 R2 release and can almost be synchronized (30 seconds). SCVMM 2012 R2 will enable DR for your cloud and at the VM level.

·         And much, much more.

As you can see, SCVMM could easily be renamed to System Center Cloud Manager, but then we would have another SCCM J

There is a bunch to cover, and I will provide you with the guides on this blog as soon as I have my hands on the preview we are expecting.

Windows Azure Services for Windows Server has also evolved, and it is now called ‘Windows Azure Pack’ that truly leverage the capabilities in SCVMM/Windows Server 2012 R2 – Hyper-V from a service provide and tenant perspective. Expect this to be covered as well.

If you have any comments to what you would like to know more of, please leave a comment and I will respond.