Microsoft Announced SCVMM Beta 2 Features

At this year’s Microsoft Management Summit 2007, Microsoft announced the beta 2 release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and said the product should be released sometime around the Microsoft WinHEC 2007 conference. For IT professionals responsible for managing the virtual infrastructure, SCVMM provides a solution for the management of both physical and virtual machines, consolidation of underutilized physical servers, and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines.

The new beta product includes a number of highly anticipated features, such as:

• Identification of Consolidation Candidates – System Center Virtual Machine Manager leverages historical performance data in the Operations Manager 2007 database to identify and list underutilized physical servers that are good candidates for consolidation.

• Physical to Virtual Machine Conversion (P2V) – Virtual Machine Manager improves the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) experience by integrating the conversion process and by using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) of Windows Server 2003 to create the virtual machine faster and without having to interrupt the source physical server.

• Intelligent Placement for Capacity Planning – When a virtual machine is deployed, Virtual Machine Manager analyzes performance data and resource requirements for both the workload and the host. This allows an IT administrator to fine-tune placement algorithms to get the best matched deployment recommendations. First, historical performance data is used to understand actual resource requirements of the workload. Next, minimum CPU, disk, RAM, and network capacity requirements in the virtual machine’s configuration are checked. After determining the virtual machine’s requirements, performance data is gathered for candidate virtual machine hosts. Finally, pre-selected business rules are factored in to optimize placement recommendations either for resource maximization or for load balancing, and to weight the importance of different resource types for the workload.

• Centralized Resource Optimization – Resource settings can be changed on virtual machines without interrupting workloads and virtual machines can be migrated from one host to another to optimize physical resources.

• Automate Test Lab Operations – Using Virtual Machine Manager, administrators can delegate the provisioning role to authorized users while maintaining precise control over the creation and management of virtual machines and hosts. Authorized personnel are assigned to a set of physical host servers – known as a “host group” – on which they can provision virtual machines according to administrator restrictions. The administrator can set quotas to limit the resources an individual user or group can use within the host group. The end user is presented with an easy to use Web page that enables virtual machine provisioning within the controls preset by the administrator.

• Monitor Physical and Virtual Machines from one Console – System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides an end-to-end service management solution for Windows Server-based virtual machines because it is deeply integrated with Windows Server technologies, helping IT increase efficiency while enabling greater control of the datacenter environment.

• Fully Scriptable Using Windows PowerShell – Virtual Machine Manager is built on Windows PowerShell, a new administrator-focused command shell and scripting language. Easy to adopt, learn and use, Windows PowerShell’s architecture enables the quick construction of ad-hoc integration solutions. Windows PowerShell scripting features allow administrators to integrate System Center with established tools and procedures in the data center.

You can register for the beta, here. To find out more information about the product, visit the following Web site.