Manage Your Virtual Environments with VMM 2008

His article is based on a prerelease version of Virtual Machine Manager 2008. All information herein is subject to change.

At a Glance:

• Support for VMware VMs
• Windows PowerShell-based scripting and automation
• Consolidated, centralized management
• Installation procedures

An Introduction to Virtual Machine Manager 2008
Integration with System Center
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Installation
Adding VMware ESX Hosts
VMotion Migration
Conclusion

Last year, Microsoft introduced System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, which provides a consolidated interface for managing a virtual infrastructure running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. Now, to coincide with the release of the new Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervisor, a new version of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) has been released. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 manages not only Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V installations, but support has also been extended to VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX/ESXi) servers. With VMM, you now have an integrated management interface that works with your entire virtual infrastructure, including both Microsoft and VMware systems.

VMM supports all the traditional virtualization tasks, such as rapid virtual machine (VM) deployments from templates and pre-configured VMs, Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) conversions, a centralized library of virtual infrastructure objects, and even Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) conversion of VMware virtual machines (VMX configuration files plus VMDK virtual disks) to Hyper-V VMs. Moreover, VMM integration with the rest of the System Center family brings the management of physical and virtual systems to a single pane of glass.

In this article, I will examine VMM 2008 and the new features it brings to IT administrators. I'll then look at the requirements and the steps involved with a VMM installation. Finally, I'll take a closer look at how to use some of the new features of VMM 2008.

An Introduction to Virtual Machine Manager 2008

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is a standalone application that provides centralized, enterprise-class management of virtual machines running under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX/ESXi) servers. Together with other System Center products, VMM provides end-to-end physical and virtual infrastructure management. Figure 1 shows the architectural layout of Virtual Machine Manager.

 

Figure 1 System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Architecture (Click the image for a larger view)

As those familiar with VMM 2007 will note, there are significantly more interfaces to the VMM system in VMM 2008 (see Figure 1). The boxes in the upper-left represent VMM 2008; the boxes in the upper-right represent System Center Operations Manager 2007, and the managed systems and interfaces are shown below. The red boxes indicate the management servers, the blue boxes show the system inputs, and the green boxes are the managed host systems with their managed objects shown in yellow.

The red box on the upper-left represents the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 server service. Above it are the different interfaces into the service; the Administrator Console, the Windows PowerShell interface, and the Self-Service Web Portal with delegated user access. Windows PowerShell forms the basis for all access to the VMM server. The VMM Admin Console is built entirely on Windows PowerShell, so you can simply create Windows PowerShell scripts that the VMM server service runs. Thus, the public API for VMM 2008 is Windows PowerShell, and any program can leverage VMM using Windows PowerShell. A great example of this is the integration of Citrix's XenDesktop Desktop Delivery Controller with Virtual Machine Manager, which is done entirely through Windows PowerShell.

Supporting VMM is a SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 database, either a full installation or SQL Server Express Edition if no other database is available. While the diagram shows both Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager pointing to SQL Server, the two programs do not share a database. They simply both run on the same version of SQL Server. The actual integration between Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager is through a connector that is available through VMM. This connector allows VMM and OpsMgr to share data, which brings virtualization information into OpsMgr and brings OpsMgr data to VMM for actions.

The bottom half of the diagram shows the managed hosts. VMM 2008 still manages Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 virtual machine hosts and a centralized library share, like it did in VMM 2007. It should be noted that in VMM, the library share is not a special file store or server. It's simply a Windows file share that VMM manages. You can manage the library through VMM or you can easily copy and delete files out of the file share and let VMM discover the changes. You can also have multiple libraries, which is useful for delegated sets of servers and for servers in remote offices.

New to VMM 2008 is the ability to manage the Hyper-V and ESX hypervisors. The management of Hyper-V hosts is done through Windows Remote Management (WinRM) and the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface. In fact, when a potential Hyper-V host is added, if the Hyper-V role is not enabled in Windows Server 2008, VMM can automatically enable that role for the administrator. This feature is also available to potential Virtual Server hosts for Windows Server 2003 systems.

