What is SCVMM?
A System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) is a virtual support center for Microsoft Windows machines, that entails the system administrators to have a centrally virtualized environment that holds multiple physical servers consolidated in it.
The VMM being a part of the system center suite helps the IT-admins to create and manage all the Virtual Machines from a single window and provides a unified management experience across on-premises, service provider, and the Azure cloud.
Capabilities of VMM:
- With the help of VMM, we can manage and configure data center components as a single fabric. The components of the data center include virtualization servers, storage resources, and networking components
- VMM helps the admins to create and manage VMware/Hyper-V hosts and clusters. It also helps to provision the above-said virtualization hosts
- The admins can discover, classify, allocate and assign their local and remote storage with the help of VMM, where storages such as SAN, NAS, SAS, iSCSI and fiber channel can be added since VMM supports block-level storage
- The VMM provides an option to virtualize the network, that allows tenants to have isolated networks enabling a higher rate of privacy and security. These virtual networks can connect to physical networks in their local site or different locations using gateways
- The VMM helps to retain a library of file-based and non-file-based resources that are used to create and deploy VMs and services on different virtualization hosts. The virtual hard disks, scripts, and ISO images are resources that are file-based meanwhile, profiles and templates used for the creation of VMs are denoted as Non-file-based resources
What’s New in SCVMM:
The System Center 1807-VMM is the latest version, which is enriched with features. Let’s have a deep dive into it.
1) Supports selection of CSV for placing a new VHD
With all new VMM 1807, you are allowed to select a cluster shared volume (CSV) for placing a new virtual hard disk (VHD).
In previous versions of VMM, a new VHD on a virtual machine is placed on the same CSV by default where the earlier VHDs associated with the VMs are placed, if there occurs any issue related to CSV then it may also affect the VHDs placed on top of it.
2) VMM 1807 supports SQL 2017
3) Conversion of a SET switch to logical switch
In the previous versions of VMM, the conversion of a Switch Embedded Teaming (SET) to a logical switch was done only through PowerShell script. As far as VMM 1807 is concerned the conversion is handled from the VMM console.
4) VMware host management
The VMM 1807 supports VMware ESXi v6.5 servers in VMM fabric. This feature enables administrators with additional flexibility in managing multiple hypervisors at the same time.
5) S2D cluster update
The individual S2D hosts or clusters against the baselines configured in Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) can be updated in this VMM 1807 version.
Some VMM installation constraints to be aware of:
- The VMM management server can’t run on the Nano servers
- The management server name can’t exceed more than 15 characters
- No System Center components other than agents, and VMM management server are to be installed on servers running Hyper-V
- Set the startup RAM for the virtual machine to be at least 2,048 megabytes (MB) if you use the Dynamic Memory feature of Hyper-V; this, in turn, enables you to install the VMM management server on a VM
On the whole, the features that are added to the new SCVMM-1807 improves the management of the concerned virtualized environment from a single window making it flexible for the IT admins and also makes the concept of virtualization to be more user-friendly.
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