Building the Network Virtualization Gateway - Service Template (SCVMM 2012 R2)

As I promised, I will show how easy you can create a service template for the native virtualization gateway in Windows Server 2012 R2, and deploy it with SCVMM 2012 R2 in this blog post.

First of all, you’ll need a sysprep’ed virtual machine with Windows Server 2012 R2.

This is the basic building block you will use for this service.

Next, follow this recipe to create you network virtualization gateway Service Template.

1)      Navigate to the Library pane in your SCVMM console.

2)      Click on Service Templates, and ‘create service template’ from the ribbon menu. This will launch the service template designer for you.

3)      Assign a name to your service template, version, and the pattern you would like to use. As you can see, you can have some directions from Microsoft regarding how to create a multi-tier service or simply start with a blank service template. In my case, I would like to start with a blank service, and add the needed VM template directly in the designer (drag and drop in the canvas)

4)      Make sure your VM template has enough NICs presented, for connecting both to the internet and the management network. Ideally, the service template should have three NICs. Connect the to the right VM networks.

5)      Next, we must leverage the powerful settings within the guest OS profile, so click on your service tier instance in the canvas, and navigate to the OS configuration

6)      Assign a name to the tier (use double hash for being able to increment as you plan to scale).

7)      Click on Roles and Features to configure the actual Windows Server. To configure this as a network virtualization gateway, we must enable the following roles:

Remote Access > DirectAccess and VPN (RAS), Routing

8)      Second, we must enable the following features:

Remote Access Management Tools > Remote Access GUI and Command-Line Tools, Remote Access module for Windows PowerShell

9)      Clic save and validate before you continue, as this will check the service for any errors and misconfiguration.

10)   Click ‘Configure Deployment’ from the ribbon. Choose destination for this service and assign a service name. (Remember that you must deploy this service on a dedicated physical Hyper-V host). Click OK and continue.

11)   If any errors appear on this screen (complaining about there is no suitable host, please click on the tier and then ‘ratings’ to get the details. Eventually go back to the canvas and fix these errors before you proceed with your deployment. If everything is in order, you can click ‘Deploy service’.

12)   When the deployment has completed, please follow this guide on how to add your virtualization gateway to your fabric in SCVMM: http://kristiannese.blogspot.no/2013/06/how-to-add-your-virtualization-gateways.html

We could always use some powershell scripts together with this service, to have consistent naming of NICs and so on, but please consider this blog post as 'fast publishing'. More details will come.

-kn