The management of VMware VI3 ESX hosts is actually done through a VMware VirtualCenter server. VMM 2008 interfaces with VirtualCenter through the VirtualCenter Web Services API. Thus, a VirtualCenter server is required for VMware management, and most enterprise installations of VMware will have at least one VirtualCenter server. What is unique to VMM 2008 is the ability to manage multiple VirtualCenter servers. VMM can add multiple VirtualCenter servers, allowing an administrator to aggregate the entire VMware infrastructure and provide a single enterprise view that was not possible before.

As part of the System Center family of products, VMM uses the System Center or Outlook-style interface in the Administrator Console. The VMM Administrator Console is not an MMC snap-in; it's a completely new application built using the Microsoft .NET Framework and is built on top of Windows PowerShell 1.0. In fact, as noted earlier, any action in the Administrator Console calls the associated Windows PowerShell command, so the UI actually uses Windows PowerShell. Any command or function done in the Administrator Console can be done through the command line in Windows PowerShell.

Each wizard in the Administrator Console has a View Script button that can show the associated Windows PowerShell script for the command about to be run—a great starting point for learning Windows PowerShell as it relates to VMM. New in VMM 2008, the View Script action now opens these scripts in Notepad, so you can easily edit them right from VMM. You can also easily save the edited scripts, which you can then reuse right from the VMM library—another new feature in VMM 2008. The cmdlets from VMM 2007 have been updated for VMM 2008, including support for VMware servers. The same cmd­­lets work across virtualization platforms, so that cmdlets like New-VM work on both Microsoft and VMware systems. IT administrators can thus use one set of cmdlets to manage Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and VMware ESX hosts.

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is designed to provide three important benefits for IT administrators:

• Maximize resources
• Achieve better agility
• Leverage existing skills

A number of features and functions promote these benefits. First, VMM helps maximize your resources by integrating the management of your entire virtual infrastructure, regardless of hypervisor. By integrating Microsoft and VMware systems, VMM 2008 provides a single view of all hosts and virtual machines, as shown in Figure 2, and allows administrators to filter and view their systems by parameters such as host, operating system, owner, date added, and so forth.

 

Figure 2 The VMM Console shows integrated Microsoft and VMware management (Click the image for a larger view)

VMM also helps maximize system resources through easy server consolidation with conversions such P2V and V2V. P2V lets you consolidate your existing physical machines into virtual machines without having to reinstall those machines. This is especially useful when converting machines that have low utilization for their hardware, so you can maximize resources by placing several low-utilization machines together on one piece of physical hardware. P2V is an integrated feature of VMM and doesn't require additional software or servers. For VMM 2008, support for a greater number of physical systems has been added, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and x64 hosts. The P2V functionality of VMM is a great companion to planning tools such as the Microsoft Assessment Planning (MAP) tool (discussed in the article by Baldwin Ng and Jay Sauls in this issue of TechNet Magazine), which helps identify candidates for server consolidation.

If you already have virtual machines in VMware's VMDK format, VMM allows you to use V2V to convert your existing VMDKs into the VHD format. This is an offline process—the VMware VM has to be shut down as the V2V process converts the actual VMDK file to a VHD. You can also convert a running VMware VM by using the P2V function. This may be a little confusing, but it's important to remember that virtual machines are machines first, virtual second. Since all other systems see VMs as running machines, so will VMM's P2V functionality, which lets you convert a VM running on any virtualization software to a Microsoft VHD.

VMM provides greater agility for IT administrators through several features. One of the key features that VMM enables is the migration of VMs from one host to another, which can help maintain high availability and server optimization. With Hyper-V hosts, VMM 2008 supports Quick Migration, which can move a VM between Hyper-V hosts with only seconds of downtime. This requires a Windows Server 2008 cluster and shared storage, but VMM helps ease the management and configuration.

With a VMware ESX host, VMM 2008 also supports VMware VMotion, the VMware feature that moves VMs without any user-perceptible downtime. VMotion-enabled VMware ESX hosts are required, as is a cluster and SAN back-end like Quick Migration. Later in this article, I'll walk you through a VMotion using VMM 2008.

Finally, VMM 2008 can migrate an existing Virtual Server 2005 VM onto a Hyper-V host, automatically performing all the upgrades and conversions needed for migration.

Edwin Yuen is the Technical Product Manager in the Windows Enterprise Management division for System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Edwin came to Microsoft with the July 2006 acquisition of Softricity. Edwin also has 13 years of technical consulting experience in both the commercial and federal space. He has a BS in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University.