Table of Contents
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) – Overview
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) – Features
- Managing Hyper-V Host and Clusters with SCVMM
- Is System Center Virtual Machine Manager Required?
- Concluding Thoughts
There are multiple ways that Hyper-V administrators can manage a Hyper-V environment including the built-in Hyper-V manager, Failover Cluster Manager, and PowerShell. The problem with many of the built-in solutions is that no single tool does everything you want to do with Hyper-V.
Generally, Hyper-V administrators may find themselves flipping between the various options to accomplish different tasks with Hyper-V management.
However, for those that want to centralize the management for Hyper-V and have an almost VMware vCenter experience with Hyper-V, Microsoft offers a solution that provides the centralized management and control for Hyper-V hosts and clusters that most administrators prefer.
Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager is an all-encompassing Hyper-V management solution that brings all the management tools and features together into a single product and management interface. System Center Virtual Machine Manager or SCVMM is a paid licensed product from Microsoft.
Now, let’s take a look at
- An Overview of SCVMM
- Features of SCVMM, and
- Hyper-V management with SCVMM and the various tasks and controls it affords Hyper-V administrators
System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) – Overview
Most Windows Server administrators are familiar with the System Center suite of products. System Center Virtual Machine Manager or SCVMM simplifies the administration, configuration, and management of Windows Server Hyper-V environments. It does this by bringing all the tools, management, and administration of Hyper-V hosts and clusters under a single management tool. Without SCVMM, Hyper-V administrators manage their Hyper-V environment by using a combination of tools with no one tool being the all-encompassing tool for administration.
These include the well-known Hyper-V manager, Failover Cluster Manager, and PowerShell. Typically, these tools complement one another and none of the tools mentioned are used solely in and of themselves for managing Hyper-V. Hyper-V administrators may use Hyper-V manager to configure their Hyper-V host virtual switches, but then use Failover Cluster Manager to configure a highly available virtual machine. Then, they may use PowerShell to configure affinity rules.
With System Center Virtual Machine Manager, all of these various features and functionality and much more are brought under a single-pane-of-glass dashboard and allows for consolidated management of the entire Hyper-V infrastructure. System Center 2016 brings to the mix cloud support, enabling seamless management of complex hybrid cloud environments with both on-prem and Azure public cloud workloads.
As mentioned, System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a pay for product and is licensed and integrated along with the System Center family of products. You cannot license System Center Virtual Machine Manager as a standalone product. For further details on buying/licensing System Center, take a look at the following link:
System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) – Features
System Center Virtual Machine Manager contains really great management features for Hyper-V environments, allowing administrators to successfully manage Hyper-V at scale in the enterprise datacenter. Among the features and functionality afforded Hyper-V administrators by SCVMM are the following:
Windows PowerShell – Windows PowerShell is the premier scripting language for use by Windows Server administrators today. SCVMM allows IT administrator to take advantage of the fully scriptable capabilities of SCVMM and run scripts against multiple VMs.
Integrated Physical to Virtual (P2V) Conversions – Most organizations today are looking to virtualize physical resources if they still have physical servers around. SCVMM allows easily performing P2V operations.
Virtual Machines Intelligent Placement – SCVMM allows automatically profiling Hyper-V hosts in the environment and placing VMs on the host that has the best fit for hosting those resources.
Centralized Resource Management and Optimization – One of the primary advantages of SCVMM is the centralized management it offers. Hyper-V administrators have all the tools and management for Hyper-V hosts and clusters in a single location.
Virtual Machine Rapid Deployment and Migration – SCVMM allows creating virtual machine templates that allow rapidly deploying virtual machines from master VM templates. Service templates allow creating complete groups of virtual machines and deploying them together as a single object that provides an application(s).
Centralized Resource Library – This component of SCVMM allows building a library of all resources required to build virtual machines, including ISO images, scripts, profiles, guest operating system profiles, and virtual machine templates. The Centralized Library facilitates the rapid deployment of virtual machines.
Centralized Monitoring and Reporting – Centralized monitoring and reporting of the entire Hyper-V infrastructure allow administrators to quickly and easily monitor the environment.
Self-service Provisioning – SCVMM administrators can delegate controlled access to end users for specific virtual machines, templates, and other resources through a web-based portal. This is especially powerful in DEV/TEST where developers may need to quickly provision new VMs for themselves according to the controls
Existing SAN Networks – SCVMM allows taking advantage of existing SAN networks for use in the environment. SCVMM can automatically detect and use existing SAN infrastructure to transfer virtual machine files.
Managing Hyper-V Host and Clusters with SCVMM
SCVMM makes managing Hyper-V environments much easier and streamlined for Hyper-V administrators.
Below, let’s take a look at a few screenshots of managing Hyper-V environments with SCVMM, including many of the above-mentioned capabilities.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager allows seeing an overview of current performance not only across Hyper-V hosts but also Hyper-V clusters.
A deeper look at Performance, including Daily host performance and Monthly host performance metrics.
Using System Center Virtual Machine Manager, you can easily create High Availability virtual machines. Additionally, hosts can easily be optimized.
In the Create Virtual Machine Wizard, SCVMM allows configuring the Availability of the virtual machine that is housed on a Hyper-V cluster as well as the Start priority.
Configuring, monitoring, and managing Hyper-V networks is easily done with SCVMM. It allows administrators to easily see all network adapters on hosts, logical networks, virtual switches, MAC addresses, etc.
Launching PowerShell from Virtual Machine Manager yields a number of modules that allow programmatically interacting with SCVMM and a Hyper-V environment.
SCVMM allows a wealth of visibility and configurability from a Fabric standpoint. Take a look at the configuration options for Networking as an example. Administrators can configure:
- Logical Networks
- MAC Address Pools
- Load Balancers
- VIP Templates
- Logical Switches
- Port Profiles
- Port Classifications
- Network Service
Is System Center Virtual Machine Manager Required?
When thinking about System Center Virtual Machine Manager and managing production Hyper-V environments, one may ask, is it required to have SCVMM?
The answer to that question is most likely “No”.
However, would it be extremely valuable to use SCVMM in managing your Hyper-V environment?
The answer to that question is probably “Yes”.
SCVMM makes a lot of sense for organizations who may scale beyond just a few hosts and clusters. For larger environments with even moderate to large deployments of Hyper-V, SCVMM becomes more necessary to maintain a management layer of the environment that is efficient and consolidated. Without SCVMM, the manual processes and workload can increase dramatically. The overall answer then is “it depends”. Businesses will have to analyze their individual environments and use cases to justify the cost of SCVMM. However, SCVMM can quickly offset the initial cost with the return yielded by much more efficient management and operational expenses recouped in administration time.
Concluding Thoughts
There are many tools available by default that allow Hyper-V administrators to effectively manage Hyper-V hosts and clusters. These include Hyper-V manager, Failover Cluster Manager, and PowerShell. However, for much more powerful, efficient, and fully-featured management experience with Hyper-V hosts and clusters, System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a single management tool that consolidates the configuration, management, and monitoring of Hyper-V infrastructure. SCVMM is a paid product from Microsoft. So, organizations will need to examine their individual business cases for the investment in System Center licensing. However, the return is efficient management and consolidation of tools and processes can offset the initial licensing cost.
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